Game: Guitar Hero 5
Publisher/Developer: Activision / Neversoft Entertainment
Genre: Music/Rythm
Verdict: Probably the best full band game in terms of
content and gameplay out there, but the setlist leaves MUCH
to be desired.
Pros: Supremely Polished, Supremely Accessible,
and Supremely fun Rockfest multiplayer mode.
Cons: The setlist is bogged down by unremarkable songs, small problems with interface ( i.e. star power & countdown timer).
When I first bought the Guitar Peripheral and Guitar Hero 2 for the Xbox 360, I noted the price point, and thought to myself ”I hope this ends up being worth the 90 bucks.”2 years and 7 Guitar hero titles later, I have amassed a small instrumental army: 3 guitars, 1 drumset, and a microphone. In much the same way as I pondered about the value of my first plastic instrument back then, I mentally touched upon the fact that I would never be able to make use of all 3 guitars. Then Guitar Hero 5 came to my rescue. With the latest enumerated installment of the legendary franchise, I took quite some time to get acquainted with it’s many new features and what I found blew my mind.
Generally when I write reviews of this sort of game, I try to begin with the individual instruments, then work my way to other game features. However, this is a special case. Guitar Hero 5 is so chock-full of features and tweaks that I feel it would be nigh-impossible to cover them all in this review. As I sit here in my computer chair, I am having a hard time trying to wrap my mind around a way to present this review in a way that does justice to the sheer immensity and possibilities it has to offer. If I come off as an incoherent rambler, it is because there is so much to be said about the title that when everything is put together it becomes unintelligible. This statement, perhaps more than any review paragraph that can be written by me about the game, serves as a testament to how completely stunning Guitar Hero 5 is. Keeping all that in mind, the first thing I’ll touch upon here is the new Party Play mode.
Party Play allows the game to act as a virtual jukebox (similar to amplitude) when no controllers are connected. This would be obviously helpful at parties (hence the name). After controllers are plugged in, one simply has to press the yellow button to jump in, choose their instrument, difficulty, and handedness. During this entire process, there is no stop to the music- at all. This mode signals another new (and much requested) feature in the rhythm game genre: the option to play multiples of instruments. Because of the ability to play any combination of instruments (there are a whopping 125 in total), this makes Party Play EXTREMELY accessible. Within this mode, all barriers adverse to having multiplayer fun are broken. Someone doesn’t want to play Bass anymore? Switch instrument using the start button. Wanna play vocals instead of drums? just dropout on drums and press the “Y” button on a controller. This mode is strictly social- there is no such thing as scoring or failing out. There are no stat screens- meaning that you can move seamlessly into the next song. Before starting the mode, you can make a setlist (up to 128 songs at a time) to be followed, or you can just shuffle it and go where the proverbial wind blows you. The entire experience is simple as can be, and invites everyone to play along. No more restarting, forcing people to sing, or anything else to get in the way of what Guitar Hero 5 tries to give you (that is, fungasms).
The career mode has been restructured into what is an amalgam of Metallica’s career mode and Rock band 2′s Battle of the Bands mode. Like in GH: Metallica, you progress by earning stars. In GH5, completing specific instrument or band challenges nets you extra stars. So many, in fact, that it would put Super Mario to shame. These challenges can range from things like “whammying for x seconds on guitar” to “hit x many toms on Drums.” The challenges prove very alluring, especially for the completionists out there. You will find yourself re-visiting the career mode in order to unlock the tough-as-nails Diamond challenges, which often require you to 100% their respective songs. The career is singular this time around, meaning each instrument doesn’t have it’s own career mode. Like in Party Play, career is playable off-or-online in any instrument combination, which proves invaluable because of the rarity of online vocalists. Playing online, this means that you don’t exactly have to wait for a specific instrument player to show up, as in World Tour. The Matchmaking is much improved since World Tour, as is..well… pretty much everything else.
In my review for GH: World Tour, I praised the game’s charming graphics and outstanding animations. This time around, everything has been polished to a mirror sheen. A new engine brings the venues and avatars to life. The GH5 engine features lovely lighting effects, depth of field view, remarkable motion blur visuals, and the coup de grace: sick animation. In GH: Metallica, I mentioned how religiously the Neversoft team recreated Metallica shows using their mo-capped bodies. Somehow, using some kind of voodoo magic, Neversoft has upped their own ante. The animations for each avatar show the same level of care as James in Metallica, and many songs even have their own custom animations (e.g. You give love a Bad name). Also mo-capped to perfection are Matt Bellamy of Muse, Shirley Manson of Garbage, and (eerily) Kurt Cobain and Johny Cash. Johny Cash’s animations were so remarkable, that I restarted “Ring Of Fire” after it ended to make sure my mind wasn’t playing tricks on me.
Oh, and if you play on the 360, your Gamertag Avatar can make a special appearance, effectively naming GH5 the most bad ass thing you can do with your Avatar.
