Gaming Trend

Gaming Trend Review

by Mike Escobar

2009 has been quite a year in the Guitar Hero universe.  Starting with Guitar Hero: Metallica in March, we also had the chance to see Guitar Hero: Smash Hits in June, Guitar Hero 5 (GH5) arrives in September, and looking down the road just a bit we should have Guitar Hero: Van Halen in December!  That’s a whole lot of rockin’ going on!  The question all we faux-rockers have to ask ourselves is this: is each new title in the Guitar Hero pantheon worthy of our time and more importantly our money, or are Activision Blizzard and Neversoft just getting greedy and taking advantage of us?  Let’s find out, shall we?

First thing we have to look at it is what’s new in Guitar Hero 5?  Even venerated franchises like the mighty Madden take a lot of heat when they don’t change enough between yearly versions, so have the developers made enough worthwhile changes to make this more than an overpriced track pack?  For the most part the answer is a resounding “yes”, but your mileage may vary…

Graphically, Guitar Hero 5 has made a huge stride forward.  No longer are we subjected to the evil Muppet look of the previous Guitar Hero titles.  Even as recently as Guitar Hero: Metallica, which had excellent and extensive motion capture work done for it, the characters on screen still had the look of puppets created by a dark and angry god.  On the other hand, the new Guitar Hero 5 characters all look great with even better interaction between the band members, more believable lip-synching with the songs, and playing to the audience realistically.  As I’ve always said, immersion is the name of the game and Neversoft does a great job here.

Almost all of the familiar faces from previous Guitar Hero titles are back and updated to look better than ever.  Whether you love jumping in as Clive Winston and rocking out to all thirteen minutes of Peter Frampton’s Do You Feel Like We Do or you just want to grab Lars Umlaut and get your Metal on, you’ll be pleasantly surprised by their new and improved looks.  As in previous titles, the developers have included some real musicians that show up during their signature songs.  These stars include Shirley Manson, Matt Bellamy, and the man in black himself, Johnny Cash.  You also have more choices than ever on customizing your own rocker, with many of the clothing and accessory options that were available after a lot of work in previous Guitar Hero titles being available right from the start.

When it comes to music games the sound quality and track selection are what matter most, and once again Guitar Hero 5 comes through in a big way.  While the original Guitar Hero was almost exclusively comprised of classic rock tracks, the latest entry continues the trend of broadening your musical horizons by including a much wider array of styles to choose from.  From Motley Crue’s Looks That Kill to Johnny Cash’s Ring of Fire, there’s something to please nearly everyone’s musical tastes, and with every song a master track from the original artist you’ll be treated to the highest quality music out there.

The control options in Guitar Hero 5 haven’t really changed at all, with a few minor differences.  As a huge fan of drumming and the owner of an Ion drum set, I’m especially sensitive to the way drums are handled in the game.  Prior to GH5 the ION drum set had major issues on the Playstation 3, to the point where you couldn’t even use the cymbals at all for fear of locking out the controller.  Since ION sets are much more expensive and make up a smaller percentage of the general user population, I had no expectation that the newest version of Guitar Hero would have resolved this problem.  I have never been happier to be wrong in my life – the ION set worked flawlessly, although Neversoft still hasn’t solved the general issue of being able to navigate the various menus using the drumsticks.  In my opinion, tapping on the green drum to select something, the red drum to back up a menu level, and hitting the yellow and blue drums to move up and down the menu selections should be a no-brainer.  Unfortunately the developer doesn’t see things that way, so while you can use the red and green drums in this way, you still have to reach down to the drum controller to change menu selections.  Not a huge issue, but a little frustrating.

Another interesting change in control is the way vocal tracks are handled.  Instead of being locked in to the standard where the words scroll across the screen, you now have the option of changing to Static or Karaoke mode.  In Static mode each line of vocals appears underneath your usual scrolling view and a vertical line tracks across the bar to show you when to sing each word.  In Karaoke mode you see the lyrics just like you would on a Karaoke machine, with several lines of the music being displayed on the screen, and then being filled in with a different color as you sing them.  Beware though, Karaoke mode requires that you know your song lyrics and timing very well, and ratchets up the difficulty of each song quite a bit.  You have been warned!

