3 months ago
September is turning into a good month for rhythm rock games. A week before Rock Band Beatles, is the newest entry into the Guitar Hero franchise is on store shelves.
Guitar Hero is the game that created the plastic guitar franchise, and it's also one of the most watered down. While the box says Guitar Hero 5 - this is more like "Guitar Hero 9" (GH: Metallica, GH: Smash Hits, GH: Aerosmith, and the upcoming GH: Van Halen).
While the basic forumla is exactly the same, you will still be strumming, drumming and singing along to colored notes comeing down the fret, Guitar Hero 5 actually makes some changes that makes the game better.
To be fair a lot of these changes, while minor, are still long overdue.
From the moment that you start the game all the songs are avaliable in Quickplay mode, no hours of game play required. This was also done in Smash hits, so not too new.
The game gets rid of the cash awards, and what ever shallow hints of a story the Guitar Hero franchise thought it was pushing.
The biggest thing GH 5 vs World Tour is that you don't need to play with all of the instruments. You can play with four guitars, try your hand at harmony with four singers, or really get the neighbors upset by hammering out the beat with four drum kits.
Let me put a word of warning in, jamming four frets along the bottom of the screen gets real croweded real fast. If your TV isn't huge it makes every thing super tiny and super hard to see. I had to get off my couch and move close to the TV to check out my star meter which is a shrunk down bar on the side of the fret under the multiplier. I couldn't even look up to see the overall band score or multiplier. There is just way to much on the screen at one time. It's a great to have the four frets avaliable it's just not as well executed on a small screen as it should have been.
The music while varied does present some awkward moments. You end up playing different instruments on your guitar. For example, the DJ beats from Gorillaz Feel Good Inc. during the rap parts are a good example of when a non guitar instrument works on guitar. However when your playing the piano part of the Rolling Stones' "Sympathy for the Devil" it's a bit odd. I don't think my magical plastic guitar is a real instrument, but I would like it to stick to making guitar noises.
Other changes are the Party Play mode. This turns the game into a mini-DJ, and really caters to the house party crowd. The game just plays music, and you can jump in and out without stopping the music or re-starting the song. You can tweek difficulty, switch between guitar and bass on an individual menu, not stopping the game play. When you are playing in a band there are also flaming notes, which create band moments, kind of like a universal star power chord. The flaming notes when hit turn the entire fret bring orange, which is a very visual effect, and when everyone hits it - it is pretty cool.
There other multi-player change is Rockfest, a mix of online or local challenges. It's either a local 4 player or an online 8 player competition that features a number of different challenges, including "Momentum" mode where the songs ramp up in difficulty as you rack up bigger combos, "Streakers" which has you competiting for long note streaks, and Elimination mode that knocks off the lowest scoring player every 30 seconds.
Now to some of the problems with the game...
I was pumped to bring some of the songs from World Tour into Guitar Hero 5, however you can't bring all of the songs. The list is shortened and it still costs a few bucks to do it. Some of the big songs missing from the transfer are the three Tool tracks, which were one of the highlights of Guitar Hero World Tour. I'm sure other people will be missing out on favorite World Tour tracks, so just take it into account when you consider importing the songs over.
So since we are talking about music tracks, lets talk about the 85 tracks on Guitar Hero 5. The track list is all over the place. For me, I was in heaven. There are all your traditional songs, stuff people would be pumped to sing at a party, like Bon Jovi's "You Give Love A Bad Name" "What I Got" by Sublime, and "Play That Funky Music" by Wild Cherry.
Then we get a little Indie. Vampire Weekend's "A-Punk," is on the border of popculture getting plenty of radio play this past summer, but some people probably have never heard of Band Of Horses' "Cigarettes, Wedding Bands", Sunny Day Real Estate's "Seven" or Elliott Smith's "L.A."
The tracks also feature a pile of 90's one hit wonders, which figuring their core audience - 24 - 30 year olds - will be filled to the brim with nostalgia playing Rammstein's "Du Hast," Spacehog's "In the Meantime," or Bush's "Comedown." These are tracks that cater to the video games projected audience, but I don't think anyone who didn't live through the Family Values tour, would ever touch that Rammstein track. So it's really a mixed bag.
The game also changes the way stars are awarded. Each track has the stars you can earn by playing the song flawlessly, but there are also three additional stars you can obtain by completing instrument specific challenges. They are all over the map, from whammy sustains for a number of seconds, tap out a hammer on off part, or simply up-strum through a set number of notes.
The challenges are ranked, with Gold, Platinum, or Diamond certifications with one additional star attached to each. Along with the stars completing the challenge sunlocking new features like outfits or venues for quickplay.
The game also lets you use your Xbox LIVE Avatar as a character, which makes for some unusual moments on stage. The psudo realistic sets really conflict with your Avatar, he looks like a chubby little munchkin in Willy Wonka's factory. While it's something that you would see on the Wii, when I went online plenty of people were using their Avatar. Don't worry you can still craft a rocker from the game or use one of the Guitar Hero stand-bys - like Johnny Napalm, or Lars Umlaut.
If your playing alone the Career mode features the same sort of menu that Smash Hits and Guitar Hero Metallica followed, Stars unlock venues, and you don't need to play every song to get through the game. There is alot more freedom moving throughout career mode, you can change your difficult, and instrument half way through, which means if you play through on expert but can't beat the last track you don't need to re do the entire game on hard, or if you want to play bass your not sent back to square one either.
There are also challenge gigs, in each set, usually for a different instrument, which give you more unlockables, the better you do.
So, Guitar Hero 5 is more of the same. The track list is a retro 80's/90's indie lovers dream with a handful of great songs for more casual music listeners. Changes to the multi-player and band modes make the game more playable, and should have been in place in World Tour. More multi-player modes do give the game some extra life, once to music ends, but this game is another E.K.G jolt to the genre that many thought was flat-lining. It's fun like all the Guitar Hero games are fun. And if your not a Beatles fan, then this September, it's your best bet to get some fresh tracks on your Xbox.
Final Game Guy Review: B
News10/KXTV
