Guitar Hero 5

07 Oct 2009 at 12:20:59 by Tim McDonald
Systems used to review this title: (360)

The tracklisting is varied and eclectic, ranging from tracks everyone knows like Blur's Song 2, through a live, 13-minute odyssey of Peter Frampton's Do You Feel Like We Do?, to songs I never thought would appear in a rhythm-action game like 21st Century Schizoid Man. And, er, some odder choices, like Stevie Wonder's Superstition. With the guitar note chart following the keyboard and trumpets. Hm.

There's enough in there that everyone will find something they like, although the broad tracklisting also means that there are songs that seem inappropriate for the instruments (as with, say, Superstition, and even bits of my beloved 21st Century Schizoid Man) and there will be at least five that you outright hate. The advantage here is that the retooled Career mode means that you're not really going to have to do them if you don't want to. In this way, the tracklisting isn't as much of a problem as it could have very easily been.

In the end, though, there are two things that pretty much define the worth of a music game. One is the accuracy of the note charts, and the other is the tracklisting. Here, the tracklisting is great – everyone will have a group of favourite songs, and in typical Guitar Hero/Rock Band fashion, you'll be introduced to all sorts of new music that you might well love. The note charts, which have always been Guitar Hero's stumbling block when compared to Harmonix's efforts, are vastly improved over those in Guitar Hero: World Tour. They're still not quite right and leave you feeling as though you're just tapping along rather than actually playing anything, but they're not as bad as they used to be.

Worse, there's another but, and it's this: this game is competing with Rock Band, a game which – with DLC – has a customisable tracklisting that's almost up to 1,000 songs at the time of writing. That most definitely has something for everyone, and most likely more of it, with the added bonus that you don't have to pay for songs you don't want. Rock Band also has, to my mind, the most accurate note charts, which “feel” closer to the song itself, and from what I can tell most agree. Playing both this and Rock Band 2 with my housemates led to widespread enjoyment of both, but also requests to stay with Rock Band 2 once we put that on instead.

There are people who prefer Guitar Hero's more frantic and frenetic note charts to Rock Band and they, I suspect, will have already bought this game, so this review isn't really for them. It's for those who're on the fence, and what I can say is this: this is easily the best non-Harmonix Guitar Hero game, and stands up alongside Rock Band 2. In terms of the tracklisting and the note charts, Rock Band is still on top, but Guitar Hero has never been closer and packs in a whole raft of slick improvements that make the game easier to get into and enjoy. This is a title that a fan of either series can purchase and enjoy.

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