Just shy of a full four years since the birth of the Guitar Hero
franchise, Activision has touched down with its newest in-house effort
in its attempt to craft gamers’ quintessential music game entry on the
Xbox 360 (along with the Playstation 2/3 and Nintendo Wii , of course).
After a string of installments that brought us little more than
alternate gimmicks based on the foundation of October 2008’s World Tour,
the company now bares a new fruit to rock gamers that aims to take the
series one step further, donning the series entry number 5 instead of a
subtitle. Obviously, with the recent milking of the series, players no
doubt have a serious question on their hands: Does this numerical
increment mean players are in for a suitably updated experience or has
Neversoft just tacked a different set of songs on top of the abused World Tour
engine? Thankfully, there are a handful of features that come into the
scene as a welcome addition, however, some aspects of the product feel
a tad rushed and devoid of innovation and polish.
That’s not at all to say the game doesn’t have its moments of
brilliance or that one cannot derive any satisfaction from the title,
though. However, the end product ends up feeling like a World Tour version 1.5, or, in my mind, the product last year’s World Tour
should have been in the first place. Some interesting new ideas are
injected into the franchise’s stale bloodstream, but let’s take a step
back and look at the product as a whole.
Let’s just say I’m not going to waste my time explaining the game’s
premise. Since you are reading this review online, you have the
Internet and have some interest in games, so I’m inclined to believe
you aren’t an anti-social hermit that has never heard of Guitar Hero – even so, this is the third Guitar Hero I’ve reviewed for Diehard GameFAN, so go take a whiff of Guitar Hero: Metallica or Guitar Hero: Smash Hits if you need to. Every staple mechanic found in World Tour
returns, meaning you have selections between quickplay and career modes
(albeit these are now fully fleshed out with online features), the
band, character and instrument creation tools, GHMix makes a return
with a few more options and the competitive modes make a return with a
bit more emphasis and twists. For the most part, the “new” modes are
just twists on ones already given to us in previous entries but the
sequel does pack on some dandy features.
Hands-down, the biggest feature lies in the fact that Guitar Hero 5
allows players to play whatever instrument they please, regardless of
whether or not someone is already on that instrument. No longer do the
expert guitar players have to fight amongst themselves to see who gets
“demoted” to bass, as bands can consist of five lead guitars if that is
the players’ desire. The mixing and matching is by far the game’s
greatest accomplishment and puts its flexibility beyond what is even
found in Rock Band’s entries. Guitar Hero 5 also dumps World Tour’s
long-winded and painful career mode and cash earnings to provide
players with challenges per each song. This is a most welcome change as
not only are players able to tackle the career in a bite-sized,
per-song fashion, but each song has an instrument specific challenge
(such as using only upstrums on bass guitar, holding on to a 4x
multiplier as long as you can, whammying sustains for specified
timeframes, etc.) that will have players coming back to songs with
different instruments and full bands for those high-scoring band
achievements (which is strengthened by the smart decision to finally
allow the career to go online). These challenges are now what unlocks
the hidden characters, cheats and customization goods and all 85 tracks
are available from the getgo, meaning players won’t have to slave away
for cash to enjoy certain songs. These two features are certainly
well-played on Neversoft’s part.
On the other hand, you have a handful of features that are just kind
of “there.” The band moments do nothing of huge benefit to anyone that
doesn’t care about getting high scores and just seem like a ploy at
imitating Rock Band’s unison bonuses. While the jump-in feature that
allows other players to join or drop out of a song at any time seems
like a nifty feature, in the two weeks I’ve played this title, I
haven’t used it once, but I suppose I have a little ease of mind
knowing it is there just in case. The new competitive setup just adds
in one new mode to the already existing pro face-offs and band vs. band
and, really, it just takes the place of the battle mode while adding in
new twists to expand it to five different modes. Granted, these
additions do add something to the overall value of the game, they just
don’t leave the same impact as the band structure and challenges do.
Looking at the title, however, it is evident that Neversoft did put a
little effort into pumping up the game’s bicep to flex its graphical
muscle. The animations and character models are as great as ever and
the development team still works in some crazy environments with subtle
quirks. The environments aren’t nearly as crazy as those seen in World Tour, but the environments seen in Guitar Hero 5
are very believable and the unlockable visual effects environment gives
the performance a “music-video” vibe that the series has always lacked
outside of mind-ripping Tool venues. Even the avatars meld into the
game very well and it’s a kick to see that they even animate just like
on the dashboard – this leads to very amusing results when the avatars
sing and go a little crazy onstage. Lastly, while it might not matter
to most people, the note gems have a really noticeable pop to them in
this installment. With brighter color and a bit of animation inside of
them, the notes stream down the highway very noticeably and with the
highways themselves being a bit less busy in design, the highways are
as clear as they have ever been.
There are a few minor setbacks to the graphics, however, most
notably in the jaggies and lack of detail of the created characters
when compared to the on-disc characters. Also, even though the notes
have gone through an overhaul, the tap notes seemed to have lost a bit
of their transparency, which makes them stick out even less when you
consider the purple connectors have been dumped in this installment.
It’s a minor detail as if you can’t tell whether or not the note is of
the tap variety, you can just strum it without penalty, but it is a
slight step back for the game’s intuitive visuals. Finally, even though
the menus and HUD are now as streamlined and accessible as ever, they
just seem to lack in graphical punch – they get the job done, but
nothing really pops out for players to feast their eyes on. Regardless,
with how easy the game makes navigating these menus, it’s a small price
to pay.
