Guitar Hero 5

Reviewed by:
Gerasimos Manolatos

Price: $59.99–$99.99

The Skinny: C'mon, it's a Guitar Hero game. If we need to tell you what this game entails, we will vandalize your front lawn with burning ashes of plastic instruments. (We have to get rid of our 73 guitar peripherals someway!)

The Good: Here's the deal: You get 85 songs, some snazzy new post-backyard beer pong modes like Party Play and RockFest, and the ability to mix and match instruments to your liking. Like, if you've been saving up and building your own Leaning Tower of Drum Kits, you can now put all of them to use at the same time. The track list is decent—acts include The Rolling Stones, Bob Dylan, Kings of Leon, and Carlos Santana, to name a few—but, as with most music games, you'll find many unwelcome clunkers. Coldplay? AFI? Garbage? Garbage.

And, if that wasn't enough, then you'll love this recession special: Buy GH5 and you get GH: Van Halen for free when it comes out. Somewhere, Sammy Hagar shrugs.



The Bad: We've come to a point where the music game genre is churning out titles in the key of Madden: A new year must mean a new game. Unfortunately, this means very little deviation from the series formula. Sports games get away with it because of their slow-but-steady movement into fully functional online modes along with the incremental game play corrections and additions. However, Guitar Hero and its bastard brother Rock Band have seemingly pigeonholed themselves a bit in that they already employ fully functional online modes and the majority of players shy away from their intricate music creation modes such as GHMix. (Of course, Activision can take note of that for future releases and, if we know anything, it's that there will be many, many ____ Hero games.) With that said, GH 5 could have easily been a simple "track pack" release, or the 85 songs packed into the game would've served better as weekly additions to the GH Music Store. Also, upping the price point for the Wii version 10 dollars over suggested retail price is a dick move. Dick. Move.

You Give Dead Musicians A Bad Name: Someone didn't quite look at the fine print on the contracts too closely. Grunge icon Kurt Cobain is an unlockable character and can be selected to play some of his lesser known classics, like Bon Jovi's "You Give Love a Bad Name" and Garbage's "I'm Only Happy When It Rains." Yikes, Courtney Love.



Buy, Rent, or Disembowel: At best, this is a rental for someone in need of a break from Beatlemania. For the others, you're not missing out on anything. Move along.

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