So, I picked up GHWT. Having lots of fun w/ the dlc (Raconteurs, Shins = AWESOME) so far, catching up on stuff that I kept seeing go by over the past months...
A couple things I noticed, in comparison to Rock Band 2:
1) I really like the drums – the elevation of the cymbals adds a welcome element of realism/fun to the gameplay. Oh, and no sensitivity issues with my drumset, so that's a relief.
2) I really,
really, really miss the "save your teammates" dynamic from RB. It's such a huge part of the gameplay, and makes for such engrossing and exciting play sessions. I can't tell you the rush I've gotten from barely getting through a song at a difficulty higher than you're really comfortable with, saving your fellow rockers and
being saved by them along the way. Skin of your teeth sort of gameplay = win. Without it, it feels like there's a gaping hole in GHWT's gameplay.
3) Characters animate more realistically and feature more believable facial expressions when singing/rocking/etc. in RB than GHWT. The GHWT models look like emotionless dolls much of the time, which is creepy, honestly.
4) Harmonix regularly shafts the Wii user (starting w/ shoddy/late/gimped RB port and lately with dlc discrepancies across versions - for example, 360/PS3 get Pearl Jam this week, but not Wii). It's so nice to see that Activision seems to bend over backward to get awesome/diverse (I actually downloaded some country tracks the other day, and they were awesome!) songs to all platforms concurrently.
5) I've noticed some differences in charts... or rather, the writing of charts, how they're arranged/put together. I can't quite put my finger on
how the "chart-writers" are different between games, but... yeah, there's definitely a noticeable difference. It's interesting. Oh, and it's also interesting how the difficulty levels scale differently. For example, WT shows its roots by having more difficult guitar charts in general than in RB. And in RB, difficulty for drums is higher than in WT.
So, some good differences, some bad. I like having access to both though, and will likely split my dlc purchases between the two games.