Guitar Hero 5 Compatible with World Tour DLC and On-Disc Tracks

Robin Yang

 Neversoft has announced "Franchise Compatibility" for Guitar Hero 5,  which will allow 152 of the 158 Guitar Hero: World Tour downloadable tracks to be playable in the new game with a free patch. In addition, most on-disc tracks from World Tour can be imported to 5 by paying a small re-licensing fee (similar to the $5 fee Rock Band 1 owners could have paid to import tracks into Rock Band 2).

"We are fully committed to support compatibility and downloadable content," said Neversoft project director Brian Bright. "We've gone back and added band moments, vocal star power and touched up all those songs. We are so committed to supporting these songs that we did extra  work on them to bring them forward."

New modes are also debuting in Guitar Hero 5, including Rockfest -- a  suite of multiplayer modes in which players are pitted against each other for points, and Party Play, which allows players to jump into  whatever song is currently playing on the main screen with just one button. The mode, which we covered back to E3, lets you switch difficulties and instruments on the fly (and as a result doesn't keep score at the end of each song), is playable with any combination of guitars and drums and is also locked in 'No Fail' mode.

In contrast, the Quick Play mode (a slight misnomer since technically it takes more button presses to get to than Party Play) will still let  players save their scores on the leaderboard, be that as it may that it too will feature the face-saving 'no fail' option missing from its predecessor.
 

Bright noted that many of the changes and features in GH5, from the  ability to have multiple guitarists and drummers to the placement of individual rock meters on the side of each player's note highway (and  the exclusion of 'band health' entirely) stemmed from lessons learned  after the release of World Tour last fall.

"Not everyone always want to sing or play bass. And not everyone has a drum kit, but a lot of people have guitars," he said. "We took World  Tour home after it came out because we all wanted to play with our  friends, and as soon as we get into an environment that's not with a  bunch of dudes that you work with, these little annoyances came up and it's like, 'We could've done this better.'"

As music games gain more prominence in gamer households -- and frankly,  even in non-gamer households -- investment in a particular series, like being able to play previously purchased songs with new games and being able to use instrument peripherals with a variety of games, is increasingly important.

Guitar Hero and Rock Band have been rival franchises since the release of the former's original game in 2007, with each successive announcement upping the features ante. Rock Band may have been the first to debut 'No Fail' mode, but even so, last month's reveal of the Rock Band network, which lets artists submit songs to be approved for inclusion, seems vaguely analogous to the GH Tunes song creation mode in World Tour (which has also been updated for GH5).

The battle of the bands heats up again this fall as GH5 goes head to head with Harmonix's entry, The Beatles: Rock Band. So what does Bright think about the rivalry?

"Stack them up. You've got our game on one side, you've got whatever our competition is on the other side. We have 85 songs spanning 3 decades, 83 artists, covering all genres of music. And our competitors might have games that come out with one artist, and half the songs. And that's about all I'll say."

Hmm, Neversoft calling out one-artist music-rhythm games? We must've imagined Guitar Hero: Aerosmith, Guitar Hero: Metallica and the upcoming Guitar Hero: Van Halen.

Guitar Hero 5 releases on September 1 for the Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, PlayStation 2 and Nintendo Wii.

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