This holiday season, console owners are truly spoiled for choice. In addition to all the top shelf action, strategy and role playing titles, there're a couple of big hitters with more universal appeal. I'm talking of course about the rhythm games. Electronic Arts' Rock Band, originally released a year ago in North America has finally landed Down Under and Activision's Guitar Hero World Tour has now also arrived, only a few short weeks after its US debut.

Both games now offer the full band experience; allowing four simultaneous players to take on guitar, bass, drums and microphone duties and jam along together to an assortment of popular and classic rock tunes.

So we've got two great offerings from the world’s top two video-game publishers, both here just in time to compete for your holiday dollar. They're certainly not cheap either - the full bundles of both games costing more than you can actually pick up a new Xbox 360 or Wii for. So rather than review the games separately, we thought it would be more useful to put them head to head and give you a straight-up comparison from an Aussie perspective.

Guitar Hero World Tour continues the evolution of the Activision's hugely successful series. Developed by NeverSoft (the guys that have brought us nearly a decade of Tony Hawk Pro Skater games and of course, Guitar Hero 3), World Tour - like each of the successive skateboarding games - has retained the core of its predecessor while adding a whole bunch of new features on top.

Rock Band has been crafted by Harmonix – the guys that started the lounge-room rock movement with the original Guitar Hero and Guitar Hero 2 under Activision before shipping off to start this new franchise under the EA umbrella with MTV.

The competition is still undoubtedly fierce but fortunately both teams seem to have accepted that there's a limit to the amount of plastic crap their customers want cluttering their lounge rooms, so both games now offer compatibility between their respective controllers – at least in the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 versions (unfortunately not Wii). You're not going to get the absolute best experience using either game’s peripherals to play the other, but you can still get by just fine.

The biggest feature for both is obviously the drum peripheral (it's the reason the boxes are now about four times the size of Guitar Hero 3). The World Tour drum kit consists of three circular pads, two elevated, fan-shaped cymbals and a floor kick-pedal for a total of six triggers. Rock Bands' is a row of four circles and a kick for a total of five. You play both games simply by hitting the corresponding trigger-pads as the notes scroll down the screen.

Drumming in both games feels much more comparable to playing a real kit than the relation between the guitar controller and a string instrument and playing these games will no doubt inspire a lot of people to seek out some genuine skins.

Guitar Hero Star Power is activated by hitting both cymbals simultaneously whereas in Rock Band, you activate your Overdrive in certain free-style fill sections throughout the song. There's a multitude of subtle differences like this that gives each game their own unique character but in each case, neither is really significantly better than its competitor.

In terms of build quality the World Tour drums are a definite cut above Rock Band's, they're also wireless while Rock Band's require a cable (a USB hub is included for those without enough spare ports on their console though). Rock Band's pads make a pretty annoying noise that can be very distracting for the others you're playing with, whereas World Tour's make a damper sound and have more bounce, making them much nicer to play on.

Unfortunately, the World Tour review-kit that I received suffered from an early manufacturing defect where some pads were not sensitive enough, requiring extremely heavy hits to register in the game. I managed to get hold of a USB-Midi interface for my PC and was then able to re-calibrated them myself, after which they worked perfectly. The procedure was certainly something you couldn't expect the average casual gamer to perform though so hopefully Activision have this issue nailed for the Australian retail release. Even after that experience, however, the Guitar Hero World Tour drums still win over Rock Band's, they just feel much nicer to play.

Rock Band's guitar controller, modelled on the iconic Fender Stratocaster, is also wired. Two new features differ it from Guitar Hero 3: An effects selector - a five-point toggle switch that adds effects such as flange, wah and echo; and five high-fret buttons – a smaller set of buttons higher up on the neck, that don't require strumming to play.

Guitar Hero World Tour's guitar controller is once again wireless and introduces one new feature: The neck slider. Certain sections of a song will award extra points for using the touch sensitive slider to scale notes; you can also use it to add a wah effect to sustained notes, in the same manner as the whammy bar. These extras in both games sound kind of cool, but in practice they serve more as just gimmicks - fluff to help differentiate the games from each other – rather than adding any actual new enjoyment factor.

The Microphones function pretty much the same in both games. Nothing super special here - anyone that has played Sony's Singstar will know the drill - simply read the lyrics that scroll by at the correct pitch. Again like Singstar, you don't necessarily have to sing in the same octave as the rockstars you're emulating, just as long as you're singing the same root notes and staying in key.

The increased popularity of these games has meant that the cover versions of songs that made up the bulk of the earlier games' content are no longer required. Artists and their labels have recognised the promotional potential and so for Guitar Hero World Tour, every track included with the game is an original master. With more than 85 songs it's also the biggest setlist the series has seen in a single game, with several extra downloadables available for purchase at launch (including the complete new Metallica Album – Death Magnetic) and certainly more on the way.

Rock Band still features several cover songs among its 58 on-disc tracks but the one year head-start over its rival has given it a leg up in the total amount of content, with over 300 additional tracks available for online purchase, including several complete albums.

In terms of variety, the selection of music in both games is honestly about even. Guitar Hero World Tour perhaps has a bit more on offer for fans of classic rock with a bit more focus on greats from the 60s and 70s and Rock Band arguably has more to offer for fans of the heavier and crustier ends of metal and punk. There's certainly something for all rock music tastes in both games, and then some.

