Guitar Hero 5: Rocks My World! Company: Activision As I'm sure you've all heard, there is a new Guitar Hero coming out, Guitar Hero 5. Now, I'm sure your first question is going to be "with all the versions out there, why should I buy a new one?" Well, the answer to that is simple... they have added several things to Guitar Hero 5 that are so cool that you should be pre-ordering it right now! There are some changes that are common to all the systems, two of which I think are particularly important. The first is a "Party" mode. Here, you can change players in and out of the game without disturbing the rest of the band. You simply pause the player you want to change out and pass the instrument to the next player. You can also remove players or add players just as easily. The only downside to this mode is that you can't fail, so if you're one of those people who has to have a challenge, you probably won't play here as much. It really is perfect for parties though! The second feature that is important to me is the ability to import songs from Guitar Hero World Tour. This is a really cool thing as it keeps you from having to switch between versions just to play some of those songs that you wanted to play on the other one. In addition to these changes that are common to all, the 360 and the Wii also have some changes unique to them. On the 360, you can choose to play as your avatars. So if you've got your avatar customized exactly as you want, you don't have to go through all that again in the Character Creator. You can just choose to play as your avatar. I think this is really nice so that you can still play as you, but you don't have to make a new customized character! Granted, the characters available to play as on Guitar Hero 5 are really cool without even customizing them. Your classic favorites like Pandora and Johnny Napalm are still there, with some updated looks. The Wii has the best addition of all, in my opinion. Since Nintendo has made the Wii and the DS so easy to work together (Sony is really missing out on this with the PS3/PSP!), they have added Roadie Battles to the Wii version of Guitar Hero 5. You will need 4 people to play this mode, 2 guitarists and 2 roadies. The roadies use their DS or DSi, all wireless download with no additional software needed, to aid in the guitar battles. You can sabotage the opponent guitarist with moves such as cutting the guitar strings, restringing the guitar backwards, setting fire to the amps, and quite a few many more attacks. Of course, your opponent roadie can do the same to your guitarist, so you'll need to go repair the equipment by restringing the guitar correctly, blowing out the fires, and other such things. It's a balancing act between sabotaging your opponent and making sure your guitarist is repaired quickly, because everything that is broken makes his playing much more difficult. When I was playing, I didn't even have time to watch the songs, I was having too much fun sabotaging! Roadie battles really are the coolest thing I have seen in a while. You're going to want the Wii version of this just to play them! So as you can see, there are an abundance of reasons to get the new Guitar Hero 5 without me even mentioning the awesome new set list. There are 85 songs from 83 different artists on there. Personally, I think it is the best set list yet. There are songs from newer (newer in comparison to the classics) bands like Children of Bodom and Queens of the Stone Age, and your classic bands like The Rolling Stones, Bob Dylan and even Johnny Cash. My personal favorite Megadeth song, "Sweating Bullets," is even on there. All the songs are unlocked from the beginning too, so if you just want to hop in and play, you don't have to go through the Career mode. With all of these awesome features, I hope you're on the way to pre-order Guitar Hero 5 now! -Cyn, GameVortex Communications AKA Sara Earl