Game Review | September 8, 2009 2:03 pm

By Hektic Juggalo

Well now, at the rate we are going, you can all look for Guitar Hero 16 by Christmas of this year. Sorry, but I had to throw that dig in there; recently Activision has dropped Guitar Hero 5, the latest reiteration of their Guitar Hero franchise. Following Guitar Hero: World Tour, GH5 returns to the conventional naming system of numbers, although they are a little off. However, I digress. Will the new Guitar Hero be a 'Smash Hit'? Or will it pull a bargain bin 'Aerosmith' in another month or so? Only one way to tell, so lets get into it!

Alright, well you all know the drill; GH5 has the player attack any number of colored dots at the bottom of the screen, with whatever instrument you choose (vocalists will, of course, not attack colored dots but rather match the pitch of the song.) We all know how it goes, so what makes GH5 stand out? Well, first off there are several new modes available; it is clear from the get-go that GH5's main focus is on getting players to have a good time jamming together, above all else. It doesn't matter whether you're just starting out on beginner, or you've beat 'Through the Fire and Flames' on expert, the game's main goal is to get you all playing together without penalty. A nice feature, clearly advertised by the games achievements, is that of being able to play in an entire band made up of the same instrument: This means if you have no vocalists, but four aspiring guitar players, the four of you are allowed to play together in the same band. Unless you've been big on purchasing bundles, you probably don't have four spare guitars laying around, but this also means you can play the same instrument online, in career, wherever you go.

Another feature, if it can be called that, is the ability to access every song in quickplay right from the get-go. While I see the convenience in this, and newcomers will appreciate that they don't have to play through an entire career on medium before accessing their favorite songs, I was kind of disappointed; I glance at the setlist before a new rhythm game is released, but I enjoy playing through the career and uncovering new songs I didn't realize were in the game. That is just a personal preference, however, and I'm sure there are many who love this feature.

Aside from that, a nice new feature is the ability to change the instrument you are playing at any time during career, unlike its Predecessor, World Tour, which forced you to begin a brand new career if you wanted to play a different instrument. You can, of course, change the difficulty midway through career to make it harder or easier depending on your preference, who's playing with you, etc. Other changes include an individual star power meter for each player in the band, and 'saving' a failed bandmate doesn't cost star power as in previous rhythm games. That's right, if someone in your band just can't make it through that solo and fail out, the game will automatically bring the fallen comrade back, providing the rest of the band is playing well. There is also no 'three strikes and you're out' rule; a player can fail out and come back as many times as they need to.

Multiplayer modes also got a facelift on GH5; doing away with Boss Battles and the attack options, GH5 replaced these with various competitive modes. These modes do not all focus on high scores, either. One new mode, Perfectionist, comes to mind; in this mode each player earns points based on how perfect each phrase of the song is performed. This means that a player playing on expert, with so many more notes and difficult solos, could easily fail to a player playing really well on easy or medium.

However, the new and arguably most touted mode is that of Party Play mode. Directly from the opening menu, players can simply hit the green button and begin playing whatever song is running through the background. Without a pause, players can change instruments, difficulty, or even a new song from the entire Quickplay playlist. A player's score does not matter in this mode, but you still receive the stats screen at the end of each song showing everyone how good (or dare I say bad) they did. I must admit that this is quite convenient; I remember trying to get a game of Rock Band 2 going and having to go through seemingly endless menus before we could play. To me, party mode should be a staple in any rhythm game from now on.

The career in GH5 also hosted some new features; it was back to a single song at a time, instead of World Tour's setlist of three to five songs at a time. A nice thing is that difficulty didn't really impact the player's experience too much; it focuses more on collecting stars by completing songs well, regardless of difficulty. Being an average rhythm rocker myself, I can complete every song in a typical music game on medium with five stars, and more than three quarters on hard with up to three stars. While I do enjoy rocking out on my 360, I severely doubt my ability to ever complete the likes of Jordan, or any song for that matter, on expert any time in the near future, so I was kind of happy to see this.

