Guitar Hero 5 (Wii) Review

It seems futile to explain the gameplay of Guitar Hero in more than rudimentary detail yet again, seeing as little in the way of core mechanics has changed. As with the others, you stand - or sit - firm with your chosen instrument, be it guitar, bass or drums, and strum or tap along in time with the colourful gems that hurtle down the screen, each of the colours corresponding to a pad or button on your big plastic controller. If you would rather your throat take the toll than your digits, you can sing your heart out on the microphone, following the on-screen lyrics and attempting to match pitch. Do well and score-boosting Star Power becomes available. Any extra bits added in Guitar Hero: World Tour, such as support of the touch strip featured on Guitar Hero guitars to make finger-shredding solos brilliantly fun, are all in here. Guitar Hero 5 is essentially Guitar Hero: World Tour 2.

That's no bad thing, as World Tour was close to the top when it came to the Guitar Hero games. Rather than doing anything drastically different in gameplay terms, developers Vicarious Visions have decided to expand upon the modes. Keen to take advantage of the social aspect of music games, all songs are now unlocked from the very beginning in Quick Play, and they have popped in a Party Play mode. This acts like an interactive jukebox - left to itself, it'll rest on the title screen and rattle through the tracklist in the background, but anybody can grab a peripheral and get stuck in at any time. Should that person grow bored, they can hop right back out of the game, or skip through tracks at their leisure. Any complication barrier of music titles is stomped right down; now if you only want to play along to a favourite guitar solo you can ignore the rest and only play that part. You only need go through the frustrations of setting everything up perfectly if a few of you want a serious session.

That's still possible, of course, and has also been given a little twist. Now you're no longer restricted to one of each instrument; up to four players can mix and match whatever they want. You could have four guitars at once, four vocalists, three bass and a drum, two vocalists sharing the limelight over the gentle clatter of a pair of drums...you get the picture. Most will probably still go for the standard set up, but it's a great option.

Wii's success has not always been reflected in the way that it has been supported outside of Nintendo, but to Activision's credit Guitar Hero 5 fully exploits the console. Downloadable content is available from the off with a dedicated in-game store, supporting download of track packs as well as single songs to Wii or SD card. Tracks stored on the SD card take slightly longer to load, but it's not a big deal. You can export the majority of the songs from Guitar Hero: World Tour, Guitar Hero: Greatest Hits and Band Hero into Guitar Hero 5 if you have a sufficiently-sized SD card and copies of the games to hand, giving a massive boost to the number of songs available for a reasonable cost - each game's export licensing fee ranges between 200 and 500 Nintendo Points. Online multiplayer is easy to connect to, with standard guitar duels and all-out full band clashes supported with a variety of rules. Leaderboards and the music making portion of the games introduced in World Tour, GHTunes, are as present in the Wii edition as they are in any other.

In fact, Nintendo has gotten the better deal with Guitar Hero 5. On top of the standard content, they also benefit from some Wii exclusive modes. Make-your-own-music mode Mii Freestyle makes a return, giving your Mii the chance to rock out to a selection of genres. Switch on your instrument and play whatever you like along to the backing track or follow the recommended notes, it makes absolutely no difference - there are no scores to worry about, it's all about doing whatever you feel like. When you're done you can play your performance back, save it and even send it to eight friends via Nintendo Wi-Fi Connection. More significant is the support of Nintendo DS. Connect your two-screened wonder in Mii Freestyle and you take the role of stage manager, mucking around with the lights, cameras and special effects with the touch screen.

It's also used in the Roadie Battle mode. This plays like a standard guitar duel, only one or two people can also join in by utilising DS Download Play. Those on DS are the roadies, each teaming up with one of the Wii players. As the guitars are being played, the roadies will attempt to sabotage the opposing guitar player through a series of mini-games, including breaking, restringing and swapping guitars to flip the colours around, or setting fire to the stage. The same roadies will also have to constantly dash back to the aid of their own team and repair damage done by their counterpart; blowing into the microphone to put out flames, for example. It's probably the best use of Wii/DS connectivity seen yet, and the fact that you can have AI taking the place of any of the guitarists or roadies means that, even if you only have one DS and one Wii guitar available, you can still play some form of local multiplayer on Guitar Hero 5.

The main thing that lets Guitar Hero 5 down is actually the setlist. There are some superb, well-requested songs in the list - Muse's Plug In Baby, Queen's Under Pressure, Stevie Wonder's Superstition to name a few - but overall it doesn't feel up to the standard of Guitar Hero: World Tour's or Harmonix's rival Rock Band titles. Credit where it's due in bringing more David Bowie and T-Rex to music games and finally locking down the involvement of artists such as The White Stripes and Elton John, but the game would have benefited from stronger tracks and less emphasis on newer songs. There's still plenty to have fun with, though, and it's without doubt the music game that takes advantage of Wii the most.