Sum n substance:

Thumbs up: The game play is provides for a lot of camaraderie, the visuals and the sounds are pretty impressive, entertaining, genuine LOL moments using the Xbox Live Avatar mode.

Thumbs down: The setlist is not that great, also the import capabilities are not worth the talk.

Inside the trunk:

• Platform Xbox 360
• ESRB rating Teen – Suggestive Themes, Mild Lyrics
• Genre Music
• Number of players 1-4 Players

THE WHIZ-KID SPEAKS: This one is something which I guess everyone who played the world tour was surely looking out for. Whenever there is a new addition to an existing game, what is expected most of the time are certain improvements to the existing game. Being a gamer this was exactly what I expected, not a total overhaul but just a few improvements here and there or probably just some clearing of the mess that was created in the last game. And if you are amongst the ones who were looking out for then u surely wont be let down by this new edition. I won’t say that GH has totally revamped the music-game genre but it has for sure tried to fill in the existing patches with a few tweaks here and there.

Anyways coming back to the game, starting off with the game software and the on-disc catalogue. The on-disc song catalogue exactly won’t set your toes tapping but its quite a balanced collection. There are a few songs which aren’t surely that great along with esoteric bands making their presence felt. Though the relief that this one brings along is that you don’t really have to play all the songs in the career mode and can conveniently avoid playing the songs that you don’t like.

The import abilities of this are a bit disappointing. I thought that I could easily import the 85 songs which were available in the world tour version, but was kind of disappointed because only around 35 songs of the list could be imported to GH5.

This game surely has some cool features which includes the party mode. Its aimed at building connections between the people with people moving around with their instruments getting to know each other. All the stumbling around while people try to find their positions in the band has been avoided with this one and also provides for easy co-ordination for everyone to be playing at the same time.

What I found interesting about this new edition was that there were no limits in the party mode. As in there were no compulsions as how to many guitarists should be there  or how many drummers should be there. If I wanted a band with all guitarists I could easily have it without having to actually follow the norms of having a single guitarist, drummer or a bassist. Plus the other advantage is that I don’t need to start all over again if someone decides to change the difficulty levels, I could just continue to play without having to bother much about what changes the others are making. When I didn’t like a certain song all I had to do was simply change it and also it has the option of creating a set list. With the inclusion of all these features the main aim is to just concentrate on the fun element of the game without having to bother much about the other complications.

Coming to the career mode… this one has been created to be quite a flexible one. The sets have a nice selection, also you don’t have to max out every song in order to change the venue. Plus you could easily change from playing the drums on a few occasions to strumming the strings on some other.

Speaking of the new addition of characters, with this one Activision and Neversoft went ahead with creating quite a few real life musicians. Like Kurt Cobain making an appearance in this one will surely make the Nirvana fans just go ahead and jump on it. Though their inclusion has added a lot of glamour to the game, it doesn’t have much part to play as far as the actual course of the game is concerned. To be frank, I kind of loved the parts where I could go on to the stage using the Xbox Live Avatars and jam along with the others than actually watching the celebrities perform.

You could just go to the “band lobby” pick up your instrument and start practicing all the songs in the Career mode using Quickplay  where the songs are unlocked letting you practice whenever and wherever you want.

The multiplayer options surely offer a lot of competition and it it could almost be compared to a car race where the person who is last is thrown out. Similarly out here, the slowest shredder is asked to leave when someone doesn’t really do well. The difficulty levels keeps on changing depending upon how well you perform. The competition here is rather quite safe and healthy.

A bit of disappointment came in with the role play. At times it just didn’t feel like I was actually playing the instrument with the chart gems going up when the notes came down. It was kind of weird. Comparing it to Rock Band I must say that the latter provided much better charts which where I actually felt like I was the one playing the guitar or moving around the fretboard. It kind of gave an animated feeling which I missed out on with this one.

Nitty-gritty: The graphics of this one though vibrant and lively don’t exactly give the roockstar kind of a feel. I mean the characters apart from the real life musicians are quite cartoony and give a kind of a kiddish feel at times. The gameplay is pretty impressive and I must sat that the enhancements really add to the game. There is also quite a varied choice of  songs but not all of them are really foot tapping or high profile. Basically I didn’t enjoy much of the playlist. I hope the makers collaborate with bigger and better  bands the next time they want to come up with something like this. Activision has definitely done a pretty much decent job with this under its belt and I hope to see more improvements in the future.

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