Guitar Hero 5 doesn’t offer as much in the way of new, innovative features as, say, Guitar Hero World Tour, which introduced drums and vocals to the franchise. Instead, it offers smart refinement to its ease of use, its multiplayer capabilities and the music creator known as GH Tunes. It also offers a hefty soundtrack, with more than 85 songs available right from the get-go.

With a flood of music games hitting this fall, is Guitar Hero 5’s largely iterative effort worth grabbing?

Loved
Easy In, Easy Out: Guitar Hero 5 puts smart emphasis on making it simpler than ever to jump into, then do whatever one might want in a multiplayer music game, all without having to wade through a sea of menus. The switching of instruments and difficulties on-the-fly is a welcome addition, all easily navigable even with a guitar controller. Drop-in, drop-out Party Play mode should be standard in all multiplayer music games from now on.

Do Whatcha Like: Hey, everyone want to play the guitar part? Cool, go for it—no need to slum it on bass. For some insane reason, would everyone want to drum at the same time? Go nuts. The four-player options are minor stuff, targeted at an increasingly focused subset of the audience, but good for a vocally shy party crowd or perfect for when one doesn’t feel like dragging out the drum set.

Quickplay Is Quick: Guitar Hero 5 lets you hop into a song straight from the main menu and, even better, gives the player access to every song from the beginning in Quick Play. No need to slog through Career mode or input cheat codes just to play some blistering Iron Maiden jam.

I Make Gold Records: The addition of song-specific challenges—in addition to PlayStation Trophies and Xbox Live Achievements—may seem like overkill, but they’re just as strangely alluring of a pursuit. They’ll also make you more likely to pick up a microphone or drumsticks should you be Score Hero forum dwelling completionist, but may annoy you if you’re armed with nothing but guitars and feel excluded. A guitar specific challenge for each song in a future sequel wouldn’t be unwelcome.

It’s Guitar Hero, Again: Guitar Hero, as a formula, is fun. This is Guitar Hero, with a five at the end of the title. Therefore, it is fun… if you still like music games.

Hated
The Soundtrack: The list is long and varied, but the list of songs I found myself actually wanting to play (and play again) was a very short list, partly because of the attempts at ever broader appeal—and admittedly partly due to personal preference. Fans of Children of Bodom may have little interest in playing the songs of Peter Frampton and vice versa. But more important, while I personally enjoy some of the selections, the Rolling Stones’ “Sympathy for the Devil” for example, it’s not particularly enjoyable to play, possibly because it’s not a guitar driven song. Actually, the inclusion of some songs in a Guitar Hero game, in which you play electric piano, organ or the horn section on a guitar controller are highly suspect.

Character Editor: Again, this is personal preference, but the Guitar Hero 5 avatars one can customise I find range from unattractive to ghastly. While the digital rockers tend to lean closer to caricature, they veer far enough toward photorealistic to manage to be disturbing. Guitar Hero 5’s rocker creator often gives the player too much rope to hang themselves with from a customisation standpoint, but offers too little in other areas, missing key options that fall between bland and outrageously over-the-top. At least some of the real-world characters, like Shirley Manson and Carlos Santana look good.

The Creepy Touch: If seeing Johnny Cash or Kurt Cobain prance about while singing the songs of other artists doesn’t bother you, carry on. But if you find the virtual corpses of Cobain or Cash reanimated as marionettes performing, say, Rammstein or John Cougar Mellencamp on the tackier side—as I do—then you might object to how these artists can be used in the game. Of course, how they’re used is totally up to the player. But I found the implementation crude and a mark against the game.

Guitar Hero 5 is a solid enough entry to recommend to the Guitar Hero fan wanting a level of feature refinement or anyone who finds themselves regularly playing with a group of friends. From a soundtrack perspective, I’d have a hard time praising it, largely for a lack of welcome hits and too much in the way of filler. There’s also little in the way of new discoveries, curated classics or tunes that surprised me with their level of enjoyment to play.

