Guitar Hero 5

[Trader05]

I ran out of games to play and im a fan of music games, so i bit the bullet and picked up this game. I have to say Activision did a great job, or actually did their job. Its a huge improvement on World Tour and Smash Hits overall. Also it came with a coupon for 2 free songs, $5 off any GH game, and the Van Halen for Free offer(expires 10/1/09). On PSN its $4.38 credit for the 2 free songs, i'll probably use this to import my WT songs. Anyone else pick this up?

 

[BenSkywalker]

I picked it up on release day, been really impressed with the new gameplay modes. The ability to play with any combination of instruments is really sweet, a great improvement for those that lack friends with vocal talent. Having party mode rolling when people are over is great fun too, just pick up and play whenever you like.

If you import WT content you only get a small percentage of it btw(a good chunk of DLC crosses over, not so much of the original songs atm- Hot for Teacher didn't make it over as a generic example, although this is probably going to ship with VH I would imagine).

 

[Pheran]

There was a bunch of discussion about it in this thread, though part of it was a pointless flame war. It does look like there are many improvements over GHWT (which I did not like), but I'm holding off to see if they improve the lame import feature (you only get about 40% of the songs from GHWT/GHSH).

 

[jdport]

I wasn't going to buy it, until I found out about the free VH game... I couldn't resist the 2 for 1 on it, so I guess their marketing did its job.. it got at least one sale they wouldn't have had. I'm not sorry that I bought it.. i haven't played through all the songs yet but what I've seen so far, the song list seems considerably weaker than previous titles. However, the gameplay itself is better than any of the others based on what I've seen. the ability to add/change band members and change instruments on the fly is just awsome. I also like the addition of the challenges. Kind of a minor thing also is getting a 6th star for 100%'ing songs. I got two FC's... on All Along the Watch tower my second try, and on Kryptonite on my siteread (I never get 100%'s on a sitereads, that was awsome).. and I got 6 stars for each of those which I thought was cool. I am reserving judgement on the strength of the soundtrack, but from what I've seen after a few hours of playing it's the best GH/RB game to date.

 

[Slick5150]

The song list is a bit wonky. I've never heard of some of the stuff on there, nor does a lot of it have very interesting guitar parts. And the incessant need to include a random Beastie Boys song is just weird. I like their music, but 99% of it is totally wrong for a game like this.

I did pick it up and am enjoying it more than World Tour, but admittedly I probably wouldn't have had it not been for the free Van Halen game offer.

 

[DougoMan]

I hate it. I played through it last week and I can't believe all the good press this game has received. The presentation is tacky as hell. You know how they used to give you tips or funny band trivia during the loading screen? Now you get advertisements! It's obscene. And what is with the fat guy with all the makeup?

And the gameplay is subpar. It's such a shame too because I thought the set list is awesome. My brother summed it up nicely when he said "WTF there are notes on this chart that are not even in the song." Playing RB2 I feel like I am playing along with the song. GH5, it's more like mashing notes as quickly as possible.

Also I'm not that keen on the Party Mode. So we can all play guitar at the same time now.. and that's a good thing? I like what comes out of the speakers to reflect how the players are performing. With two people playing the same instrument, wrong notes don't register (unless you both mess up simultaneously) and it makes for a very unrealistic experience. Half the fun of playing with a group is trying to make the song sound good!

And speaking of what is coming out of the speakers, WTF is with the sound quality of GH titles? I have my console connected to a great sound system with floor-standing speakers and subwoofer and blare it. Playing RB2 it shakes the house. The sound quality is very sharp. When I put in GH, I have to turn the receiver up ten notches and it still sounds flat.

 

[FuryofFive]

did anyone realize the selection of songs...are less than stellar... i mean, you end up playing the synth part in du hast. did we run out of guitar based songs? i could probaly go through my library of songs at home and find 50

 

[Platypus]

How do people like this so far? I've read either really good or really bad things about it.

I love the GH franchise but unless there's some amazing new shit I don't see a reason to buy this game because the setlist is pretty lame imo.

 

[BenSkywalker]

I love the GH franchise but unless there's some amazing new shit I don't see a reason to buy this game because the setlist is pretty lame imo.

Does party mode sound interesting to you? Works like a jukebox, keeps the music rolling non stop and anyone can hop in or out playing along at any time on any difficulty setting with any instrument.

You can also play any combination of instruments in the regular modes which is a very welcome change IMO. Bass in GH grates on my nerves big time. I know it it far more like playing a bass then what they do in RB, but I loathe the strums(reason why I always stuck to guitar in RL instead of the bass too ).

The new challenges are a welcome addition too. You can get up to 9 stars per song now, the first five work as normal- if you complete a song perfect you get 6 stars, then each song has a challenge where you can get up to an additional 3 stars. Challenges are like, alternate strums for every note, whammy on sustains for as much time as possible, maintain a certain multiplier or hit a certain score(lots of others, just giving some examples). Really make replaying some of the songs fairly interesting.

did anyone realize the selection of songs...are less than stellar... i mean, you end up playing the synth part in du hast. did we run out of guitar based songs?

Heh, thought this was amusing as my wife was psyched that DuHast was on there(your point is completely valid, my wife is German and a big Rammstein fan). You certainly have a valid point, but they do have a few decent guitar songs in the game, plus those you can import from WT(why hasn't anyone done 'The Audience is Listening' on any of these games yet? side tangent but still, got on a rant about that the other day and it's still pissing me off ).

 

[jdport]

They have some really good songs, but I agree that on the whole the set list is pretty weak. I still like the game overall though. I think they are getting a lot of sales simply because of the Van Halen deal... it would be interesting to see the sales numbers for the first month compared to next month's sales numbers, and compare them to the first two months sales numbers for all the previous versions of GH.

 

[Trader05]

I beat the career last night, overall the play system and interface is great. The set is ok, i was psyched for Du Hast when i saw it pop up, and I imported World Tour songs also which make it a little better song selection. Im waiting for the Smash Hits import to be up for PS3, im at 140+ songs now

 

[Pheran]

Looks like all those ridiculous GH5 Kurt Cobain videos got a rise out of someone after all:

Courtney Love to sue over Kurt Cobain Guitar Hero appearance

 

[chedrz]

Well, I think I would like it...that is, if my disc actually loaded properly all the time. I've tried it on 2 different Xbox 360's, and you can play maybe 1 or 2 songs before it comes up with a loading error. And I can't save it to either hard drive; it gets about 45% through and says the disc is scratched or unreadable. I'm going to try to return it in a couple hours.