The Good: Controls function well, fun with friends, advanced music studio is awesome, a few good song choices.
The Bad: Most song choices are bad, unbalanced difficulty settings per song, career is a waste of time, character models look creepy, stages look bland, annoying glitches
A few reviews ago, I said I liked music games. Especially Guitar Hero World Tour. I love that game so much! So I saw the trailer for Guitar Hero 5 and the advanced music studio, I got excited. Of course, later I realized it was the worst in the franchise (Except for Guitar Hero Warriors of Rock, which I have not played). Why is it bad? Well, it's not really bad, it's just not that good.
Let's start off with a positive- the controls. It's still got that normal button pressing and strumming guitar controller, and it still works really well. It also has a pretty good difficulty curve. It can be easy to play, but difficult to master.
Another plus is the advanced music studio. It's gotten so much better now! You can make songs in different pitches, different notes, different tunes, and make longer songs overall. It can take a little bit to get the hang of it, but when you do, you'll have a whole lot of fun making songs.
As for the setlist- it was disappointing. It has very few songs worth listening to and worth playing. All the other songs are bad because they're bad songs or the difficulty settings the game shows on the screen are unbalanced. My biggest problem with the setlist is that it has mostly Alternative songs. On all the other genres, it has about 3 to 8 songs per genre. How many songs does Alternative have? Fourteen! There isn't a whole lot of variety in the setlist.
The career isn't that much better. You only really play it to unlock stages and cameos of famous musicians. It's not worth playing if you want to unlock songs, because you can't. You get all your songs right when you start playing the game. You don't feel like you're achieving anything when you have all songs right from the get-go.
People have said that the visuals in this game are better than the ones in Guitar Hero World Tour. I have to disagree. Every character model looks creepy. They have psychotically wide eyes and disturbing body sizes. It's unsettling. The stages aren't much better. They're kind of bland.
I can't end this review without mentioning the glitches. There aren't many, but they're so annoying, they're distracting. A couple that bothered me were that the bassists' and guitarist's hand would go through the base of their instrument, and, after every performance when the drummer stands up to thank the audience, the drummers foot is backwards! It's distracting.
Overall, this game faltered. While it is fun in multiplayer, has good controls, has a better music studio, and those few good songs, they are overshadowed by the majority of bad song decisions, boring career, creepy graphics, and annoying glitches. If you want this game for the music studio, then go ahead and get it. It's really not worth it for the songs.