Despite my personal preference for the musical offerings on hand, Guitar Hero 5 is a solid foundation upon which to continue to build the series. I personally have little interest in digging any further into the GH Tunes music creator, instead hoping that Activision offers better downloadable content selections in the future. Because the tools with which to play those songs are stronger than ever before.

Guitar Hero 5 was developed by Neversoft and published by Activision for the Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, PlayStation and Wii on September 1. Retails for $US59.99 ($US39.99 on PS2). Played all soundtrack selections, tested all modes online and offline with a maximum of three guitars, one drum kit, one vocalist each with the PlayStation 3 version.

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Before, the music-making mode was limited in what it could do, what kind of music it could produce and the interface was less than intuitive. Now, the UI has been overhauled and the options expanded so that would-be musicians can record longer songs in different genres – or completely zone out as they jam to their own private laser show. But best of all, you can now record songs as long as 10 minutes (depending on how much fancy editing you’re doing within the song) and upload 50 to the Guitar Hero site instead of just three.

For my tour of the new Music Studio, Neversoft’s Travis Chen walked me through the three modes – Tunes, Mix and Jam. Unfortunately, the Johnny Cash cover band blaring down below our demo site sort of made it hard to hear his music compositions (or even what he was saying, really), but the new UI is so effectively arranged, I could understand what was going on just watching him navigate menus and play notes. And thankfully skipping through menus and tracks seemed to go way faster on 5 than it used to on World Tour.

First, we went through Mix mode. Chen showed me the new sample tracks added to the lineup to get you going if you’re not sure how to begin making your own song. Once you’re playing down the track, you can pause and edit notes you’ve played – stretching them out, speeding them up or adding special effects to the note without having to re-record it. Also, Mix takes a page out of the Wii Guitar Hero’s Mii Freestyle mode by letting you set down pre-created “blocks” of notes within songs much like the cards you could select in Mii Freestyle to give the mode some structure.

Next up was Jam mode – and this will probably become the default party mode for hipsters, stoners or people who’ve got that one artsy friend that needs to be doing something with his hands during polite conversation. Like the name suggests, you’re pretty much just rocking out however you’d like in the style of one of 14 pre-sets (jazz, blues, country, etc.). The floating laser background makes this mode especially soothing and engrossing – to the point where I could remember what I’d played even five notes before my current laser-show butterfly induced haze. However, if you go on a crazy music bender and can’t remember the sheer brilliance you played at 5:43, you can rewind or skip forward through the track to play certain segments. Also, you can record what you play and move it to Mix mode to edit.

Finally, Chen demoed what he could of Tunes mode for me and by now the Cash cover band had taken a break, so I was able to hear the music he played. Tunes mode is the space where you upload your creations to the music store for other people to enjoy or download for their own playlists. Chen scrolled through some the songs that we created by the Neversoft team that will ship with the game. One super-industrious tester created an insane version of Flight of the Bumblebee that even Chen couldn’t pull off.

Quick note about copyrighted material: You will still get your stuff yanked if it’s found to be infringing on someone else’s licensed music. However, Chen says the screening process for songs like these will be far less militant and rely more on user complaints.

I finished my demo with another Neversoft-created song that turned out to be a Back medley. I don’t think I’m enough of a musician (or any kind of musician, really) to ever make something so wonderful myself. But if I buy Guitar Hero 5, I’ll be a getting a ticket to enjoy the brilliance of other budding musicians. I count that as a win, even though Music Studio isn’t a game.

Franchise compatible means no new band sets to replace your old ones and you can keep the music you’ve downloaded for World Tour as well. But there’s more to Activision’s plan than just a unified music system. Seriously—they brought Johnny Cash back from the dead both in the game and in the form of a live cover band at the event. And beyond that, they’re already thinking about the future of the franchise well down the road from Guitar Hero 5.

