The 2009 stretch of Guitar Hero releases is kind of insane when you look at it with hindsight. Earlier in the year you had Guitar Hero:Metallica and Smash Hits released on mainline consoles, with the DS getting On Tour: Modern Hits. That is three games in one series, in one year. The somewhat ironic thing, however, was that Guitar Hero was not done with releases, as Activision would release one rhythm game in the 'Hero' family per month between September to December of 2009, each of them attempting to capture specific audiences and branch out from the guitar-centric gameplay of the series even further.
The sheer hubris of flooding the market like this is definitely a massive mistake. The over-saturation of the rhythm game genre was already in full swing. Gone were the heydays of the franchise; it is now a focus on quantity versus quality. Compare this to Rock Band, who had three major releases in 2009, all of which were not mainstream titles; and it is clear to see why Guitar Hero began to suffer immensely.
Guitar Hero 5 is probably the poster child for that suffering. The 5th entry in the mainline series, it is also Neversoft's 2nd major release for the year after Metallica. In this case they didn't do much to rock the boat at all for it to stand out. This is another problem with the series, it was becoming increasingly stale. Neversoft had relied heavily on the Guitar Hero: World Tour engine for a full year of game production, with four out of the seven games released in 2009 basically taking that visual style and running with it.
Guitar Hero 5 does update the interface and chart scaling, but it feels more sterile and scaled back. This is another problem that has been unavoidable; the multi-platform releases of the game. Up to this point, Activision has released Guitar Hero as both a standalone game and a bundle with a guitar peripheral, or a bundle with the band kit. These releases are also across four different game consoles. For Guitar Hero 5 alone, 9 different SKUs were released, out of 25 for the year for the franchise, which is an insane amount of content that is being sold at full price.
Guitar Hero 5 would be the last Guitar Hero game for the PlayStation 2, and the last mainline game to follow a standard band-centric formula. For the most part, Neversoft looked to improve gameplay and spice things up with some added modes, most of which are good additions that feel like a long time coming. New gameplay modes include several multiplayer modes. Party Play is a quick launch that plays songs automatically, allowing players to jump in and out of the song with any instrument and start playing after selecting difficulty. Players can also play the same instrument, a nice little touch that is welcome for a casual setting, making Party Play perfect for simple, drop-in and out gameplay.
The second, RockFest, is a 4-player local or 8-player online challenge/battle mashup mode that is all about accumulating points. RockFest clearly had some work added to it by including multiple sub-modes that are designed to challenge players. Each song in RockFest is given a 30 second section of a song to play, and players earn points based on their submode. Some, like Streaker mode, award points for making note streaks for as long as possible. Others, like Do or Die, force the player to wait until their next section if they miss three notes in their current section of the song. RockFest includes an elimination mode, and even Pro-Face off, the standard multiplayer mode from previous Guitar Hero games, so there is a lot of variety for players looking to play online.
The bigger change was for sure career mode song challenges, which add replayability and fundamentally recontextualize career mode. These challenges can be instrument specific, simple score-based challenges, or even something more skillful, like holding and using the whammy bar for a song's duration.
The reason challenges are a good addition is because they are tied to game unlocks, meaning you get a tangible reward for their completion. The unlocks are new outfits, avatars, and other bonus items, replacing the reward store from the previous games. This does add some layers to Guitar Hero 5 that would otherwise be the same thing we see in Guitar Hero games past, go to a venue, play the songs in the list, rinse and repeat.
In truth, this is what Guitar Hero 5 brings to the table that is new, outside of a whole new song setlist. However, this does bring us to the major flaw with Guitar Hero 5, and the one problem that it simply can't get away from; its setlist is arguably the worst in the series.
Now, to be clear, the songs themselves are not the problem. We have a massive 85 song setlist in-game featuring some heavy hitters. The Rolling Stones "Sympathy for the Devil", Thin Lizzy's "Jailbreak", Rush's "Spirit of Radio" and King Crimson's blistering " 21st Century Schizoid Man" are major standouts. You also have songs from Deep Purple, Peter Frampton, Carlos Santana, and Grand Funk Railroad thrown into the mix there.
