More Guitar Heroics

While Guitar Hero's transition into the full-band format last year was kind of a bumpy one, it got a lot of things right, and it showed signs of Neversoft getting more comfortable with the franchise. We got a quick demo of Guitar Hero 5 at E3 from Neversoft's Allen Freese, along with several other members of the Neversoft team. The focus of the demo was on the new Party Play feature, though it also gave us a glimpse of a more visually refined Guitar Hero.

Before we got started, though, I had to ask the Neversoft guys about that name, Guitar Hero 5. After last year's World Tour, I fully expected the series to stay away from numbered iterations, though it sounds like, had it been Neversoft's choice, the last game would've been called Guitar Hero 4. Anyway, to the demo itself, we kicked off with a look at the Party Play mode and Santana's "No One to Depend On." The idea here is that any player can jump into a song at any time, and with any instrument, without disrupting the song itself. If a player is finding their current difficulty level overwhelming, they can change that on the fly as well. 

Aside from making for a smoother, more casual play experience, this will allow multiple people to play the same type of instrument at once. If you've got four vocalists, you can turn the game into a full-blown singalong; if, God forbid, you've got four drum kits handy, you can have your own digital drum circle. You can select the Party Play mode from a menu, though if you load up the game and just let it sit at the menu for a while, the Party Play mode will kick in on its own, jukebox-style. It's a feature that seems to go against the performance challenging focus that the series has taken on, and it seems like a really smart way to address the difficulty of putting together a perfect four piece. This ideology is extending into the main career as well, which you'll be able to play with any instrument, and with any number of players. 

But, lest you think Neversoft has gone, err, soft, Guitar Hero 5 will still bring the challenge, in the form of song-specific bonus challenges, which will reward you for completing specific, performance-based objectives in different songs. Allen Freese confirmed that DLC songs you've bought for World Tour will work with Guitar Hero 5, and while they won't have their own bonus challenges, you will be able to use them to complete sponsor challenges. We asked whether you'd be able to import the songs off the disc from World Tour, Rock Band-style, and while we mostly got a lot of hemming and hawing, it's something they said they were looking into.

We were also given a glimpse of Guitar Hero 5's competitive Rockfest mode, with a specific look athe the Momentum challenge. This is a score-based multiplayer mode where up to four players attack a song using the same instrument. For every twenty consecutive notes you can play successfully, the difficulty level will go up. For every three that you miss, though, the difficulty goes down. I've never been much for competitive Guitar Hero, but this seems like an interesting way to approach it.

Aside from the new play modes, what caught my attention most about Guitar Hero 5 was the look of the game. I felt like World Tour really lost a lot of the caricatured character of Guitar Hero III's art style, with recognizable characters like Axel Steel and Lars Ümlaüt looking like cosplay versions of themselves. This doesn't seem like it will be an issue for Guitar Hero 5, which already features more emotive characters and just generally looks sharper. There were touches like the look of the menu screens that just looked more thoughtfully put together than the slop of World Tour.

Every year that we get a new iteration, I feel like I'm ready to give up on these plastic instrument games. I wouldn't say that I'm feeling super pumped-up about Guitar Hero 5, but I think Neversoft is being smart about the changes and improvements it's making. We'll see how it all comes together soon enough, as the game's set for release on September 1st.