Which brings us to Guitar Hero World Tour's most unique new feature, the Music Studio. Music Studio not only allows you to create your own new tracks to play with in the game, but also lets you share them with other players. It's hardly a professional level DAW, but considering you're using the game controllers to create and manipulate your tunes, it serves the purpose surprisingly well.

This is definitely one area of the game that some are going to find much more value in than others. It's a fun little utility to mess around in and will definitely be a winning feature for the creative types (probably even a good learning tool for children or just for those looking to learn more about music in general). There's some seriously cool stuff like licensed Line 6 amp modelling to re-create the signature sounds of your favourite guitarists and the drum kit can actually even be hooked up to external devices (via the same kind of Midi interface I used to re-calibrate my kit) to use as a real instrument.

Realistically though, the quality of music you're going to be producing here doesn't hold a card to the licensed tracks in the game already. Despite the game not allowing vocal recording, the majority of the top-rated tracks in the online sharing system are copyright infringing melodies – mostly just various theme tunes and re-creations of classic video-game music from games like Megaman and Final Fantasy.

So while it might sound like a great way to extend the content of the game. The result is more like the Spore creature creator – a nice sandbox for people to fiddle around and burn up some creative hours with; just don't expect to find anything too amazing amongst the thousands of sandcastles (and look out for all the poop).

Most of the focus of these games is deservedly on the audio, but the graphics definitely require a mention here too. Guitar Hero has gone to lengths re-creating some iconic real-world venues to play in as well as using mo-cap sessions with several of the game's signed artists (including Sting, Zakk Wylde, Billy Corgan and Travis Barker) to bring them to life in the game. The backdrop for the TOOL songs in the game have been designed to resemble the band's disturbed music videos and album art. It's all well intended and does aid the atmosphere of the game, but the overall art style is just a bit... ugly. In trying to capture the rockstar attitude, they've gone a little too far with the bright colours and clutter.

Rock band comparatively, has a much slicker look about it. The fret boards are translucent black and scrolling notes are smoother. It's still colourful, but more clean and vibrant. It also renders your band members into the loading screens in images that are like tour photographs, documenting the rise of your virtual stardom. In defence of Guitar Hero here though, its larger note icons, while less attractive, do admittedly make it easier to tell the difference between regular strummed notes and hammer-on/pull-off sections.

Both games offer a good depth in character creation and thankfully have done away with the prohibitively expensive virtual gear that you could only purchase by completing the toughest songs on the hardest difficulty level. Instead, you just earn more dollars the more that you play and spend it on a varied wardrobe for your characters.

Guitar Hero has made an important change for the better here, now giving you the option to change difficulty at any point in the career mode instead of having to start again from the beginning. A hugely welcomed adjustment considering the exhausting length of the included track list. They have also added a new Beginner difficulty level which drops the game to a truly remedial level – perfect for getting the littlies (and the older folk) involved in the fun. Rock Band is slightly less accessible in this respect.

Playing by yourself is all well and good, but Rock Band and Guitar Hero World Tour are both party games at heart so you're going to want to find some friends to get the most out of them (maybe you can even get them to split the cost, heh) – if not, it's no huge issue as both have a very solid online multiplayer component.

You can play cooperatively through the songs locally, or jump online and band up with others. Additionally you can go head to head in a variety of different modes that include complete four vs four player band battles and there're leaderboards for the truly elite to compete for top spot.

One caveat is that the extra downloadable tracks can only be played online between players that have both purchased them – a fact that perhaps gives Guitar Hero's larger on-disc library an advantage over Rock Bands more populated online catalogue. Conversely, EA's Rock Band 2 (currently now available only in North America) boasts 84 songs on disc, but more importantly, backwards compatibility with 55 tracks from the original Rock Band via an inexpensive patch download – a good sign of future support for the series, but then it took them a year to release the first one here, who knows when we'll see number 2.

In terms of quantity, Rock Band wins the battle on overall content and also for keeping their downloadable tracks to a reasonable file size (note to Neversoft: with our country's current broadband situation, 1 Gigabyte really is too much data for the average Aussie to be blowing on a single album of music – it should be better compressed). Guitar Hero does stay in the game, however, simply by offering more tracks on the retail disc.

Rock Band loses some points for twelve months of tardiness and kudos goes to Activision for getting this to Australia in time for the holidays. Guitar Hero World Tour is also the clear winner in the hardware stakes (despite my uncalibrated drum experience). In addition to being wireless, the instruments are just of a better build quality and feel like they'll outlast their Rock Band counterparts.

The fact is that both of these games are top-notch entertainment and in software it's only minor differences and gimmicks that separate them functionally. Ignoring the criticism of those that whinge about playing rhythm games when you could be learning a real instrument, the genre has proven itself through popularity as an innovative new way to enjoy and interact with the music that we love, instead of just listening to it.

EA's Rock Band and Activision's Guitar Hero World Tour are both worthy purchases this holiday season, you really can't go wrong with either. AusGamers official recommendation for Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 owners however, is to pick-up the Guitar Hero World Tour complete bundle for the game and instruments and grab the Rock Band software only pack. If you do have to absolutely only pick one - unless Rock Band has some specific songs you can't do without - Guitar Hero World Tour is the stronger choice.

Wii owners should exercise more caution as instrument compatibility between the different titles on this platform is not yet 100% clear. The PlayStation 2 versions have no online component so Guitar Hero is the clear victor with more on-disc tracks.

The below summary is for Guitar Hero World Tour only - Click over to the Rock Band page for that game's corresponding breakdown.