The thing is, the setlist is way too varied. For every King Crimson and Iron Maiden you get Stevie Wonder and The Gorillaz, excellent musical talent for sure, but not offering much for every instrument as they should. Rock Band is often a bit unbalanced, but tries hard to make sure there is a challenging or engaging chart for players. Maybe one or two instruments will be challenged, but the whole band will feel like they have a role to play.
Guitar Hero 5 botches this balance. A great song like Johnny Cash's "Ring of Fire" is a nice addition for sure, but it feels like it's there for name recognition versus a solid chart. For guitar and voice it is ok, but drums and bass are severely lacking. Conversely, Elton John's "Saturday Night's All Right for Fighting" is very voice heavy, with all three instruments sort of lagging behind. Other song choices by Beck, Coldplay, Scars on Broadway, 3 Doors Down, and Elliot Smith just feel less challenging overall across all of their instrument charts.
Some of that is fine as early-level songs, but it does feel like Neversoft is a bit more gunshy with the difficulty. Save for the final levels of career mode, none of the songs, across all of the instruments, are really a challenge. This is why the Challenge Mode is valuable, it makes the setlists harder if you are aiming for a specific goal in the end.
In truth, the setlist is not bad in Guitar Hero 5, but what makes it weak is that there is a band-specific game in the franchise, Band Hero, coming out in two months after Guitar Hero 5's release. Another long-time coming issue for the series is this; Guitar Hero should almost always be focused on the guitars. World Tour you had a healthy mix for each instrument but Guitar Hero 5 there were a lot of guitar-specific songs that would not be out of place in any other game. , that list is thin at best, and with Band Hero two months from release, it exacerbates this problem fully.
To Neversoft's credit, Guitar Hero 5 is the first game in the series to allow songs from World Tour, and previously released DLC to be playable. That immensely helps the weaker setlist, but this is also a long time coming feature that, at the time, was in high demand thanks to the setup done by Rock Band.
The only other returning feature was guest artists, but despite adding Johnny Cash, Carlos Santana, Shirley Manson and Matthew Bellamy to the game as playable characters, the real elephant in the room is Kurt Cobain. Cobain's inclusion was three years of legal wrangling to get him in there, with his ex-wife Courtney Love approving of the final design of him in the game. Apparently, however, Cobain being used as a character for other songs was a step too far.
It is well known that Cobain was not a fan of mass commercialization, with the Nirvana catalogue of songs even being tightly controlled by Dave Grohl, who owns the rights to their music. Cobain being included was clearly a dream choice by Neversoft, but Love felt they took it too far despite her blessings on the design and final inclusion of him. A legal battle would ensue over Cobain's image and use as a playable avatar, with Love, Grohl, and other musicians commenting that Cobain should have been only playable for Nirvana songs.
It is clear Activision over-stepped their boundaries with Cobain's inclusion, and it does bring into question the integrity of the music and the people playing it. This is not the only controversy that will follow Activision either, as Band Hero will suffer a similar lawsuit. This was always the danger of having guest musicians in the game series; what started as a nice little bonus gimmick has now turned into a major blemish on the franchise, and it is fitting that Guitar Hero 5 and Band Hero would be the last two games to have real-life musicians as playable characters.
At the end of the day, Guitar Hero 5 is a mess of a game that adds some good features and is steady on the rails for the series. It doesn't do anything particularly wrong or bad (outside of the ethical ramifications regarding Cobain), but it also doesn't really excel at much either. It feels like another rhythm game, chasing the dragon that is at this point beyond its reach. If it were the only release in the fall of 2009 for the Hero franchise, it probably would do better. If anything, it is the first in a string of games of varying quality that sets the tone for the series going forward.