14 DAY TRIAL // Guitar Hero 5 is now out and music simulation fans can pick it up and then play around with its new features, like the seamless drop in and drop out feature and the fresh Band Moment.
They might enjoy playing songs from bands new to the music sim genre, like Arctic Monkeys, A Perfect Circle, Brand New, Eagles of Death Metal, Gorillaz, King Crimson, Peter Frampton, Sunny Day Real Estate or The Derek Trucks Band. They might take advantage of the new instruments, if they shelled out the money to get them. But one thing that they may not be able to do is get their favorite songs from the previous big release, which was not band-themed, World Tour, to work in Activision's fresh release.
Exporting and importing songs works pretty much like in Rock Band. Players need to pay a fee of around 3.50 dollars so that the songs will be moved on the hard drive and then they can be imported to Guitar Hero 5.
The problem is that whereas Rock Band 2 allowed players to get all the songs included in the previous iteration of the series, Guitar Hero 5 will only be importing 35 of the tracks from World Tour, which featured 85 tracks on the disk. The reason Activision has given is that older tracks do not make good use of the new features included. Unfortunately, no one has yet compiled a list of the tracks that can be imported. Activision is promising that tracks from Smash Hits will also be playable in Guitar Hero 5.
When it comes to the library of digital downloads, Activision is saying that 152 of 158 are compatible and can be downloaded at any time. Given the disparity in proportions between the importing of songs that are on the disk versus downloadable tracks, it just might be that Activision prefers gamers to play for DLC songs rather than import those previously released in other Guitar Hero games.