To suggest that Guitar Hero, on its long journey from humble experiment to multimillion-dollar revenue stream, hasn’t become somewhat disconnected from its original concept would be naive. Even the most casual of observers are able to sense the disparity that’s grown between a gamer happily blasting away at More Than A Feeling, to the ostentation and industry over-saturation that’s come to characterise the series.

Maybe the blame can be laid at Harmonix’s feet. It kicked off the craze in 2005, before causing a schism in the rhythm-action genre in 2007 with the release of Rock Band. Ever since Guitar Hero has been engaged in a tug-of-war with its rival franchise, a game of one-upmanship that’s seen Harmonix exercise self-restraint while Activision inundates the market with sequels, tie-ins, and cynical marketing ploys like Guitar Hero: Greatest Hits.

Yes, Guitar Hero is certainly a different kind of beast, and along with 2005’s innocent simplicity some of its charm has been lost along the way. It was a feeling we couldn’t suppress when rocking out to the latest entry into the series, Guitar Hero 5. We can’t deny that the mainstream recognition and acceptance of the medium afforded by Guitar Hero has been invaluable, but lack of any significant new features in Guitar Hero 5 makes the sceptic in us question its worth. The simple joy of playing music seems to have been supplanted by a desire to make money, and we question whether a whole new game and barely evolved peripheral (see Anyone Can Play Guitar) is truly beneficial to the consumer. Harmonix has said its focus for the foreseeable future will be on DLC. Would Activision not have done well to follow a similar path? Maybe, but lets take a step back and consider the latest series entry under a more attractive light. Yes, the leap from World Tour to Guitar Hero 5 is barely apparent when compared to previous evolutions, but Neversoft has nevertheless steered Guitar Hero 5 in a direction that will appeal to both series veterans and newcomers alike.

Firstly, the track list boasts 85 tracks that have been carefully selected from a more rock-centric catalogue, the selection conjuring up images of worn-out jukeboxes hidden away at the back of grungy American rock bars (see Play That Funky Music). It’s telling that while World Tour boasted the Music Studio and full-band set-up as its innovations, Guitar Hero 5 promotes the track list as one of its core features, but this revealing discrepancy aside it’s nevertheless good to see that Guitar Hero has eschewed the middle-of-the-road pop that clogged up World Tour’s tracklist and placed the focus back on the rock ethic embodied by the first two games. You may view the forthcoming Band Hero as a needless extension of the Hero franchise, but at the very least it will act as a siphon for the family-orientated music that’s tainted Guitar Hero tracklists in the past.

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