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Average customer review 
(based on 196 reviews)
 If you own a Wii, you should own this game.
Written by A. Jefferson from Long Beach, CA USA
Sep 24, 2009
This is a great game, and deserves far more credit than it is getting. I own both Rock Band 1 and 2 for Wii as well, and LOVED both of those games far more than any previous entry in the Guitar Hero series. This newest iteration however, is really something special, ESPECIALLY if you play on Wii. Here are some great things about this game:
On ALL Consoles:
*Soundtrack: Several reviews have bashed the soundtrack for this game, and I really don't understand why. The song selection is GREAT. Granted, I imported all of the available songs from Guitar Hero: World Tour and Smash Hits, so maybe that improves the setlist... and I also have lots of downloadable songs. But, that said, the tracks on the disk are great. Please, before you take these reviews at face value, check out the track listing for this game... there are some really great songs. Granted, I honestly do like the Rock Band 2 track list better (but I have over 150 downloadable songs in Rock Band 2... and honestly, several songs that are on GH5 are also on Rock Band...)... so just check out the setlist for yourself before you judge this game!!!
*Party Play Mode - This is a REALLY great feature, and with some tweaking in future games, could be AMAZING. Essentially, as soon as the game starts up, rather than selecting a game mode, selecting a song, players, etc... you click one of the fret buttons and are launched directly into whatever song is playing in the background. You can select a rocker, etc... but are essentially launched directly into playing a song! If you don't like the song, you can opt to skip to the next or another song. The gameplay mechanic for Party Play mode is IDEAL for parties (DUH!). If you have ever had friends over to play Rock Band or Guitar Hero, you know what a pain it can be to actually get into playing.... everyone takes FOREVER choosing a song, which rocker they want to play as, etc.... this is a quick and easy way to get right into playing with your friends. They can drop in and out as they please (without affecting anyone else playing), so it is ideal for groups of friends. When one gets tired or wants to grab a beer, he can jump out, and someone else can take his place! Also, there is no fail in this mode, and there is even a BEGINNER difficulty (more on that later)...
*Beginner Difficulty - FINALLY! A mode where even a toddler can play! Literally! When you are playing in quick play, party play (and some of the other modes I would assume), there is a difficulty level even lower than Easy called Beginner. There are no fret colors to worry about... you simply strum at the right time. This is a really great feature. I have had some friends, as well as kids, that have a hard time grasping the concept of holding the correct fret button(s) and strumming simultaneously. Beginner mode is idiot proof! =) Yesterday, I was jamming along with a 4 year old!! And he actually won over the crowd to save me when I failed out on Expert Drums!!! This is a really nice added touch.
*Song Imports: You can import some (and eventually MOST) of the on-disk songs from Guitar Hero: World Tour and Guitar Hero:Smash Hits for next to nothing (cost me like $6 to import all of the songs). So, the day I brought GH:5 home I imported all of the available songs, and my library instantly grew to around 160 songs. This plus future dlc means this game is going to be a nice compliment to my already expansive Rock Band library!
Nintendo Wii-Specific features:
*Expanded SD Card functionality: Guitar Hero 5 is the first Wii game to make use of the expanded SD functionality added to Wii. What does that mean? With games like Rock Band 2, you were limited to only using standard SD cards (maximum size of 2GB) for storing downloadable songs. With this being the case, Rock Band (as well as Guitar Hero World Tour) lowered the quality of the downloadable songs and removed the album art to decrease the file size so as to maximize the number songs songs we could download. Starting with GH5 however, we can use high-capacity SD cards up to 32GB. Long story short: Guitar Hero 5 is the first game available on the Wii that takes advantage of these large sd cards, effectively adding a "hard drive" to the Wii. You no longer have to swap 2gb sd cards back and forth (before, I had one 2gb card for virtual console and wiiware games, and a separate 2gb sd card that stored rock band downloadable songs). The process is elegant and seamless.... and just plain works! THE ONLY complaint I have is that you can't preview songs that you have stored on the SD card... so when you are selecting a song to play, when you highlight songs that are on the disk, a brief preview plays. If the song is stored on your sd card, it doesn't preview. But, I can live with that, considering the fact that I can easily store 800+ downloadable songs on a single 32gb sd card now!!!
*Roadie Battle Mode - Long story short, this mode allows a friend that owns a Nintendo DS to act as your "roadie" and sabotage other players in this mode. I dont own a DS, but from what I have heard, this mode is FUN, and easily one of the best features of the game. Check it out!
