Long story short, they haven't...
Graphics - 8.5/10
Guitar Hero 5 is nothing if not awesome looking. The avatars of real people like Johnny Cash and Carlos Santana look amazing, and the semi-cartoony look the series once had has been pushed even further towards realism. The lighting effects look great, and the textures are high resolution. No real complaints here. I'm not a fan of the visuals of the interface. It seems overly "Tony Hawk game" (no surprise) and doesn't have a nice, clean look. It's not necessarily better or worse than the Rock Band series, just a different feel.
Soundtrack - 5/10
Man, you'd think there were only 100 songs left in the world to choose from with this game, as they picked every B-side track from every band you wanted a great song from. Without a doubt this is the worst set list in any music game, ever. Of 85 songs I only found myself wanting to play 10 or so. 10 divided by 85 is roughly 12%. 12% of the songs were appealing! I'm pretty open too. I was a DJ for six years, and have played the guitar for 10+ years, so I love to give new music a try.
The only saving factor here to bring up the score is that you can import songs from other Guitar Hero games. A total of 117 out of 199 songs can be imported from World Tour, Smash Hits and Band Hero for a reasonable fee.
Features - 10/10
This is the one true saving grace of this game. The ability to play any song in Free Play without needing to unlock them, the four-player-same-instrument feature, drop-in/out play, a five second countdown when returning from a paused game, and the crazy-robust character creator are all things the Rock Band series is lacking.
*The Beatles: Rock Band has a countdown-after-pause feature, but that's the only thing on this list that matches
Gameplay - 3/10
This is beyond annoying. How many games will it take for Neversoft to get it right? Playing with friends, some of whom were musicians - but the vast majority haven't been - I've seen two consistent complaints over, and over, and over, and over, and... you get the idea:
- Why are there notes to hit where there aren't notes in the song, and why are there notes in the song that I don't get to play? --- Seriously? 5+ games and they can't get that right? Yeah, as Trump would say, "You're fired, Neversoft"
- The other complaint is that a song that's ridiculously easy to play on guitar all of the sudden gets weird three chord progressions. Don't make the song harder just for the sake of making it harder. There's lots of hard songs to play. Make it what it's supposed to be. (most of the songs that suffer from this use power chords in real life, which are two note chords)
Think of this game as a Ferrarri F50 with a Toyota Prius drivetrain (including the factory-recall gas pedal). It looks amazing -- so amazing that you can't wait to put the car in gear -- but when you do you realize that no amount of outside "prettyness" can fix what's fundamentally broken. I really, really hoped to be turned around to love the Guitar Hero series again. I was incredibly disappointed.
