The gameplay and setlist are rock solid, but honestly, do we really need another music game?

User Rating: 7.5 | Guitar Hero 5 X360
The Guitar Hero franchise has always been strong. Despite too many releases as full retail products instead of DLC, the gameplay has been solid all the way along. Guitar Hero 5 plays just as great others and the setlist is generally good, but the gameplay hasn't really evolved and the genre as a whole needs a break.

If you've ever played a Guitar Hero game before, you know what to expect. A series of notes come down a highway of strings and you have to hit buttons on a guitar of drums that correspond with the color of the notes. Has anyone played something like this before? Yeah, I know you have.

But Neversoft did introduce a pretty great feature- the party play. Once you boot the game up, the game automatically loads up a song. You can choose to play the song, or go the menu. Also, while in a song, you can have 3 other players, playing whatever instrument they want, drop in and out whenever you or they want.

Another great thing is xbox live integration. You can search for 3 other players online and you can all use whatever instrument you want. All the players can choose one song to create a setlist, and then you're off rocking. The first thing you'll notice is that although you may be playing by yourself, all note charts and the singing charts for singers will show up. This is cool and makes you feel like you are actually playing in a real band, but if all 4 players are using guitars, bass or drums, than the note charts need to shrink for all of them to fit on screen. This can become an issue, especially on higher difficulties, as it can be hard to see the notes unless you're super close to your television. Despite this, it's still a blast to play over live.

The game has strong visuals, although you won't get to notice as you play. All the character and venues look great, even Johnny Cash and Kirk Cobaign. If you play on Xbox 360, you'll definitely going to get a kick out of seeing your avatar on screen. Sound is of course, fantasic. There are over 85 tracks and setlist is quite good overall. You have Coldplay, Nirvana, Tom Petty, Blink 182, Whitestripes, Bon Jovi, John Melecamp, just to name a few.

But again, this is extremely familiar territory for anyone who has played one of these games before. Guitar Hero 5 plays, looks, and sounds great, plus has cool additions and great features, but that's always been the case. The gameplay hasn't evolved, and quite frankly, Activision and Neversoft should look at the incredible things MTV and Harmonix are doing with downloadable content and learn from them.

Verdict- Rent

It plays terrific and has cool features, but falls victim to a lack of evolution in the genre.

Graphics- 9.0
Audio- 9.0
Gameplay- 7.0
Controls- 8.0
Replay- 6.0
Multiplayer- 8.5
Downloadable Content- 6.0
Overall- 7.5