Are you ready to rock? Again? It feels like only yesterday that the first Guitar Hero game hit the scene, but we are now in the middle of yet another season of rhythm games. Our living rooms are once again getting populated with plenty of plastic guitars and miniature drum sets thanks the latest offering from Neversoft and Activision, Guitar Hero 5.
We were offered a brief glimpse at this game when the Futurelooks team was at the E3 Video Game Expo in Los Angeles earlier this year. Well, the game’s been released and it’s pretty much what you’d expect. More rocking, more jamming, and more of the same.
More Songs for Guitar Heroes and Rock Stars
While we may be lead to believe that Guitar Hero 5 is a wholly different game from Guitar Hero World Tour, you are going to get nearly an identical gaming experience this time around. The main selling point, you could almost say, is the new list of songs. Yes, Guitar Hero 5 is more than a track pack, but the songs have to come first.
All in all, there are 85 songs by 83 different artists. The developers have worked to keep the track list as “fresh” as possible with 25% of the songs released within the last 18 months and more than half coming from this decade.
Among some of the highlights are Smells Like Teen Spirit by Nirvana, Sex on Fire by Kings of Leon, Bleed American by Jimmy Eat World, In My Place by Coldplay, Play That Funky Music by Wild Cherry, and The Rock Show by Blink-182.
When going through the Quickplay or Party Play modes, you have the opportunity to organize the songs based on title, artist, source, and release date, as well as the relative intensities for each instrument. This display of difficulty is similar to what we’ve long since experienced in the Rock Band series.
Will the Avatar Please Take the Stage
Aside from the new songs and the better organization of the songs, one of the more fun innovations introduced in Guitar Hero 5 is the ability to use your Xbox Avatar as your rock star. That adds a dash of personalization to the game.
I don’t know about you, but I think Guitar Hero 5 beats out most of the other Xbox Avatar games available on the system. If you have all of your friends over (and they saved their accounts onto memory cards), you can have a full band of Avatars.
As before, you can make the customized Guitar Hero-style rock star characters instead, if the whole cartoon-inspired Avatar thing isn’t your cup of tea.
How to Save Your Failed Band Members
In all the earlier Guitar Hero and Rock Band games, the way that you would go about saving a fellow band member who has failed out of a song is to activate Star Power (or Overdrive, as the case may be). That’s no longer the case for Guitar Hero 5.
When a player fails as part of a band, a new Band Revival shows up on the screen. The rest of the band then needs to “play well” to push the meter into the green, hitting as many of the notes as possible. The more correct notes, the more the meter goes into the green. The more they miss (or the fewer notes there are on the screen), the more the meter pushes into the red. If it goes all the way in the red, the band fails.
Party Play for the Win
Even though you could certainly play Guitar Hero 5 alone in the comfort of your home, I think we’d all agree that the biggest appeal for the whole rhythm game genre these days is the ability to play with your friends. These make for fantastic party games, especially since everyone likes some good music at a party.
The problem is that some people are going to suck and some people won’t want to play a whole song. Further still, it can be a pain to back out of the menu to add or remove players. The Party Mode in Guitar Hero 5 totally overcomes all of these obstacles.
Accessible directly from the title screen (you don’t even need to enter any menu), Party Play lets players drop in and drop out on the fly. This can be in the middle of a song and they can change the difficulty as needed. Party Play is always on “No Fail” mode and the system will continue to choose random songs to keep the music going.
Of course, you can choose your own songs or develop your own playlists by pausing the game and going into the track listing. I think this will be the mode that gets the most play out of the majority of Guitar Hero gamers, particularly when the holiday season rolls around the corner.
You still accumulate points and it’ll still track your percentage, but since there is “no fail” and the ability to drop in/out at will, everyone can have a good time without feeling the pressure of letting down the rest of the band members. It really is great for parties and the implementation is great.
GHTunes, GHJam, GHMix…
Although these three modes are included in the game and they’re meant to enhance the user experience, I don’t think too many people are going to making very much use of these at all.
With GHTunes, you can download the songs that other players have created. With GHJam, you can play along to some songs (I don’t see how this is different from Quickplay). With GHMix, you can create your own tunes. Since the art of making a good song is so tough, I’d rather leave that up to the experts.
Not Much of an Illustrious Career
The career mode has always been a bit of a weak point for the Guitar Hero franchise, especially when compared to the much more robust experience that you can get out of the Rock Band franchise. Unfortunately, this tradition is continuing with Guitar Hero 5.
While you are almost giving the “venue” experience of Rock Band, you are still playing songs in sequence, unlocking them as you go along in Guitar Hero 5. You need to earn a certain number of stars to get more stars in your current venue and to unlock more venues. Unlike previous iterations, Neversoft didn’t even feign an attempt at making a story for this career mode.
One aspect that I really disliked was the lack of multi-track setlists. You always play one song at a time and, unlike Rock Band, there really is no punishment for failing a song. There’s also very little in way of a reward, since all the tracks are unlocked from the beginning for Quickplay and Party Play.
More Challenges and More Stars
Along with the usual (up to) five stars that you can earn with each song, each track is also accompanied by a bonus challenge for up to three more stars. Some of these cater to individual instruments, while others get you to work as a band. The challenges can be to hit a certain number of notes, hitting the whammy bar for a certain duration, or achieving a certain score.
You can see the progress on these bonus challenges by the little disc that fills up on the side of the screen. The first level (gold) lands one bonus star, the second level (platinum) is two stars, and the third level (diamond) is three stars. As you can see, hitting enough of these challenges can substantially increase your star count over the course of your virtual career and they add an extra point of interest during your so-called world tour.
Final Thoughts
If you’re expecting something groundbreaking or revolutionary with Guitar Hero 5, you’re going to be sorely disappointed. It’s the same old Guitar Hero gameplay that you’ve come to know and love, along with the drums and vocals introduced in Guitar Hero World Tour. You hit notes, wow the crowd, and bask in your rock star glory.
As before, you have the opportunity to unlock “real” stars to play as in the game. For this go-around, you can get Kurt Cobain, Carlos Santana, Shirley Manson (Garbage) and Matt Bellamy (Muse). These characters can be fun at first, but they lose their novelty appeal quite quickly. Playing as my Avatar is more interesting, actually.
The career mode leaves a lot to be desired, but Party Play is a nice innovation that will be a welcome addition for all the party people in the audience. Dropping in and out, as well as the ability to use any combination of instruments, is a nice way to play with both experts and novices alike.
In the end, Guitar Hero 5 pretty well does what you expect it to do, keeping the formula largely untouched. I just wish the career mode was more rewarding.
Pros
- Same band-based rhythm gameplay
- Party Play mode is great
- Track listing is mostly current and relevant
- Xbox Avatar integration
Cons
- Career mode is still disappointing
- No major innovations in gameplay
- Just an expensive track pack
Overall Rating: 7.5 / 10.0
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Guitar Hero 5 for the Xbox 360 Photo Gallery
