Guitar Hero 5 Review

"We only doubled up on two bands!"

Ever since my brother gifted me the Guitar Hero 3: Legends of Rock bundle for Christmas a couple of years back, I’ve been a great fan of the series and the music genre in general.  I’m not a naturally talented musician (despite six years practicing the trombone), so a game that gave you the chance to play along with all your favourite rock songs appealed to me.  Even more so because the game is constantly challenging and great fun to drag out when your party is getting to the boozy end of proceedings.

Because I loved GH3, I went out and bought Guitar Hero 2, Guitar Hero: Rocks The 80′s and Guitar Hero for PS2, Guitar Hero: Aerosmith, the Guitar Hero: World Tour bundle, Guitar Hero: Metallica and Guitar Hero: Greatest Hits. I have a grand total of four plastic guitars stashed around my house and one faulty, neglected set of electronic drums perched above my wardrobe.  And maybe with the exception of Greatest Hits, I’ve never been so disappointed in a Guitar Hero title until now.

Part of this may be because I picked up both GH5 and The Beatles: Rock Band in the same week, and stood next to one another it’s clear which game was made with care and attention.  But it seems to me, if you’re going to try and push a new title in the series out year after year, then you better be rethinking your gameplay, improving your features and adding something new for players to enjoy.  It’s the last point where I think GH5 falls down, and it’s the point that also has me feeling like such a pathetic shill at the fact I paid money for Activision to continue this cycle.

So let’s begin with the new stuff Guitar Hero 5 brings to the table.

First we’ll discuss gameplay, because this is where all the interesting stuff should be.  The developers have finally conceeded the fact that Rock Band made a more sensible decision for online play, and has given the player the ability to revive failed out players in multiplayer.  Also new to the gameplay mix, and once again borrowed from Rock Band 2, are hammer-on/pull-off chords.  The score multiplier has seen a bit of tinkering and is now more band-focused.  Not only can individual players score their own multipliers, but if everyone is doing well the whole band will have their score multiplied.  There are new “Band Moment” phrases, which are indicated by flaming notes on the chart.  If the whole band can complete these, the band multiplier is automatically increased for a short amount of time.  Star power can now be transferred to other members of a group if your meter is maxed out, thus allowing stronger players to support the rest of the band easier.

Can you just FEEL the rhythm?

I did enjoy the jump-in/jump-out feature offered in this title, which works well for people playing the game in a party environment.  Occasionally during the middle of a 26 minute set you just want to go and refill your drink, and this feature allows you to do so with no detriment to the rest of your group.  In a similar vein, there’s no need to argue with your guitar wielding buddy as to who’s playing bass, as GH5 supports whatever combination of four instruments you like.  Go for a four-man shred, or enjoy the sheer ludicrous nature of fronting a four singer band.

Much of the game’s development has obviously gone to making the title more multiplayer friendly.  In this regard, if this truly is the direction that Neversoft wants the game to proceed in, Guitar Hero should probably continue it’s release schedule under the newly acquired Band Hero monkier.  It’s doubtful they’d ever do this, of course, as the series has far too much product recognition tied to it’s title.  However, as someone who started playing the game back when lead guitar was the sole option for play, I can only feel like nothing has really progressed since then, and all the chords-over-sustains and tranparent slider notes Neversoft can throw at me won’t convince me otherwise.

Similarly, for a game called Guitar Hero, there are now surprisingly few entertaining guitar parts to play.  The game’s setlist is scatter-brained to say the least (and this isn’t just because the game actually includes the song Scatterbrain by Jeff Beck).  In an effort to diversify it’s audience, Guitar Hero 5 offers everything from rock to country to nu-metal to death metal to pop to ska.  So while you might love around a quarter of the tracks in the mix, there’s a good chance you’ll loathe around a quarter of them and then be highly indifferent to the rest.

