Yes we heave and haw about another Guitar Hero being released every few months, because it’s generally the same game with a $60 sticker price for a setlist that could have just been DLC. I understand that, but with all the changes, tweaks, and upgrades Neversoft has made to the latest installment of Guitar Hero — I urge you to hear me out! Many of the finishing touches placed on the game make it a complete package worth a measly three Andrew Jacksons.

First, what is one thing people complain that most rock music games do poorly? The setlist, which is the most important feature of the game, at the end of the day. We essentially say “Oh I like this song, I like that song, and… I’ll sing that one when I’m drunk.” At first glance of the setlist on paper, I adapted that mentality again… Until I got my hands on it. With one of the newest — and addictive –features to the franchise, Guitar Hero 5 appends challenges to each song in the game. Challenges vary from singing a 50 note streak, holding a band multiplayer of 4x for 90 seconds, to jam hard on the whammy bar on long notes for 75 seconds total throughout the song. This adds immense replayability to the songs. Songs you wouldn’t normally look twice at, you might want to go back to with your band to go after the goal, because it’ll unlock you some in-game swag like new rockwear (not to be confused with Rock-UH-Wear) or unlock the fame and fortune of performing as some of the most respected artists such as Johnny Cash and Kurt Cobain. Each song has a specific instrument necessary to complete it’s requirement, while some require a full band. If you team up with players online, if one of the players attain the challenge’s goal, you will also unlock the reward for doing so.

Gathering up cash to purchase new clothing and accessories has been abandoned for the challenges. Most clothing is already unlocked, which you can change up at your every desire. I welcome this change because I’d often see many tops or pants I wanted to outfit my rocker Miss Tigresa in but I’d end up “saving up” ’till I could deck her out in the most expensive and fancy threads. Now I can change it up at will without worrying about having to save up all over again or wasting the cash. In fact, sometimes I don’t dress her up at all. No, no, I don’t rock out like Heff’s Playboy Bunnies, but I do rather enjoy rocking out with my Xbox avatar! Something about it just makes the game feel more like a personalized experience for the player. As bizarre as it sounds, my little avatar coupled with Kurt Kobain on the same stage is smooth and everything looks natural, albeit … different; hilarious if anything.

The largest revamping that took place was the interface, the hub, the very heart of Guitar Hero 5. Everything, absolutely just about everything can be done from one menu, and one menu alone. It is the most utilitarian approach to a menu in a long time. Career mode? Same menu. Quickplay? Same menu. Want to switch instruments, join a band, fly solo or change the difficulty? Yep, it can all be done via the same menu.

Running through career mode is usually my favorite part of Guitar Hero when flying solo, because it gives you a sense of a goal path and you know, a way to measure when you’ve “beaten” the game. Career mode has been improved ten-fold in Guitar Hero 5. You can play any song you like to move on, skip over The Police (Don’t shoot the reviewer), and grab a band. Whether you play alone or with a crew, play as the drummer or as the vocalist, or even have four Johnny Cash’s belting out some country blues, the progression is all relevant. No need to start four separate career paths for each instrument, or pass the guitar back and forth taking turns to burn through the career mode. This is a vast improvement over the past iterations of Guitar Hero because previously that was exactly what I’d do when I wanted to churn through the story mode for each instrument and I had a friend over. We’d pass the guitar back and forth to get through each type of career mode because adding a second player made it a “band” or “co-op” which would start a whole new career.

The introduction of Party Mode is very to the point as well, it allows players to literally jump in, drop out, switch difficulty MID-SONG and more. It’s pretty wild how much can be done without having to plague your friends to have to go back to the menu to change things up. It gets the ball rolling quickly and you can randomize the songs that come up right after your song finishes. Mostly aimed for, yep, parties. Your inebriated expert bassist may soon need to be given the boot mid-strum even if for your roadie who plays on easy. This mode is planned just for that very circumstance.

I also spent a short time with the Guitar Hero Tunes area, to see what was changed from the original, which was rather intimidating to many World Tour players, if I do say so myself. The interface has been redone to be a lot smoother and user-friendly. You can live record the notes you want to play instead of placing them individually (which you can also still do) which makes for tuning your track to be a lot easier. And if creating your own tunes isn’t for you — Keyboard Cat is the second most downloaded song right now on the user-created tracks hub!

While the setlist is extremely varied, from well-known chart toppers to lesser-known discoverable gems, if you have Guitar Hero: World Tour (and any other GH game) it’d only be fair if you could have the option to finally import your tracks that you, well, already paid for. GH:WT is actually supported by GH5… Sort of. After you go through the options to import the tracks (you input the code from the GH:WT game manual), you are informed that you must fork over 280 MS Points to import the tracks. Okay, that’s not so bad, you’ll be able to have a massive setlist all on one game after that, right? Totally worth it? Not quite… For some reason, only 35 of the 80+ songs available are supported for the import. A bit of a disappointment, why not go all the way? Go big or go home!

Jamming online to complete challenges and go for new high scores throughout career mode is simply a blast. If you have been twiddling your elitist thumbs saying you’ll never switch from Rock Band to Guitar Hero, I strongly suggest you at least try it before you knock it, because in all honesty, Neversoft has truly put a lot of care into Guitar Hero 5 to make it the most functional and enjoyable game in the current selection of rock music games. Everything is fluid and being able to switch up difficulty, modes, and instruments on the fly makes the experience all the more inviting. What I originally set Guitar Hero from Rock Band games was that it was superior in being enjoyable as a single player experience, but as a multiplayer experience, it just wasn’t there yet. With Guitar Hero 5, both the single player and multiplayer experiences are a fierce combination worthy of any badass living room out there.

Tags: Activision, Guitar Hero, Guitar Hero 5, Neversoft

This entry was posted on Thursday, September 24th, 2009 at 10:30 pm and is filed under Featured, PlayStation 3, Reviews, Wii, Xbox 360. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.