This is a really great game, and I am glad that I didnt listen to all of the negative reviews (I almost passed on it!). I am a loyal Rock Band fan, but with Guitar Hero being the first music game on Wii to adopt the use of the high-capacity SD cards, as well as allowing the import of GH:WT and SH... AND giving away Guitar Hero: Van Halen (which has an AWESOME soundtrack!!!!!!!)...buying this game was a no-brainer. Great songs. Fun and well-done gameplay. Impressive party play and co-op features. If you own a Wii, you should own this game...period.
My review scores:
Gameplay: 10/10
Difficulty: Varied (Anyone from grandma to seasoned hardcore guitar hero veterans can get loads of value out of this game)
Presentation: 9/10
Lasting Value: 10/10
Overall: 9.5/10
(45 of 48 people found this review helpful)
If you own a Wii, you should own this game.
Written by A. Jefferson from Long Beach, CA USA
Sep 22, 2009
This is a great game, and deserves far more credit than it is getting. I own both Rock Band 1 and 2 for Wii as well, and LOVED both of those games far more than any previous entry in the Guitar Hero series. This newest iteration however, is really something special, ESPECIALLY if you play on Wii. Here are some great things about this game:
On ALL Consoles:
*Soundtrack: Several reviews have bashed the soundtrack for this game, and I really don't understand why. The song selection is GREAT. Granted, I imported all of the available songs from Guitar Hero: World Tour and Smash Hits, so maybe that improves the setlist... and I also have lots of downloadable songs. But, that said, the tracks on the disk are great. Please, before you take these reviews at face value, check out the track listing for this game... there are some really great songs. Granted, I honestly do like the Rock Band 2 track list better (but I have over 150 downloadable songs in Rock Band 2... and honestly, several songs that are on GH5 are also on Rock Band...)... so just check out the setlist for yourself before you judge this game!!!
*Party Play Mode - This is a REALLY great feature, and with some tweaking in future games, could be AMAZING. Essentially, as soon as the game starts up, rather than selecting a game mode, selecting a song, players, etc... you click one of the fret buttons and are launched directly into whatever song is playing in the background. You can select a rocker, etc... but are essentially launched directly into playing a song! If you don't like the song, you can opt to skip to the next or another song. The gameplay mechanic for Party Play mode is IDEAL for parties (DUH!). If you have ever had friends over to play Rock Band or Guitar Hero, you know what a pain it can be to actually get into playing.... everyone takes FOREVER choosing a song, which rocker they want to play as, etc.... this is a quick and easy way to get right into playing with your friends. They can drop in and out as they please (without affecting anyone else playing), so it is ideal for groups of friends. When one gets tired or wants to grab a beer, he can jump out, and someone else can take his place! Also, there is no fail in this mode, and there is even a BEGINNER difficulty (more on that later)...
*Beginner Difficulty - FINALLY! A mode where even a toddler can play! Literally! When you are playing in quick play, party play (and some of the other modes I would assume), there is a difficulty level even lower than Easy called Beginner. There are no fret colors to worry about... you simply strum at the right time. This is a really great feature. I have had some friends, as well as kids, that have a hard time grasping the concept of holding the correct fret button(s) and strumming simultaneously. Beginner mode is idiot proof! =) Yesterday, I was jamming along with a 4 year old!! And he actually won over the crowd to save me when I failed out on Expert Drums!!! This is a really nice added touch.
*Song Imports: You can import some (and eventually MOST) of the on-disk songs from Guitar Hero: World Tour and Guitar Hero:Smash Hits for next to nothing (cost me like $6 to import all of the songs). So, the day I brought GH:5 home I imported all of the available songs, and my library instantly grew to around 160 songs. This plus future dlc means this game is going to be a nice compliment to my already expansive Rock Band library!
Nintendo Wii-Specific features:
*Expanded SD Card functionality: Guitar Hero 5 is the first Wii game to make use of the expanded SD functionality added to Wii. What does that mean? With games like Rock Band 2, you were limited to only using standard SD cards (maximum size of 2GB) for storing downloadable songs. With this being the case, Rock Band (as well as Guitar Hero World Tour) lowered the quality of the downloadable songs and removed the album art to decrease the file size so as to maximize the number songs songs we could download. Starting with GH5 however, we can use high-capacity SD cards up to 32GB. Long story short: Guitar Hero 5 is the first game available on the Wii that takes advantage of these large sd cards, effectively adding a "hard drive" to the Wii. You no longer have to swap 2gb sd cards back and forth (before, I had one 2gb card for virtual console and wiiware games, and a separate 2gb sd card that stored rock band downloadable songs). The process is elegant and seamless.... and just plain works! THE ONLY complaint I have is that you can't preview songs that you have stored on the SD card... so when you are selecting a song to play, when you highlight songs that are on the disk, a brief preview plays. If the song is stored on your sd card, it doesn't preview. But, I can live with that, considering the fact that I can easily store 800+ downloadable songs on a single 32gb sd card now!!!