To offset grumbles from veteran players who may be upset that difficulty doesn't matter, each song includes a challenge, where players can earn up to three additional stars (making each song worth a grand total of 8 stars) by performing certain requirements while playing the song. These challenges are instrument-specific, depending on the song, so one song may require you to play lead guitar, another bass, and yet another drums, as well as requiring a band of two or more players to play. These challenges can range from earning so many points, to pulling off a certain number of hammer-ons and pull-offs, to whamming sustained notes for a certain amount of time. The challenges have three levels of difficulty; Gold, Platinum, and Diamond, with each difficulty earning you another star. For example, a song that required you to whammy sustains for a certain amount of time would have a Gold target of 50 seconds, a Platinum time of 100 seconds, and a Diamond time of 150 seconds. Completing these challenges is key to getting all the stars available and truly completing the career, and achieving the higher challenges can only be done on higher difficulties: To refer back to my example, for instance playing the song on Medium there is only 50 seconds worth of sustains, while playing the song on expert there are 200 seconds of sustains. I thought this was quite interesting, and a nice little add-on.

Of course, the true bread and butter of any rhythm game is the song list, and to me, this is where GH5 falls a little flat. This is all opinion, and you may disagree and totally love the song list, so be sure to check it out before basing your opinion solely off this review, but I did not care for it at all. Out of the 85 songs on the disc, I only knew about 20 of them. Now, that is fine; the original Rock Band had a ton of songs I didn't know, but I learned them and ended up loving them. In GH5, not only did I not know many of the songs, but I didn't like the ones I got to know.

Now, some of you may have heard of the new import feature; GH5 boasted of an ability to import songs from World Tour to add to its expansive playlist, similar to how Rock Band 2 aloud users to transfer all the original Rock Band tracks. The import feature, however, bit off a little more than it could chew, and many fans were upset to find that only a paltry 35 songs from World Tour's original song list of over 80 would be available to transfer into GH5. Activision has announced that this list is not definite, and more content will be available to import as soon as licensing is worked out, but how many more songs and which ones remain to be seen. This feature is also, of course, not free; it will run you 250 Microsoft Points, or $3.20. No telling whether the planned additional songs will cost you more, or not.

Ah, and what I know all of you have been waiting for; achievements! The achievements in GH5 are fairly well rounded: Some will cause you to make use of the games new features, some will make you play so many songs in quickplay, etc., some will make you complete the career. What I really liked is that difficulty didn't impact achievements a lot; where an average player may obtain around half of the achievements, the majority of GH5's achievements can be attained on easy or even beginner difficulty, with only the few relating to challenges in career mode reserved for those with the skill to play on expert. This will make many casual rhythm game players quite happy. While the amount of time to achieve 1000 gamerpoints in this game depends solely on your dedication to it, in a five day rental period where I also played through and beat Batman: Arkham Asylum, I was able to net myself around 500 achievement points, with many more doable had I had the time.

Guitar Hero 5 brings some nice new features to the table; the advent of Party Mode is a great way to get a group together to start jamming out. The ability to have multiple players on the same instrument is great for those not versed with drums or vocals. The fact that the game doesn't focus nearly as much on difficulty as previous releases may be a blessing for some newcomers, while serving as a kick in the teeth to veterans. The lackluster song list, and fairly broken import feature are quite disappointing, however. All in all, GH5 is your typical Guitar Hero: Diehard fans will pick it up on day one and love it, average players may be better served with a rental, while haters and Rock Band fanboys should steer clear. If you are on the fence about purchasing this one, I would hold off, or at least spend the money on a rental first.


Songlist on disc:

# 3 Doors Down - "Kryptonite"
# A Perfect Circle - "Judith"
# AFI - "Medicate"
# Arctic Monkeys - "Brianstorm"
# Attack! Attack! UK - "You and Me"
# Band Of Horses - "Cigarettes, Wedding Bands"
# Beastie Boys - "Gratitude"
# Beck - "Gamma Ray"
# Billy Idol - "Dancing with Myself"
# Billy Squier - "Lonely is the Night"
# Blink-182 - "The Rock Show"
# Blur - "Song 2"
# Bob Dylan - "All Along the Watchtower"
# Bon Jovi - "You Give Love A Bad Name"
# Brand New - "Sowing Season"
# Bush - "Comedown"
# Children Of Bodom - "Done With Everything, Die For Nothing"
# Coldplay - "In My Place"
# Darker My Love - "Blue Day"
# Darkest Hour - "Demon(s)"
# David Bowie - "Fame"
# Deep Purple - "Woman From Tokyo ('99 Remix)"
# Dire Straits - "Sultans of Swing"
# Duran Duran - "Hungry Like The Wolf"
# Eagles Of Death Metal - "Wannabe in L.A."
# Elliott Smith - "L.A."
# Elton John - "Saturday Night's Alright For Fighting"
# Face To Face - "Disconnected"
# Garbage - "Only Happy When It Rains"
# Gorillaz - "Feel Good Inc."
# Gov't Mule - "Streamline Woman"
# Grand Funk Railroad - "We're an American Band"
# Iggy Pop - "Lust For Life"
# Iron Maiden - "2 Minutes to Midnight"
# Jeff Beck - "Scatterbrain"
# Jimmy Eat World - "Bleed American"
# John Mellencamp - "Hurts So Good"
# Johnny Cash - "Ring of Fire"
# Kaiser Chiefs - "Never Miss a Beat"
# King Crimson - "21st Century Schizoid Man"
# Kings Of Leon - "Sex on Fire"
# Kiss - "Shout it Out Loud"
# Love and Rockets - "Mirror People"
# Megadeth - "Sweating Bullets"
# Mötley Crüe - "Looks That Kill"
# Muse - "Plug in Baby"
# My Morning Jacket - "One Big Holiday"
# Nirvana - "Lithium"
# Nirvana - "Smells Like Teen Spirit"
# No Doubt - "Ex-Girlfriend"
# Peter Frampton - "Do You Feel Like We Do (Live)"
# Public Enemy Featuring Zakk Wylde - "Bring the Noise 20xx"
# Queen & David Bowie - "Under Pressure"
# Queens Of The Stone Age - "Make it With Chu"
# Rammstein - "Du Hast"
# Rose Hill Drive - "Sneak Out"
# Rush - "The Spirit of Radio (Live, 2008)"
# Santana - "No One To Depend On (Live)"
# Scars On Broadway - "They Say"
# Screaming Trees - "Nearly Lost You"
# Smashing Pumpkins - "Bullet With Butterfly Wings"
# Sonic Youth - "Incinerate"
# Spacehog - "In the Meantime"
# Stevie Wonder - "Superstition"
# Sublime - "What I Got"
# Sunny Day Real Estate - "Seven"
# T. Rex - "20th Century Boy"
# The Bronx - "Six Days a Week"
# The Derek Trucks Band - "Younk Funk"
# The Duke Spirit - "Send a Little Love Token"
# The Killers - "All the Pretty Faces"
# The Police - "So Lonely"
# The Raconteurs - "Steady As She Goes"
# The Rolling Stones - "Sympathy for the Devil"
# The Sword - "Maiden, Mother & Crone"
# The White Stripes - "Blue Orchid"
# Thin Lizzy - "Jailbreak"
# Thrice - "Deadbolt"
# Tom Petty - "Runnin' Down a Dream"
# Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers - "American Girl"
# TV On The Radio - "Wolf Like Me"
# Vampire Weekend - "A-Punk"
# Weezer - "Why Bother?"
# Wild Cherry - "Play That Funky Music"
# Wolfmother - "Back Round"


Importable World Tour songs at time of Publication:

* Nirvana – "About a Girl (Unplugged)
* Lenny Kravitz – "Are You Gonna Go My Way"
* Wings – "Band on the Run"
* Blink-182 – "Dammit"
* Sting – "Demolition Man (Live)"
* Steely Dan – "Do It Again"
* Foo Fighters – "Everlong"
* Pat Benatar – "Heartbreaker"
* Bob Seger & The Silver Bullet Band – "Hollywood Nights"
* Steve Miller Band – "The Joker"
* 30 Seconds to Mars – "The Kill"
* The Mars Volta – "L'Via L'Viaquez"
* The Silversun Pickups – "Lazy Eye"
* Bon Jovi – "Livin' On A Prayer"
* The Stone Roses – "Love Spreads"
* Jimmy Eat World – "The Middle"
* The Answer – "Never Too Late"
* Beastie Boys – "No Sleep Till Brooklyn"
* Interpol – "Obstacle 1"
* At the Drive In "One Armed Scissor"
* Blondie – "One Way Or Another"
* Lacuna Coil "Our Truth"
* Motorhead – "Overkill"
* Rise Against – "Re-Education Through Labor"
* Sublime – "Santeria"
* Coldplay – "Shiver"
* NOFX – "Soul Doubt"
* No Doubt – "Spiderwebs"
* Black Label Society – "Stillborn"
* Ted Nugent – "Stranglehold"
* Lynyrd Skynyrd – "Sweet Home Alabama (Live)"
* Smashing Pumpkins – "Today"
* Stuck in the Sound – "Toy Boy"
* Creedence Clearwater Revival – "Up Around the Bend"
* Hushpuppies – "You're gonna say yeah"

Reviewed: Guitar Hero 5

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