Last year, Guitar Hero World Tour introduced band play for the first time in the franchise and the final result was interesting. However, having an emergent and ferocious competitor in Rock Band, the game felt more like a rushed and incomplete product as it failed to meet the expectations of some avid fanatics of the genre, including myself. GH World Tour did garner positive reviews and sold very well but we all knew that a new and improved version of GH World Tour would eventually make its appearance one day or another. Eleven months later: Guitar Hero 5 gets released and while I continue to ask myself if it was too soon to release a sequel, I’ve got to admit that Activision did learn something from World Tour and managed to release a better game.

Playing Guitar Hero 5 isn’t very different from GH World Tour and other games that use guitar, drums and microphones to play. So you can imagine that I will bypass the tutorial of how to emulate your favorite rock bands with plastic instruments. However, if you played GH World Tour and are planning to get Guitar Hero 5, you should know that several changes and new additions have been added to the game.

Among the new additions is Party Play, which lets you join or drop at any point during a song with the press of a button. The game shuffles through the entire track list plus any downloadable track until you decide to load your own set list or change gameplay modes. You can also change your settings or difficulty level on the fly without interrupting your gameplay session. Party Play doesn’t show any scores which means that less competitive players and families can rock out and have fun without worries. Now, if you really want to have fun but know how many points you can score, the Quickplay mode should do the trick. One thing to mention about Quickplay is that Activision has finally decided to unlock all the tracks (85) right from the moment you load the disc in your console. During gameplay, you won’t notice huge changes with the exception of two little things. In Guitar hero 5, if a band member fails out of a song, a special Revival meter will appear. As long as the remaining members play well, the needle on the meter will move from the red to the green and “revive” the fallen band member. Also, once a band member maxes out their Star power Meter, any additional Star Power earned by that player is shared out equally to the other members of the band. Guitar Hero 5 also lets you personalize and customize how they experience music by being able to play with any in-game instrument combination -- multiple vocalists, guitarists, bassists and drummers, in any game mode.

Just like its predecessors, the heart and soul of Guitar Hero remains the Career mode. Here again, you can create your own rocker and start a solo career or you can create a band of two or four rockers, either offline or online, and go on tour around the world. During your career, unlockable and playable characters such as Shirley Manson, Billy Corgan, Carlos Santana, Johnny Cash and Kurt Cobain (who has been subjected to controversy early this month), will become available to you. Guitar Hero 5 also features two new gameplay elements: Band Moments and Challenges. Band Moments are special sections of a song marked by flames. When those notes are hit, multipliers are being earned depending of how many players are in the band. For example: a two player band will earn 1 extra multiplier, a three player band will add 2, and a four player band will add 3. If someone fails the band moment, there’s simply no multiplier pay-off. Challenges are specific objectives that lets you can earn additional stars for successfully completing a goal while playing a song.

Earlier I mentioned the addition of Party Play to Guitar Hero 5 and its accessibility to the more casual gamers. Quickplay and the Career mode are good ways to awake the competitor in you, however, Guitar Hero 5 does have something for the more competitive and hardcore player. If you were a fan of the “Face-Off” and “Pro Face-Off” gameplay features of past Guitar Hero games, you will be happy to know that Guitar Hero 5 introduces new competitive modes. All of these new head-to-head modes allow up to 4 players locally and 8 players online to engage in head-to-head competition.

• Pro Faceoff: Players compete to see who can score the highest on a given song or songs.

• Momentum: All players begin at Medium difficulty. Miss notes and your difficulty (and scoring opportunities) decreases. Hit notes in a streak and your difficulty increases. The highest score wins.

• Streakers: Maintain streaks. Before your multiplier changes, you’ll earn that number of points. Star power doubles your multiplier so use it to earn even more points. Highest score wins.

• Do or Die: Missed notes earn strikes. Three strikes and you’re out until the next section of the song. You earn one point for every section you survive. Star power removes strikes and renders players invincible while active. The player with the most points wins.

• Perfectionist: Try to play perfectly. The players with the highest percentage of notes hit for a section will earn points. Most points wins.

• Elimination: The player with the lowest score after each section of the song is eliminated from play. Be the last musician standing to win.

• RockFest has you compete during a series of songs. Game rules change after every song. Players vote on which rules to use. RockFest include Pro Faceoff, Momentum, Streakers, Do or Die, Perfectionist and Elimination.

• Team Games: Every one of Guitar Hero 5’s competitive games can be played in Team mode, pitting band against band, on Xbox Live.

Lastly, GH Studio also makes a comeback. While the song creation tool remains complex, it feels more accessible and less scary compared to its first appearance in GH World Tour. The only issue I have with GH Studio is that every track created sounds like a MIDI file. When the possibility to create real songs with real sounds and beats comes, I can bet than GH Studio will become far more popular than what it is now. Eventually, we all know that it will be possible…so stay tuned.

Graphics and Sound

Visually, Guitar hero 5 has improved in many ways. The character renderings of the Guitar Hero characters (including the ones you generate) still look weird. This becomes more visible when real unlockable artists hit the stage. Surprisingly, what sounds to be a horrific view becomes fun to watch after a few minutes. Since the camera emphasises less on getting close-ups of each of the characters and goes for a more dynamic/less restrictive overview of what’s really happening on the stage, the mix between the different characters is quite surprising.