*Roadie Battle Mode - Long story short, this mode allows a friend that owns a Nintendo DS to act as your "roadie" and sabotage other players in this mode. I dont own a DS, but from what I have heard, this mode is FUN, and easily one of the best features of the game. Check it out!
This is a really great game, and I am glad that I didnt listen to all of the negative reviews (I almost passed on it!). I am a loyal Rock Band fan, but with Guitar Hero being the first music game on Wii to adopt the use of the high-capacity SD cards, as well as allowing the import of GH:WT and SH... AND giving away Guitar Hero: Van Halen (which has an AWESOME soundtrack!!!!!!!)...buying this game was a no-brainer. Great songs. Fun and well-done gameplay. Impressive party play and co-op features. If you own a Wii, you should own this game...period.
My review scores:
Gameplay: 10/10
Difficulty: Varied (Anyone from grandma to seasoned hardcore guitar hero veterans can get loads of value out of this game)
Presentation: 9/10
Lasting Value: 10/10
Overall: 9.5/10
(37 of 41 people found this review helpful)
The 5th Guitar Hero, and it's rockin'!!!
Written by Austin Murphy from Meridian, ID USA
Sep 19, 2009
Well I would just like to say, that the average rating of this game is 3 stars. I'm very stunned by that, because this is a good game. I'm going to do a list of pros and cons.
Pros:
+ Excellent graphics, the band on stage has never looked better, and some of the effects are awesome. You either hate them or love them.
+ The song selection is huge, the biggest out of all the guitar heroes, I was really surprised with all the venues they had in career.
+ Is the song selection good? Overall it's more good than bad which is nice, I wish there were some more songs that I knew on the game.
+ The game is fun to play, it's enjoyable, and not as frustrating as some of the other guitar heroes.
+ A lot of reviews, say playing your avatar in the game looks weird and just doesn't fit in. I disagree, it gave me a chance to really make my avatar look cool, sometimes I get sick of seeing the same game characters every guitar hero.
+ The Party Play is a nice feature, I know if I had party at my house, and tons of instruments I would definetely use this feature. It's also fun, if you're to lazy to find a song to play, or just want to relax.
+ Tons of replay value, going back to get the bonuses, or completed every song in career will take a while and keep you busy.
There's a few nuetral spots, that aren't bad at all, but annoy me in some way:
+/- Sympathy for the Devil is a fun song to play, but listening to "whoo, whoo," the whole song can get on your nerves.
+/- Making a logo, wasn't all that great, I found it to be more annoying than fun when making one, but I felt good when I got it done.
+/- I only knew about 3 of the songs when I played this, some of the other guitar heroes, atleast had 5-10 songs that I knew, but not a problem at all since most of the songs are quite enjoyable anyway.
And last but not least the negatives:
- This guitar hero didn't do much in progression, what I mean each guitar hero game has some significance in doing something new for the fans, this one didn't do that for me, still a fun game.
- The store is gone, instead of money you have to unlock the stuff, and some stuff you can't even unlcok on medium, which is the difficulty I play on, which in general sucks.
Well, Overall this is a really good game, and if you're a guitar hero fan this is a must buy, with great graphics, pretty good song selection, and lots of replay value. I actually mostly bought this so I could get Guitar Hero: Van Halen for free and actually I play guitar hero with the guitar, our family is poor, and I'm only 14 and don't make much money, but still even with this is an awesome game!! Recommeneded for Guitar Hero fans, and people who need to complete their collection.
(17 of 17 people found this review helpful)
Good Features and a Few Issues
Written by Lisa Shea from
Sep 07, 2009
We've owned all the Guitar Hero and Rock Band games, often for multiple systems, plus many other music games. We are both musicians. So we definitely were looking forward to Guitar Hero 5 to see what new features it would offer and how it would compare with the many other offerings that exist out there.
First, let me comment that it makes a HUGE difference what equipment you use for any of these games. If your drums suck, then it really doesn't matter what the game does or does not do. You're going to hate the experience because of lousy drum response. So we definitely recommend having wireless guitars, so there's no drag at all on your movements, and an Ion drum kit. Making these improvements in your set are going to give you a vastly superior experience whichever game you go with.
Guitar Hero 5 doesn't do anything groundbreakingly new. We were able to pop it in and start playing on Medium, whipping through songs at 5 stars without much problem. So the mechanics are sound. Hit colored notes with the matching button. Sing on key. The songs are all "real songs" by now which is great - no more fake-bands with not-right notes. You can import other songs from past games (in the same series) which is good too.
