Close Look: Guitar Hero 5 Has the Best Song List Menu System Ever

Guitar Hero's set list and song menu systems have changed with every new release, and every time it resulted in complaints from gamers who took issue with the changes or loss of old features.  Changes like the lack of high scores displayed on Career Setlist in Guitar Hero Metallica were among the most hated.

Let's take a look at how Guitar Hero 5 has learned from past mistakes to produce the best song list menu system in the Guitar Hero series.  We'll take a quick look back at the Guitar Hero 3 and Guitar Hero World Tour menu screens for comparison.

Guitar Hero 5 is the Quickest Loading Guitar Hero Ever:

Guitar Hero 5 Wii Main Menu Screen

No More Annoying Startup Logo Screens to Click Through

First thing you'll notice upon loading GH5 is they finally did away with the endless series of obnoxious intro screens.  Guitar Hero 3, World Tour, Metallica, and Smash Hits players no doubt recall having to press the green button about a dozen times to get rid of all the developer/publisher company logo screens, every single time you load the game. It got old, fast.  Finally they would pop up one more delay, a "Press any button to continue" screen.  What was the point of that?

In Guitar Hero 5, you get the standard Wii safety warning (annoying, but standard in all games that use the Wiimote), and ONE cartoon intro scene with all the publishers' logos together, and that's it.  BAM!- you're at the menu screen already and it launches into a random song and plays a full screen band animation in the background.  It's a nice "screensaver". You'll appreciate this streamlining every time you pop in the GH5 disc.

Notice the yellow "Party Play" button available up front and center?  I'll get to that.

Guitar Hero 5 Has the Best Song List Menu System Ever

We'll be looking at the "Quickplay" song list menu, which is also used to select songs for Competitive modes in GH5.

But First – A Look Back at Previous Guitar Hero Menus

Remember the Guitar Hero 3 song list menu? (Pictured is the Career song list menu, but the Quickplay looked identical):

Guitar Hero 3 Wii Song List Menu (Raining Blood's "Mosh 1" commands serious respect...)

This was a decent menu system with few flaws, mainly that it took a bit to scroll up and down the list.

Guitar Hero World Tour:

Guitar Hero World Tour Wii Career Setlist Screen

World Tour combined the 4 skill-specific song lists of GH3 into one list featuring new "Skull" icons that cryptically indicate the skill (to those who can decipher the skull code scheme.) The problem?  All scores are hidden except the currently selected song. In GH3 you had a seperate setlist for each skill, maintaining high scores for each skill.

However, GHWT's new ability Sort by Artist etc., was a nice improvement over GH3.

Improvements in the Guitar Hero 5 Quickplay Song List Menu Screen:

Guitar Hero 5 Wii Quickplay Song List Menu Screen

Song "Intensity" Rating Chart

Finally!  While Rock Band obviously had this feature first, it was pretty much necessary for Guitar Hero to add this in for intelligent song selection.  It's also nice to see the genre (Metal) and which game the song is from (Guitar Hero 5) – since players can now import portions of their Guitar Hero World Tour and Guitar Hero Smash Hits song libraries.

Greatly Enhanced Song Sorting

You can sort not only by the basics:

• Song Title A-Z
• Artist A-Z

But you can now sort by:

• Genre
• Duration (quickly find the longest song in your setlist!)
• Source (put all your DLC and GHWT Imports in order)
• Guitar Intensity (play the easiest – or hardest – song on guitar)
• Bass Intensity
• Drum Intensity
• Vocal Intensity
• Year
  

Pretty sweet, right?

Scroll Fast – a Page Full at a Time!

One of the biggest improvements for managing your massive GH5 song library is the yellow "PAGE" button.  Notice the strange silver "bar" next to it?  It's a signal: Hold down the yellow button, and now you can scroll down A PAGE AT A TIME!  This makes it blistering fast to jump to the bottom of your song list.

The Blue "Options" Menu Lets You Show Song Stats:

Guitar Hero 5 Wii Quickplay Song List Stats Screen

GH5 lets you swap between showing the new Song Intensity ratings, or a list of your best scores on all skill levels (not both at the same time).  But what else?

You Can Create and Save Custom Song Playlists!

This is a killer feature!  Especially combined with the mega song libraries you can build between your GH5 setlist, DLC, and your Smash Hits and World Tour disc imports.

Pick all your favorite songs from every game in your collection and make an "ultra setlist".  If only they added this sooner!

Drawbacks to New Song List System

Gamers are complaining about one thing with the new song menu - it always resets to the very top of the list, forcing you to scroll down every time to find the song you want.  For instance, say you're browsing the new Leaderboards (which also uses the same song menu system as Quickplay) and checking your scores on a series of imported GHWT songs you just played from SD card.  You scroll to the bottom of the list, pick your song to view the score screen, and when you back out to return to the menu, you're back at the top.  You have to scroll over again.  It would make more sense to return to the position you were at.

What Do You Think of the New GH5 Song List Menu System?

Did we miss anything?  Do you love or hate anything in particular about the new song screen?  Share your thoughts in the comments below.