The animations and visuals aren’t the only thing that have been vastly improved since World Tour. The new multiplayer modes, culminating in “Rockfest”, are a breath of fresh air. You still have your vanilla pro face-off, but GH5 marks the addition of a slew of new game modes: Do or Die, Streakers, Perfectionist, Momentum, and Elimination. In the Rockfest mode, players (up to 8, and can also be on teams of 4 v 4) vote on which mode they like to play for the next song. For example, the three-strikes-you’re-out way of Do or Die doesn’t quite fit with the likes of Scatterbrain, so having everybody vote is very wise. Although every mode boils down to “FC the song to win,” the ways they get you there are very unique. I find that, for example, playing Team Elimination mode brings out a level of comradery in me the likes of which I haven’t seen since my Counter Strike days. You feel the pressure of playing against the opposing team, while watching your teammates get hopelessly knocked out one-by-one. Even without a headset, this elicits a small, but present, emotional response that not even watching close friends getting gunned down in online FPS games can match. Not too shabby for a game about mashing 5 colored buttons. Along with the Rockfest modes, Band v. Band mode returns, but this time you can actually get into a match before you start bashing your peripherals like Pete Townshend.
Finishing off the new features is the fantastic GHStudio 2.0, an extreme upgrade from World Tour’s Music Studio mode. GHStudio 2.0 adds a ridiculous amount of new ways to customize your dream song. Compositions can now be up to 10 minutes long, star power layout can be customized, and every note sample is much more realistic sounding than those in World Tour. You can even go as far as customize the sound of each individual drum in a set, or add bends sweeps and tremolo to individual notes. At first, navigating GHMix 2.0 is an annoying pain in the rear, but once you get used to pressing button combinations to perform actions, you will be flying through fix-ups thanks to your friendly neighborhood muscle memory. Creating music still takes a great commitment here (provided you aren’t just trying to get an achievement), but with all the tools newly available the product can end up being better than a lot of on-disc songs. In the right creative hands, some truly magnificent pieces can be constructed.
Now that all that has finally been covered, I can finally get to the individual instruments. (Cue “black-toothed-grin”)
Guitar
In a surprising twist, this is one of the less guitar intense music games out there. Though there are finger-obliterators like “Scatterbrain” and “Done with Everything, Die for Nothing,” on average the difficulty isn’t too harsh. You can tell Neversoft is just having a field day with this, becuase for some songs, decidedly non-guitar instruments are played in the chart. Pianos and other instruments will make their way into your gem stream, and you won’t ever complain because they kick major ass. Nothing has really changed for the guitar too significantly here, but that’s not the biggest surprise- what is is other instruments actually got a load of attention.
Bass
Unbelievably, bass is very prominent in Guitar Hero 5. No, I am being completely serious. Songs more occasionally have entertaining moving melodies- contrary to the constant (but characteristic) single note runs that we have grown accustomed to on bass in the past. This means that you get the maximum opportunity to get down with your funky self. The open note ability is still taken full advantage of, so feel free to completely upstrum and slap that bass like a true Wooten.
Drums
Drummers, welcome to paradise. GH5 delivers some of the most diverse and downright fun charts we’ve seen since Rock Band 1. There’s less straight time-keeping and more groove-delving. Some great examples of this are “The Spirit of Radio, and “Seven.” With the return of the expert+ difficulty, and the addition of better drum sounds and accent notes to RB2 drum sets, you’d be crazy to own a drum peripheral and not give GH5 a whirl.
Vocals
The instrument that has been given the biggest face lift is vocals. You now have a “rating bar,” more Rock Band style pitch markers, and no more uber star power overload. The rating bar is very welcome, as it informs you how well you are doing on a phrase (as in Rock Band). Another completely unneeded change is the visual of the pitch indicator. In World Tour, the comet was very helpful in determining where your pitch is. Now in GH5, you can barely see the pitch indicator when you are playing. It is not a big deal after you get used to each song, but unfamiliar songs are difficult to match pitches with when you can’t even tell where your voice stacks up.
Unfortunately, Guitar Hero 5 isn’t perfect. Besides niggling issues like an unclear star power bar and a countdown timer that covers the chart too much, Guitar Hero 5 has a pretty significant problem. Even though the setlist packs in many long sought after songs like “The Spirit of Radio” and “You Give Love a Bad Name,” there are too frequently songs in the setlist that will have you wondering how in the world they got into the game. These songs aren’t outright terrible, (with the exception of Bring The Noise 20XX) but they have no real redeeming qualities, or any remarkable parts that would make playing them fun in a music game. Rest assured, these types of songs are outnumbered by fun and catchy ones, but the fact that these charts take up room that could be used otherwise is quite infuriating. It’s an even bigger shame because of how phenomenal the core gameplay is- these songs in no way do justice to all the effort and care that has gone into GH5. However, if you can tolerate these unfortunate stinkers, GH5 will reward you with some of the most fun you will ever have with a plastic instrument in your hand.
The tragic irony regarding GH5 is that while most people will see Guitar Hero 5 as Neversoft’s attempt to catch up with Rock Band, the tweaks and improvements present are so numerous that they actually make the game more unique then ever before. In fact, many significant additions probably will go by unnoticed. For example, have you taken a look at the Extras menu in the game lobbies, or noticed anything different happening at the strike line? Have you taken a look at the drummer while a GHTunes song is playing? Did you notice the “Rock Record”, or how you can change the A.I. to play as your created rock stars? Neversoft has delivered an outrageous product, with a list of features and possibilites longer than the Great Wall of China. If you think you can survive the aforementioned dull dull songs, then there is no reason you shouldn’t drop full price for this bad boy.
Popularity: unranked [?]
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