They've done some nice work with the interface. Each player gets their own view of the fail bar so you can see at a glance how well you're doing, and how you're earning star power. Activating star power implements it just for you, which I disagree with. I think a member should be able to help the entire band. That's always been a complaint of mine with this series though.
They are focusing now solely on stars. You earn up to five stars for performance, one for perfection, and then others through cool challenges. One song might be "hit lots of chords". Another song might be "hit lots of snares". It encourages you to go back and replay songs to get those challenge levels, and to try different instruments.
The overall interface for working with songs is less than stellar though. When you're in a given gig (location) you can't easily see all the songs. When you're on the overall list of gigs, you can't easily see which gigs still have songs to do. If you're poking into a given gig to look around, when you come back out it resets you back to your "current gig". The whole moving around the screens is a pain.
The character customization is lacking. I'm female and I found the outfits for women to be on the insulting side. In other games I can create PERFECT outfits that I adore. Here it seems I have to choose from leather bikinis, spiked bikinis or plastic bikinis. I was hard pressed to find something I even remotely liked.
The tutorials are also lacking. The drum star power for example says to use the orange cymbal - which we don't have on an ion drum kit. So we did the tutorial which properly showed us as not having an orange track - but then told us to hit the orange cymbal. We went through the tutorial and it said "good job" even though we'd never actually implemented star power!! What kind of a tutorial says you've succeeded when you've failed?
They did add some cool features to the locations. For example I was playing "Jailbreak" in the Grease drag-strip location. When the song gets to the parts with the sirens, blue and red lights started flashing - and then a burst of flame came out in perfect time to the main crescendo!! Someone did a lot of work with that sort of timing on songs. It really is quite fun if you look for it.
It's always hard to critique a song list. Some people will love these songs - other people will hate them. I do like that if you're reasonably good you can unlock new gigs VERY quickly so you can get to fresh songs. That way whichever ones you don't like, you can move past them and get some new ones. That being said, I found fewer songs I adored in this set than perhaps in any other similar game I've played. Maybe this particular one is skewed towards a musical type I'm just not fond of. Some classics are great fun - Sympathy for the Devil, Sultans of Swing - but many of them are not high on my list. I'm sure those exact same songs are high on other peoples' lists. Just be sure to look through the music list and see if it appeals to you.
I found the very obvious product placements - like GIANT T-Mobile billboards in the middle of a gig location - to be on the obnoxious side. Surely they could have been done more subtly.
In summary, we're certainly enjoying playing it. The tie-ins with the gig location reacting to a specific song is quite cool. The playing of the music is intuitive and fun. But for me, the characters being not ones I really connect with (due to clothing options) and the song list being weighted (for me) with songs I'm not really fond of gives this only 4 stars rather than 5.
Feel free to contact me with any questions. As mentioned, we play these games a LOT.
NOTE: One more thing to mention! This game was made on SHODDY GAME DISCS and will often give failure messages in older XBox systems. What you have to do is go into the XBox system console and copy the game onto your hard drive. It should run fine once you do that.
(37 of 42 people found this review helpful)
great addition to the series
Written by Erik Guttormsen from Longview, WA United States
Sep 12, 2009
First off, try not to read other reviews that only refer to not getting receipts and manufacturer's defects. If you have played a Guitar Hero or Rock Band game, this is just a given that some of us are going to have to return an item or two. It happened to me on Gears of War, it happens to everyone.
That being said, this game should be reviewed on the game itself with a little thrown in about the quality of the guitar.
The game is excellent, and getting 4.5 out of 5 and 9 or 10 out of 10 from all the game reviewers. You can use your xbox live avatar, you can create rockers just like before, all your favorite rockers are back, there are a load of fun and new achievements, the ability to jump into songs midstream, and the run on sentence goes on and on. As many series have done, they are constantly coming up with new feature and taking out old features.
In guitar hero I think they have done better than World Tour and improved on some of the complaints with the game and the guitar. I was hesitant to buy a guitar with the new slider neck, but having tried it a few times now my only compaint is that is hard to switch back and forth, which is caused by inexperience only and will get better. The new design is cool looking, works well, and combines nicely with the game. And getting free Van Halen coming my way in 6 weeks is a nice feature as well.
There will be future reviews with more depth, but for now a week after this came out there needs to be at least one review that isn't just a receipt complaint. I am positive you can print receipts from amazon, so not even sure how that is an issue.
(23 of 25 people found this review helpful)
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