By Jeremy Azevedo

I’m sure you’ve all heard by now about some of the new features set to debut in Guitar Hero 5, not to mention what an awesome setlist is being assembled for the game. But reading about it and playing it are two radically different things, as I’m sure you can guess.

Having played the game myself last week in San Francisco, I can happily report to you that this is easily the most complete and enjoyable music game experience to date. I can think of at least five good reasons to make this claim, which I will outline for you here:

The Setlist

Newer songs in GH5 are well represented, with artists Vampire Weekend and Darker My Love making appearances that instill much faith in the developer’s musical tastes. Instead of using the most obvious bands and songs, GH5 digs a little deeper to find really great indie rock songs from bands that deserve to be in the game, like The Bronx. On the flipside of this, the classic rock songs that they chose to include couldn’t possibly be better. I don’t think there was a single person in the room that wasn’t stoked to play “Superstition” by Stevie Wonder, “Runnin’ Down a Dream” by Tom Petty, or “Sympathy For the Devil” by The Rolling Stones. There’s even a shit-ton of hard-ass metal in here for those who want to really cut loose and shred. (Might I recommend Children Of Bodom: “Done With Everything, Die For Nothing”?)

There was a time that I worried we were beginning to run out of great songs for these kinds of games, but that fear was obviously a foolish one. There are so many songs on here that I didn’t even get to, even in four hours time. I think nearly everyone will find something here to get pumped about, unless they're like, mongo or something.

Party Mode

Master Chief jumped into this game to distract everyone while the dude in the white coat and hat stole all of the guitars.

The party mode is sort of the lynchpin of this whole operation. One thing I’ve always disliked about Guitar Hero is that, while I almost exclusively play it at parties, it’s always been somewhat unintuitive in that regard. The Party Mode removes pretty much all of the barriers that were present before, allowing you to jump in and out of songs whenever, switching instruments and/or difficulties on the fly. This is a godsend for people that wish to play through a song without getting failed out by some noob’s girlfriend at their next BBQ.