Kinda looks like Cash doesn’t like his cover band…

Bright wouldn’t say too much about what lies ahead, but he did share some of the things his team at Neversoft has learned over the years. “We learned it’s not always fun to play a four piece band,” he said. “Sometimes people want to fight over the guitar, sometimes people don’t want to play bass even though we added the open note. Some people just suck at drums and don’t want to play it, it’s intimidating. And we wanted to go green and there’s a lot of guitars out there.”

It’s a lot like taiko drumming.

Bright also said he was excited about Project Natal and other motion-control-related E3 announcements. “We’ve done prototype motion controls with guitars in the past, with just the accelerometer,” he said. “But you just don’t get the refined data that you’d get when start throwing in things like they showed at E3. Just the single accelerometer—trying to put the guitar behind your head, the game just doesn’t know. Would we be interested [in Natal]? Absolutely. I’m not saying that’s what we’re doing. But it’s cool, it’s exciting stuff. Even Wii MotionPlus…there’s definitely avenues to be explored there.”

The one thing Bright isn’t looking forward to is the typical “Why isn’t artist X in the game?” complaint most music games get. “Specifically Led Zeppelin,” he added.

He also frowns on people who plan to write Guitar Hero 5 off as “not that different” from Guitar Hero: World Tour. “You have to play the game, you have to experience it. You will never want to go back to playing the old standard game. We take the stance at Neversoft that we’re making video games. We’re not music snobs, I mean we love music. But ultimately, we’re making a video game that’s fun to play and a way to experience music. Have fun, lighten up.”

Guitar Hero 5 is out for Xbox 360, PlayStation 3 and Wii September 1. Here, have some screens:

If Bob Dylan’s “All Along The Watchtower”, The Rolling Stone’s “Sympathy for the Devil”, Santana’s “No One to Depend On” and Johnny Cash’s “Ring of Fire” can’t convince my hippie parents to play Guitar Hero 5, nothing will.

This trailer also shows off Face to Face’s “Disconnect”, but I’m pretty sure my parents won’t care about that. They’ll probably be happy to see the drop-in, drop-out play mode and the part where we won’t have to fight over who gets to play guitar, but I could just be projecting.

Guitar Hero 5 is out September 1.

Songs from both World Tour and Smash Hits will be able to be carried over into GH5. Though there’s a catch: it won’t be free (and Activision haven’t yet revealed the pricing for this service). As for your downloaded songs, of the 158 World Tour songs currently available, 152 of them will work right away with GH5, though again, precise details (like which tracks aren’t compatible) aren’t available.

Guitar Hero 5 Hands-on [IGN]

If you can’t find something in here that you like, well… you should probably be looking at another kind of game to be spending your cash on.

· 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”

Good job scrolling that far down! Your scroll finger must be aching. Go on, have a rest. You’ve earned it. And now? Now I’m going to post a live clip of “Six Days a Week” by The Bronx, because I like the Bronx, and I feel like watching it.

Here’s the new 24:
• AFI – “Medicate”
• A Perfect Circle – “Judith”
• Billy Idol – “Dancing With Myself”
• Brand New – “Sowing Season (Yeah)”
• Bush – “Comedown”
• The Derek Trucks Band – “Younk Funk”
• Duran Duran – “Hungry Like The Wolf”
• Eagles Of Death Metal – “Wannabe In L.A.”
• Gorillaz – “Feel Good Inc.”
• Gov’t Mule – “Streamline Woman”
• Grand Funk Railroad – “We’re An American Band”
• Iron Maiden – “2 Minutes To Midnight”
• King Crimson – “21st Century Schizoid Man”
• No Doubt – “Ex-Girlfriend”
• Peter Frampton – “Do You Feel Like We Do? (Live)”
• Public Enemy Featuring Zakk Wylde – “Bring the Noise 20XX”
• Rush – “The Spirit Of Radio (Live)”
• Scars On Broadway – “They Say”
• Smashing Pumpkins – “Bullet With Butterfly Wings”
• Spacehog – “In The Meantime”
• Sunny Day Real Estate – “Seven”
• T. Rex – “20th Century Boy”
• Weezer – “Why Bother?”
• Wild Cherry – “Play That Funky Music”

