Activision sent over a nice big box with the Guitar Hero World Tour bundle earlier this week. I’ve had a couple days to mess around with the game and instruments and and half impressed, half disappointed. More on that later with our full review, but for now, let me touch on the new instruments.

The new guitar both awesome and annoying. The fret buttons are the exact same thing as the GH3 guitar, so nothing big there. A slider bar has been added for solo sections, which is pretty cool actually. I’m not a bit fan of the lower buttons on the Rock Band guitar, but these actually work out pretty well. The biggest change and what makes me happy everytime I play is a dedicated Star Power activation button that sits right under your palm. If tilting the guitar always makes you break combo, this is your answer. So that’s the goods, but what about the bad? The strum bar has changed from previous Guitar Hero axes. It’s not thinner, longer, and mushier. Think of it as the Rock Band strum bar with an odd sounding click. The sound and feel of the strum bar have me debating every song if I want to pick up the GH3 guitar sitting in the corner. I’m still not sold.

Onto the drums, which have me very aggravated. The layout is fantastic, with three large pads and two raised cymbals. Playing with on two levels with the cymbals is a great addition to drumming gameplay and having five pads doesn’t overcomplicate things. But there are some major sensitivity issues with the drum pads. I’m sure you’ve heard about the PC application to tune the how sensitive each pad becomes, but I currently don’t have an USB->Midi cable, so I can’t tune mine just yet (waiting for the cable from RedOctane). Right now, I have to Hulk-Smash the pads to get them to register, which is annoying and makes the drumsticks prone to sliding out of your hands. From what I hear with speaking with a few colleagues and readers, even after tuning the drums, you still have to hit the pads pretty hard. Hopefully Activision and RedOctane come up with a fix very soon.

The microphone is a microphone, what else can I say. If you’ve used the Rock Band mic or anything like it, you’ll be pretty familiar here.

Check back soon for our full review of the game, which you can buy as a standalone product if you want to use your current instruments. The guitar is okay, the drums aren’t very good in their current state, and the mic is a mic. Do you have the instruments? Let us know what you think.