Guitar Hero 5 Review

The decision whether to buy a new music game usually comes down to personal taste. While there are various gameplay features that may make one or the other slightly more user- and party-friendly, it still comes down to whether the songs in the track list are your cup o' tea.

I'm a little late to the music game genre, having purchased Guitar Hero III when it was on sale with a guitar at Walmart. I count theGH3 track list as my all-time favorite right out of the package. Harmonix , MTV and EA have made the Rock Band series far superior with the over 800 tracks available for download, but Guitar Hero 3's track list still holds a special place in my heart.

I had high expectations when Guitar Hero IV (World Tour) was announced, but was more or less nonplussed by its offered tracks; both the included and slowly dispersed downloadable tracks were mostly "meh" in my opinion. It was the inclusion of Hotel California -- even though The Eagles do a new farewell tour every other year -- and what I believe is a superior stock drum kit in terms of gameplay, not necessarily durability, mind you, and a few other tracks that madeGHWT worth its price to me. So I bought it, played it for a while, and ended up using the drums and guitar more for Rock Band 2 and Guitar Hero Metallica than the game they came with.

So Guitar Hero 5 was announced a while back, and we even saw a little bit of it at E3 this year, but I vowed not to be sucked in unlessGH 5's full track list excited me, and a 'no fail' mode was paramount to my ever rocking again with a Guitar Hero game -- sometimes you've just gotta try those hard songs, if only to move your fingers up and down the neck in a frenzy of hammer-ons and pull-offs, ya know? Well, the track list came out, and I found that of the 85 songs in GH5, I found more than half of them were familiar and ranged from 'decent' to 'pretty good' in my book.

Notable additions to Guitar Hero 5 include:
Party Play Mode - jump in and play, change the difficulty, play some more and jump out without bringing the gig to a screeching halt.
RockFest Mode - Compete in six gameplay types, including Momentum, Perfectionist, Elimination, Streakers, Do-or-Die, Streakers, or the tried and true Pro Face Off.
Import Tracks from previous games - Import 35* tracks from Guitar Hero World Tour for 280 Microsoft Points, and get all your World Tour DLC for free. *289MB DLC Update download, and 1.27GB download of the 35 re-engineered World Tour tracks.
Avatar and Axe Customization - Create your own avatar, customize your guitar down to the fret boards and pick guard.

Party Play Mode
Hearing the shrill cries of millions of Guitar Hero World Tour fans, Neversoft and co. gave us Party Play Mode to satiate our burning desire to suck at Guitar Hero and play uninterrupted anyway. In other words, you CANNOT FAIL a song in Party Play Mode. There's no need to exit a song that's already going, no need to sign in, and no need to restart if the song is too difficult. Finallynewbs and, ahem, "impaired" players alike can just try to have fun without bombing out at the first hard drum or guitar solo, or the dreaded FAIL on the last few notes of a song. Jump in or out at any time.

RockFest Mode
Online play is easy: just sign in to Xbox Live like usual, and search for other players to challenge or play co-op with. There are a few new multiplayer modes, and you can go head-to-head for the highest score, longest streak, highest percentage of notes hit and more. Even with the different mp modes, it still comes down to who nails the most notes, and as has always been the case for Face Off, who hits star power at the right time. I've never played for scores myself, instead just trying to have fun and not worry about the proper time to tilt my guitar or hit the two cymbals for Star Power. This is one reason I got spanked in the Pro Face Off last night; the other being that I didn't hit as many notes as my competitors. I didn't try any of the other modes, partly to protect my fragile ego and also because there weren't always players online -- remember this was the day before this game released, so pickings were slim.

Tracks, Importing and DLC
Unlike the Guitar Hero III to Guitar Hero World Tour transition, you can import songs from World Tour to Guitar Hero 5. Buy 280 Microsoft Points, enter the code from the back of your Guitar Hero World Tour manual, and you'll get 36 tracks from GHWT. Plan on spending some time waiting, as the download is a rotund 1.27GB. As I write this review, my Xbox 360 and cable modem are chugging down the re-engineered and re-licensed GHWT tracks.

I also checked the available DLC, which the GH5 press kit states: "...players will have access to a wide variety of music via the GH Library, which will offer more than 150 downloadable content (DLC) tracks at launch and the ability to import select songs from Guitar Hero World Tour and Guitar Hero Smash Hits including all of the upgrades and new features in Guitar Hero 5." As of 7am PST I only saw 15 tracks in the list, so maybe I'll have to wait until the actual game launch.

Anyway, we've covered new tracks, importing and no fail modes, so what else is new? I've only played the game for a few hours so far; some online play with presumably the only other twoGH 5 players in existence at the time, and the rest writing about my experience. Here's a rundown of the other features I liked or disliked, and some time trying out drums and guitar and not much else.

Avatar and Axe Customization
Customizing avatars in music games is nothing new, and with each new game you can get more granular in your avatar's accoutrements. With GH5 you not only specify your avatar's appearance, but you customize your guitar down to the pick guard, neck and fret board designs. That's all fine and dandy, but I've never bothered to do much with my avatar -- until now. Instead of creating another alter ego of myself, I just imported my Xbox Live avatar -- currently adorned in red and white Mass Effect armor and helmet. Seeing that Phoenix armor on my big-noggin'd mini-me, hopping about the stage and singing warmed the geeky cockles of my little black heart.

What else?
We've covered a lot of what I like so far in Guitar Hero 5, but there's got to be something I don't like, right? There isn't much I dislike about this game, really, but being the creative guy I am, I'll wrap it up with a simple list of likes and the dislikes some of you undecided buyers need to make a more informed decision.

Like

• Save and load playlists -- I don't recall this feature in World Tour; it's a handy and more than welcome feature regardless.
• Xbox Live avatars on stage -- they're just sooo kyoot!
• GHMix 2.0 - I tried it for about 20 minutes, and while the song I created resembled the sound 200 donkeys might make if they were dismembered in a 3-minute time period, it was MY dying donkey chorus -- I think I just found my new band name. The process is a bit confusing, but fun nonetheless.
• Shirley Manson
• Guitar Hero 5 commercials
• Shirley Manson is really hot
• Ring of Fire by Johnny Cash -- a relatively easy song to play in the game, it's still one of the best songs ever made.

Dislike

• Only 35 songs from Guitar Hero World Tour? They'll surely add more when they're done re-engineering and re-licensing more tracks.
• No songs from Guitar Hero: Metallica? See above
• No songs from Guitar Hero: Aerosmith? Wait, I don't really care
• Johnny Napalm is a bit beefier and, well, creepier. My wife couldn't stand the sight, but she's always had a pathological fear of balloons mohawks and faux-hawks.
• Carlos Santana, Kurt Cobain, Matt Bellamy models -- I'm actually undecided on all but the Shirley Manson model. The others remind me of that Uncanny Valley hypothesis...
• Ideally I'd like to have every included Guitar Hero song available to play with one game disc. A guy can dream, can't he?

Keep in mind that I'm not an either/or consumer of music games -- I've spent over $100 on Rock Band 2 DLC along with the game and guitar, and I've bought three Guitar Hero games to date: GH3, GH World Tour (band kit), and GH Metallica. They all have something to offer, so if you're looking for a "buy this game instead of The Beatles: Rock Band," you've come to the wrong place. I bought Guitar Hero World Tour for the instruments, and I highly recommend Guitar Hero 5 if only for the new tracks and Party Play Mode. We'll see about the new guitar and drum controllers in a couple of weeks.

Guitar Hero 5 is available for $59.99 for Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, and Nintendo Wii. $39.99 for PlayStation 2.