What really makes Guitar Hero 5 stand out from previous titles in this series are all the little touches; things that gamers have been asking for that have finally been implemented in the game.  For example, we are finally able to see individual difficulty ratings for each instrument in the song.  Prior to GH5 it was easy enough to look at a difficult song, like Rush’s Spirit of Radio, and know that it was a complex tune.  Being able to break it down and see that while the drums are very difficult (no shock there), but the guitar track is only moderately difficult.  This makes choosing the right difficulty for each player much easier, making the game far more enjoyable.  There’s nothing worse than jumping into one of your favorite songs and getting booed off stage because you didn’t realize how hard it was to play.

Another cool change is the ability to decide on your band configuration.  Let’s say you have enough room (and enough money) to own four drum sets, and everyone wants to give Kings of Leon’s Sex on Fire a try on drums.  Instead of taking turns (sharing is for wimps) just plug in all four drum controllers and have everyone flail away all at once!  As long as you have the controllers available for it, you can literally have any group make up you want.

The greatest change (and the biggest disappointment) in Guitar Hero 5 is the implementation of Party Play mode.  Party Play is where all the changes to the Guitar Hero franchise come together, and it’s pretty much flawless.  Your guitarist is struggling on Expert and wants to drop down to Hard difficulty before they fail out the band?   No sweat, just have the guitarist hit start and change their difficulty.  The rest of the band is completely unaffected – it doesn’t require a restart of the song, doesn’t slow up the gameplay, nothing.  Playing Blur’s Song Two solo on drums and a bassist wants to jump in and give it a try?  Again, no problem.  The new player just needs to grab a guitar, hit Yellow and choose their difficulty and your note highway slides to the side as theirs pops up.  This is all with no interruption to the song or to the other people playing.  Another nice feature is the ability to set down your instrument, walk away, and have the game be smart enough to realize you’re no longer playing and automatically drop you from the band after a short period of time.  So where’s the disappointment you ask?  All these great new features are only available in Party Play mode.  I honestly can’t tell you why these things were not implemented in Quickplay or at least add some of them in Career mode, but they’re just not there.

Another complaint I have about GH5 is that the difficulty rankings are uneven at times.  You can have two entirely different songs rated at a “4” in intensity and they’ll be wildly different in their relative difficulty.  Yet again this isn’t a huge issue and is rather subjective, but it’s definitely something you want to be aware of.

A large part of the replay value of any music title is the number and variety of musical tracks that are available to play.  Guitar Hero 5 starts off well with an excellent spread of musical genres that it covers, and you’ll have no problem recognizing many of the songs that are present.  The inclusion of a Guitar Hero Store to centralize all the downloadable content is a great idea, and as long as Activision Blizzard keeps providing new songs to purchase this title will stay fresh for quite a long time.

The multiplayer competitive options that have been added to this title are excellent and make Guitar Hero 5 an even better party game, if that’s possible!  In Momentum everyone starts at medium and the difficulty goes up the more notes you hit correctly or goes down as you miss notes.  In Do or Die, songs are split up into several sections – if you miss three notes in any section you’re locked out until the next section starts.  Points are awarded for every section you survive, and bonus points are awarded for the highest score in that section.  In Streakers you earn bonus points for maintaining long streaks with no mistakes and in Perfectionist the player with the highest note percentage for a section of the song is awarded points.  All these modes keep the play fast and furious, support two to four players locally and up to eight players online.

When looked at individually, the changes present in Guitar Hero 5 really aren’t enough to justify the cost of a full game.  When taken collectively though, almost all the minor annoyances that we were able to ignore in previous titles have been addressed and the new competitive modes make an already great multiplayer game even better.  With a robust music store that already has a solid amount of content and the ability to import songs from Guitar Hero: World Tour for a nominal fee, this is a title with a whole lot of polish.  If you’re looking for a party game that everyone can enjoy, or if you haven’t looked at Guitar Hero in a while, you should definitely check this one out.

Gaming Trend Score

91

1. Graphics: 85
2. Audio: 95
3. Controls: 90
4. Gameplay: 95
5. Value/Replay: 85
6. OVERALL:91