You can import a selection of songs from World Tour and Greatest Hits for about AU$5 a disc.  But given you only get 35 tracks from Tour‘s 86, and 21 from Hits‘ 48, I certainly didn’t bother.  While I understand that not every song can be licenced game after game, if you’re going to offer a service like this, you should at least have it in place in time for release, not just make a handful available and say “we may include more later”.

So. Fucking. Stupid.

This is indeed my main problem with the game.  The game just screams out for a direction and picks none.  It’s trying to satisfy so many different music tastes that it ultimately fails at truly succeeding at even one.  If you’d like evidence of this, take a look at your character select screen.  All the staple characters from Guitar Hero 3 are there, and if you’ll look closely, they all look the fucking same.  About the only ones who achieve a “look” are Clive Winston, Pandora and Lars Umlaut.  The rest are a vague mix of punk and rock.

And don’t get me fucking started about how truly awful Xbox avatars and Miis look in-game.  It’s like they didn’t even bother with an artistic director.

This is echoed in the now rather generic Rock God/Devil “storyline”, unimpressive stage designs and lack of any sort of scripted events during a performance.  Even the animations of characters look tired and out of place while on stage.  If they’re going to promote the obvious stupidity of being able to play as deceased rockers, you could at least take the trouble to give them their own set of movement and play animations.  Seeing Kurt Cobain front of stage screaming Flava Flav’s trademark “Yeeeeaaaaaah bwoooooooy!” is just ridiculous, and I’m almost positive that Johnny Cash has never in his life scissor kicked while on stage.  Things like this just go to show how little effort has been put into this game’s direction.

Is it just me or does this screenshot make Johnny cash look like a rockabilly vampire?

To give you an example of what I’m talking about, let’s take the track Do You Feel Like We Do by Peter Frampton.  It’s one of the genuinely fun to play guitar tracks on the disc, and they’ve gone the whole hog and used the fourteen minute version of it to boot.  I can only respect that decision.  But once you start playing, you’ll notice a couple of things.  Not only is your character rocking out and banging his head at the subdued bass fill between solos, apparently your guitar magicly becomes a keyboard mid-performance.  What is this, dark wizardry?  At least the earlier Guitar Hero titles only combined the lead and rhythm guitar scores to keep things interesting.  Keep playing, however, and you’ll reach the famous “talk-box” solo.  You’ll notice that your guitarist is oddly without a tube in his mouth, and if you’re playing this with a vocalist, they won’t either.  Apparently your vocalist is so well trained that not only can they sing like a guitar at will, they can apparently also anticipate exactly which points you’ll stuff up your guitar solo.  The animations in this section are all over the shop, as the vocal track is tied to the guitar, and yet the singer will still be shown singing into their mic.

Guitar Hero: Aerosmith managed to include a talk box for Joe Perry, why not now?

There are so many simple little things like this that stand out as lazy, or that could have been developed so much better.  And playing it alongside a title like The Beatles: Rock Band where care has gone into every part of the production, only accentuate it’s short-comings.  Given that this game was preceeded by Guitar Hero: Metallica, where a lot of work went into things like art style, animation and stage antics, why has none of this thinking carried over into what is theoretically the core title?  It feels like the series as a whole has taken a step backward, which is why I feel so desperately ripped off having paid full retail.

The Verdict:

Pros: A lot of helpful multiplayer additions like drop-in/drop-out party play and freedom to combine instruments.  The menu’s have been simplified for ease of use, and the quickplay mode allows you to play every song on the disc from the outset.

Cons: Despite a few little tweaks for the better, there’s nothing really new here.  Rehashed visuals are combined with rehashed animations, I think the entire game lacks an original thought since World Tour.  Setlist attempts to please everybody, ends up satisfying none.  The art direction of this game is missing, presumed dead, which is only compounded with tacked on features like avatar inclusion.

Overall: 2 out of 5.  This installment into the series doesn’t impress me at all.  It’s bland, through and through.  And what’s the first thing you do if you listen to a bland rock group?  You switch it off.  However, since all of Guitar Hero‘s online functionality is going to be transported to this title, fans of the series picking it up should either buy second hand or wait for a significant price drop.