Sound wise, Guitar Hero 5 features 85 tracks from 83 different artists with the possibility to expand it further by using your past downloadable tracks from GH World Tour Music Store and by ripping songs from the World Tour (35 tracks out of 86) and Smash Hits (21 tracks out of 42) discs to your hard drive for a small fee. Click here to view which tracks can be imported from Smash Hits and GH World Tour.

The complete Guitar hero 5 track list:

3 Doors Down - "Kryptonite"
Arctic Monkeys - "Brianstorm"
Blink-182 - "The Rock Show"
Dire Straits - "Sultans Of Swing"
Jimmy Eat World - "Bleed American"
Johnny Cash - "Ring Of Fire"
Megadeth - "Sweating Bullets"
Mötley Crüe - "Looks That Kill"
Muse - "Plug In Baby"
Nirvana - "Smells Like Teen Spirit"
Queen & David Bowie - "Under Pressure"
Stevie Wonder - "Superstition"
The Killers - "All The Pretty Faces"
The Raconteurs - "Steady As She Goes"
TV On The Radio - "Wolf Like Me"
A Perfect Circle - "Judith"
AFI - "Medicate"
Attack! Attack! UK - "You And Me"
Band Of Horses - "Cigarettes, Wedding Bands"
Beastie Boys - "Gratitude"
Beck - "Gamma Ray"
Billy Idol - "Dancing With Myself"
Billy Squier - "Lonely Is The Night"
Blur - "Song 2"
Bob Dylan - "All Along The Watchtower"
Bon Jovi - "You Give Love A Bad Name"
Brand New - "Sowing Season (Yeah)"
The Bronx - "Six Days A Week"
Bush - "Comedown"
Children Of Bodom - "Done With Everything, Die For Nothing"
Coldplay - "In My Place"
Darker My Love - "Blue Day"
Darkest Hour - "Demon(s)"
David Bowie - "Fame"
Deep Purple - "Woman From Tokyo (’99 Remix)"
The Derek Trucks Band - "Younk Funk"
The Duke Spirit - "Send A Little Love Token"
Duran Duran - "Hungry Like The Wolf"
Eagles Of Death Metal - "Wannabe In L.A."
Elliott Smith - "L.A."
Elton John - "Saturday Night’s Alright (For Fighting)"
Face To Face - "Disconnected"
Garbage - "Only Happy When It Rains"
Gorillaz - "Feel Good Inc."
Gov’t Mule - "Streamline Woman"
Grand Funk Railroad - "We’re An American Band"
Iggy Pop - "Lust For Life (Live)"
Iron Maiden - "2 Minutes To Midnight"
Jeff Beck - "Scatterbrain (Live)"
John Mellencamp - "Hurts So Good"
Kaiser Chiefs - "Never Miss A Beat"
King Crimson - "21st Century Schizoid Man"
Kings Of Leon - "Sex On Fire"
Kiss - "Shout It Out Loud"
Love and Rockets - "Mirror People"
My Morning Jacket - "One Big Holiday"
Nirvana - "Lithium (Live)"
No Doubt - "Ex-Girlfriend"
Peter Frampton - "Do You Feel Like We Do? (Live)"
The Police - "So Lonely"
Public Enemy Featuring Zakk Wylde - "Bring the Noise 20XX"
Queens Of The Stone Age - "Make It Wit Chu"
Rammstein - "Du Hast"
The Rolling Stones - "Sympathy For The Devil"
Rose Hill Drive - "Sneak Out"
Rush - "The Spirit Of Radio (Live)"
Santana - "No One To Depend On (Live)"
Scars On Broadway - "They Say"
Screaming Trees - "Nearly Lost You"
Smashing Pumpkins - "Bullet With Butterfly Wings"
Sonic Youth - "Incinerate"
Spacehog - "In The Meantime"
Sublime - "What I Got"
Sunny Day Real Estate - "Seven"
T. Rex - "20th Century Boy"
The Sword - "Maiden, Mother & Crone"
Thin Lizzy - "Jailbreak"
Thrice - "Deadbolt"
Tom Petty - "Runnin’ Down A Dream"
Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers - "American Girl"
Vampire Weekend - "A-Punk"
Weezer - "Why Bother?"
The White Stripes - "Blue Orchid"
Wild Cherry - "Play That Funky Music"
Wolfmother - "Back Round"

What do I think of the 85 track list of Guitar Hero 5? Well, it does offer a great mix of songs but honestly, I still find it sub-par to what Rock Band 2 had to offer when it was released. Additionally, just like in GH World Tour, a few songs feel odd to play if you happen to use a different instrument than the guitars and bass. I do understand that the game has the word "Guitar" in it but if you plan to use the band gameplay more often, I think that a little tuning is needed. Plus, how come I still need a controller to activate Star Power while I’m singing?!

Finally, I won’t judge Activision on the DLC just yet but I seriously hope that the downloadable content of the Guitar Hero 5 Music Store will be superior to what World Tour was.

Conclusion

Let’s put it this way: if you bought World Tour and ended up disappointed, the chances that the same thing will happen to you again are incredibly thin. I’m not afraid to say that Guitar Hero 5 is exactly what World Tour should have been in the first place.  If you are one of those who plead allegiance to “the other Band game” and vow to never try out something else, you are definitely missing out on something. New features, new gameplay modes and with the possibility to expand your Guitar Hero library through downloadable content and disc ripping options with World Tour & Smash Hits, Guitar Hero 5 is certainly a must have if you are a fan of music rhythm games.