When you take a look at the game’s sound, there’s not really much
you can say. I’ve always stood on the firm ground that song content is
entirely subjective, so you can check out our onsite song listing and
decide whether or not Guitar Hero 5 wets your musical
appetite. However, you can’t deny that the title has a wide variety of
acts and rock genres, so there should be some sort of appeal for nearly
anyone to enjoy. One could potentially argue that being so far into the
rock game cycle, that this entry doesn’t have as many
classically-notable tunes, but there are some jams such as “Smells Like
Teen Spirit” or “Ring of Fire” that would beg to differ. Even so, the
title gives some more recent bands a chance to shine, so regardless of
familiarity or personal taste, Guitar Hero 5 provides a very balanced song offering.
As always, these songs ring through in album quality and the master
tracks will ensure that all of the songs are presented in the way
everyone remembers them. Unfortunately, every single sound effect in
the game from what I could gather has been recycled yet again. It’s a
minor annoyance, but most players will probably never even think about
it and, of course, the music prominently takes center stage. Perhaps
what annoyed me the most, though, is the crowd clapping effect during
the execution of star power, which just seemed off for some of my
guitar rhythms and proved somewhat distracting. Very minor setbacks
aside, though, the presentation is about as top-notch as I’ve ever seen
in a Guitar Hero title.
With most music games changing so little in its presentation, we
finally get to the meat of the title, its gameplay, which, still,
admittedly, hasn’t changed all that much. Players strum the guitar,
bang on the drums or belt out vocals and the star power works 100% the
same as it has since the original entry – that is to be expected. What Guitar Hero 5
does, however, is update a handful of mechanics to make the game a bit
more serviceable. The most obvious of these changes for a band lies
within the fact each separate band member finally, finally, finally has
their own star power meter. To take things a step further, players that
score star power with a full meter will have that juice overflow into
other players’ meters. Finally, bands can step away from the star power
hogs and stolen star power that has plagued the title for quite some
time and the cooperative elements of the star power and band moments,
coupled with the revival of failed instruments, should pull bands into
a more cohesive unit as opposed to being a think-for-yourselfer.
I’ve touched on it a few times already, but, perhaps the game’s greatest achievement for the series is its ease of use. Guitar Hero 5
has finally done away with sticking players to a single difficulty for
the career and a few of the other changes just make the game wholly
accessible. The party mode allows players to jump straight into a song
currently playing from the main menu with the press of a button and the
party mode allows players to switch instruments and difficulties and
drop out/jump in on the fly, creating a process that anyone can
understand and catering to the party aspect of the series. On the
opposite side of the spectrum, diehard expert players have some
enticing new gameplay modes in the competitive set, such as the Do or
Die mode that boots players from the song for a bit. When you throw in
some relatively nicely-done notecharts (although, I do have to say the
amount of keyboard/organ fillers are getting a bit ridiculous on the
guitar) that also have a nice spread from beginner to expert, Guitar Hero 5 is an adequately balanced game.
That being said, even though I would say Guitar Hero 5 is easily the best entry for the series since Guitar Hero II
and it seems Neversoft has somewhat found its groove with the series,
let’s be honest – I just can’t shake the feeling the series is playing
catch up to Rock Band and even on some of these facets, it
fails to match that game even with nearly two years of development
progress on top of the said series’ debut. The band moments, trying to
get previous games’ songs into the mix (and not even being able to
offer even half of the content from previous discs), trying to freeform
the career a little, finally balancing the star power out a bit more,
taking the career online and so on – while these implementations, along
with brilliant accessibility, have crafted the title into a dandy Guitar Hero experience, it is just now taking the series on par with what the Rock Band
series has offered players for some time now. It is debatable whether
or not the game was thrown out with gimmicks to steal some thunder from
The Beatles: Rock Band the week before its release, but a few
more months of polish and subtle additions to the game could have went
a long way. I’m just hoping Neversoft can adequately build upon this
foundation as if the team can take the game forward even more, the next
Guitar Hero should be a unique experience.
Still, Guitar Hero 5 is a fun outing that shows the series’
potential. With the new challenges, better party functionality and
expanse in online content, there is a good bit of replayability to be
found in the title if what it has to offer keeps your attention. The
content is nothing to sneeze at either, as 85 songs come on the disc
and if players download a free patch to carry over their World Tour downloadable tracks, with the free World Tour
DLC, you’re looking at around 100 songs from the get go – much more
serviceable than the pathetic 40 or so songs Konami thinks it can get
away with on a full-priced disc. While the import ability to bring
tracks from World Tour and Smash Hits isn’t panning
out like everyone had hoped, it’s still an earnest effort and gives
players a means to add even more content to the title.
GemuBaka Final Review Score: 4 of 5
If the rehashing of Smash Hits left a bad taste in your mouth, Guitar Hero 5
is like a fresh blast of mint that breathes a little bit of life and
some much needed originality into the series. It’s not without a few
issues and the mix of new features might seem like the series is still
trying to catch up to Rock Band, but the positives far
outweigh the negatives in this new rock entry. A great presentation is
wrapped around the familiar, yet fun gameplay and the ability to
feature multiples of the same instrument and the ease of use of the
title combine to be the greatest innovations the series has provided in
quite some time. The game is suitably balanced to allow anyone to jump
in while giving expert players some new content to go to town on and
the mix of rock genres should have everyone finding something to enjoy.
It’s not a perfect game, but Neversoft is seemingly finally getting
into the knack of the series and Guitar Hero 5 is a great step in taking the series to where it should be.
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