And the tracks previously announced:

• Attack! Attack! UK – “You And Me”
• Band Of Horses – “Cigarettes, Wedding Bands”
• Beastie Boys – “Gratitude”
• Beck – “Gamma Ray”
• Billy Squier – “Lonely Is The Night”
• Blur – “Song 2″
• Bob Dylan – “All Along The Watchtower”
• Bon Jovi – “You Give Love A Bad Name”
• The Bronx – “Six Days A Week”
• 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 Duke Spirit – “Send A Little Love Token”
• Elliott Smith – “L.A.”
• Elton John – “Saturday Night’s Alright (For Fighting)”
• Face To Face – “Disconnected”
• Garbage – “Only Happy When It Rains”
• Iggy Pop – “Lust For Life (Live)”
• Jeff Beck – “Scatterbrain (Live)”
• John Mellencamp – “Hurts So Good”
• Kaiser Chiefs – “Never Miss A Beat”
• 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)”
• The Police – “So Lonely”
• Queens Of The Stone Age – “Make It Wit Chu”
• Rammstein – “Du Hast”
• The Rolling Stones – “Sympathy For The Devil”
• Rose Hill Drive – “Sneak Out”
• Santana – “No One To Depend On (Live)”
• Screaming Trees – “Nearly Lost You”
• Sonic Youth – “Incinerate”
• Sublime – “What I Got”
• 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”
• The White Stripes – “Blue Orchid”
• Wolfmother – “Back Round”

That leaves just 15 more songs for them to show off.

According to a report from Destructoid, Guitar Hero 5 players won’t be simply be seeking five star-rated performances, but will pursue Gold, Platinum, and Diamond level song challenges. Those include things like hitting note streaks of increasing difficulty, accruing dozens of hammer on/pull offs and nailing vocal parts that would elude casual players.

The reward? Local fame and unlockable goodies, of course. Gone is the series’ use of money to buy things, replaced by Achievement-like Challenges.

Exclusive: Guitar Hero 5 Challenges revealed [Destructoid]

The drums themselves look a lot like the old drums except for one key feature: the cymbals, which now look normal, as opposed to something you’d find on an electronic kit from 1986. Course, other people will say they look less like normal drums and more like Rock Band drums, but hey, to each their own.

As far as the 24 new tracks go, it’s an eclectic mix, elevated in this writer’s humble opinion solely by the inclusion of “Maiden, Mother & Crone”. (The Stones and Screaming Trees for me – AU Ed.)

Attack! Attack! UK – “You And Me”
Bon Jovi – “You Give Love A Bad Name”
Darker My Love – “Blue Day”
The Duke Spirit – “Send A Little Love Token”
Elton John – “Saturday Night’s Alright (For Fighting)”
Face To Face – “Disconnected”
Garbage – “Only Happy When It Rains”
Kaiser Chiefs – “Never Miss A Beat”
Kiss – “Shout It Out Loud”
Love and Rockets – “Mirror People”
My Morning Jacket – “One Big Holiday”
Nirvana – “Lithium (Live)”
The Police – “So Lonely”
Rammstein – “Du Hast”
The Rolling Stones – “Sympathy For The Devil”
Sonic Youth – “Incinerate”
Screaming Trees – “Nearly Lost You”
Sublime – “What I Got”
The Sword – “Maiden, Mother & Crone”
Thin Lizzy – “Jailbreak”
Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers – “American Girl”
The White Stripes – “Blue Orchid”

Guitar Hero 5 Official Track List [IGN]
The Official Store Blog » Blog Archive » Guitar Hero 5 Drums Pictures [Red Octane]

The changes are minimal. Aside from a cosmetic facelift, the only major difference comes in a tweak to the slider, which will now send purely digital signals to the game rather than analogue ones. According to Neversoft’s Brian Bright, this change was made to reduce “the chance for error and latency”. Slight improvements have also been made to the guitar’s reliability, with the controller featuring a new, sturdier strum bar.

Guitar Hero 5’s New Axe [IGN]