Five Alive
Guitar Hero 5 proves there's still a little juice left in the old formula, but it's just about tapped out.
Published: October 11, 2009
This flexibility in difficulty actually comes into play on the multiplayer modes too -- specifically in the new Momentum game type, where the game will dynamically scale the difficulty in a song depending on how well you're doing, allowing those that can't normally keep up to seamlessly drop down to a complexity that keeps them in the running.
The rest of the non-Face Off (y'know, normal head-to-head duels) Modes are a little more mixed. Do or Die boots a player that misses three notes in a section and then brings them back for the next, Perfectionist grades on total number of notes hit, Streakers declares a winner based on the longest uninterrupted run of hit notes and Elimination drops the lowest-scoring player in a section. These were clearly meant to be played online where a full eight member complement can go at it, and it's here that you'll find the most hardcore competition, but some of the modes can leave newcomers in the dust right near the start of a song.
Still, the modes demonstrate that Neversoft is indeed willing to try new things, and it's not unfair to say that this is one of the most competition-oriented games in the series; the single-player or Career Mode progression has taken a back seat to getting as many people in whatever configurations they please into the game as seamlessly as possible, and thanks to simplification of the menus and quick jumps into getting to the good stuff, they've more than met the challenge.
Even little things like letting the rest of the band save failing members (sounds an awful lot like that other game, don't it?) by playing well to fill a Band Revival Meter and breaking the Star Power meters apart again (I'm still not sure why they combined the whole band's meters in the first place, but then I'd rather pretend World Tour never existed) or having Band Moments where everyone has to play a section perfectly helps both unite and encourage cooperative and competitive play. Clearly the social side of the game has been embraced here, and to terrific effect.
Visually the core engine seems to have gotten another nudge up; animations are better, the models are more detailed (making appearances by Kurt Cobain, Shirley Manson, Johnny Cash, Matt Bellamy and Carlos Santana that much more engaging), the crowd is denser without resorting to a bunch of sprites, the stages are more imaginative and dynamic during big encores... The game just plum looks better than the series ever has, and that's most definitely a good thing.
Likewise, there's plenty of oomph to the audio, with some nice back channel separation and chanting during moments where the crowd is really into it or Star Power has been leveraged. Honestly, though, in a game like this, it's going to come down to the list of songs, and while I was initially turned off by the breadth of artists (just take a look at the cameos to see what genres Neversoft dipped into), the sheer number of songs -- and the ability to import DLC songs and disc-based ones (another nod to Harmonix' new franchise) --- means you can shore up any holes with stuff you like from World Tour (with the new interface, hooray!) or bring over what you know you like from earlier online purchases. And, to be perfectly honest, even the songs I thought I'd hate ended up being some of the most fun. I can't think of a single bad song in the bunch. 85/85 is a damn fine record if you ask me.
No, Guitar Hero 5 isn't a radical departure for the series and one might argue that it's the first time the franchise has been able to return to the glory days before the clicky plastic instrument explosion. Even if you did like some of the previous games -- actually, especially if you did -- there's no denying that this is easily the best [i]Guitar Hero game in years -- and quite possibly the best the in the whole series.
It's in a long time since I could glowingly recommend a GH game, but the recommendation here is a most emphatic "go buy it." As much as I might hate the shotgun approach Activision has taken with the Hero franchise, it clearly worked... now let's just hope the Great Hero Deluge of Ought-Nine will be a one-time occurrence. I'm not holding out much hope.
