Guitar Hero 5 is a big step up from some recent lackluster releases (Smash Hits and Metallica anyone?) as it easily has the most complete set list to date.  As we reported earlier big additions like “Smells like Teen Spirit” (Nirvana) are great additions. But “Fame” (David Bowie), “Under Pressure” (Queen), “Play that Funky Music” (Cherry) and “Superstition” (Stevie Wonder) are brilliant additions. Considering that Guitar Hero is reaching such a diverse audience, we’re glad to see the developers are making strides to bring users a diverse array of music.

The game’s look is vastly updated, ditching most of its “cartoony” background and characters for more detailed, realistic visuals. Special guest like Johnny Cash and Shirley Manson look amazing, but of course pale in comparison to the amount work they put into rendering Kurt Cobain’s likeness. Showing that they aren’t resting on past accomplishments, Party Play was added to this edition, giving players the option to play GH in its “traditional” setup, or pop in up to four of one type of instrument during a single song play. Meaning, if everyone wants to play guitar, all four can pop in a guitar and play along.  Rarely do you get to put this use, but it’s great to see the game return to its roots of traditional dueling guitar battles that GH became famous for.

Outside of Career Mode, hardcore gamers will appreciate most of the new multiplayer games. Elimination drops the player with the lowest score, while Streaker rewards you for stringing notes together. With Do-or-Die, you’ll need to take periodic time-outs if you mess up a song section and Perfectionist scores you on certain parts of the song. Finally, there’s Momentum, where the goal is to rank up through the difficulties from Beginner to Expert and, as the name implies.

For the first time ever (and it’s about time too), Guitar Hero is compatible with songs from previous GH games. If you still have World Tour or Smash Hits, you can enter a code and download songs from either game into Guitar Hero 5. True there’s a slight relicensing fee (something, Rock Band requires as well), but it’s more than worth it for the extra songs and extended game play.

Even with this diverse list of songs and the inclusion of Rock Band-esque features, it becoming obvious that Guitar Hero has been left behind by its lil’ brother. True, Guitar Hero 5 made some minor, but significant improvement to the series, but relying too much on the guitar dueling and not the full band feel most gamers are demanding, leaves GH falling a bit short of the competition. The song list is great, the new multiplayer modes are fun, but ultimately a lot of users will be playing this game because they’re tired of listening to those old Beatles songs. –A. Kennedy

This entry was posted on Thursday, September 17th, 2009 at 11:52 am by The Notorious BJP and is filed under Games, PS3, 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.