Although visually captivating with impressive customization ability and textures, GH5 is a far cry from the series’ previous heights with a sticky, awful strum system revamp – plus convoluted progressions & scattered [pop-heavy] soundtrack. 5.6/10.

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Guitar Hero 5 is a music rhythm game and the fifth main entry in the Guitar Hero series and the twelfth overall. The game was developed by Neversoft and published by Activision, and released internationally in September 2009 for the PlayStation 2, PlayStation 3, Wii and Xbox 360 consoles.

*Possible spoilers ahead*

Review:

Pros: the visuals are absolutely stunning – best visual experience of any GH with phenomenal graphics and advanced textures, inventive camerawork, intricate shots, and amazing variety, absolutely INCREDIBLE customization options with the near-perfect create-a-player that will take hours deciding upon the millions of possible looks and guitar options and what’s even better is that you can tailor-make every single detail about how the entire BAND looks creating up to 20 custom avatars and selecting them (or any of the classic Gh characters like Pandora or Lars Umlaut) into the mic, bass, or drum option and switch around endlessly for limitless customization, good gameplay options selecting songs and plenty of gigs/venues to keep you occupied, great idea narrative/cartoon playing further on GHIII developing that rock god/devil storyline with them fighting over a new band or agency of greatest musical minds like beethoven and mozart, soundtrack mixed – some good classic songs like Rolling Stone Sympathy for the devil and modern ones like feel good inc gorillaz, more accessible music studio, full band mode great for multiplayer/party fun,

Cons: What happened to the gameplay/strum system – it’s sticky and AWFUL way too easy like magnetized to the rhytm like ghostplaying instead of playing yourself – a far cry from its perfected system.. why mess with a good thing?, wish the guitar CAP options had classics like Les Paul and Fender, soundtrack is mixed – a little too modern/poppy but has glimpses of good songs, soundtrack is scattered all over the place no theme or motif boucnes around from Gorillaz pop to Blur metal to piano Rolling Stones to country stylings Bob Dylan, abandons its Rockgod vs. devil storyline with little to no mention of it post-intro, deletion of most core features from past GH’s like DLC, online, GH Tunes, long load times and glitchy feel

Overall Rating: 5.7/10