Guitar Hero 5: New features and partial tracklist revealed

Party Play and RockFest among the new features

18 May 2009 16:11 GMT / By Duncan Geere

Activision has announced a few of the features that'll be appearing this Autumn in Guitar Hero 5, along with a small selection of the artists that your living room will be rocking to this Christmas.

Kings of Leon, The Rolling Stones, The White Stripes, Santana, Vampire Weekend, Tom Petty, Johnny Cash, and Bob Dylan are named individually, along with 77 other bands. 25 of those are making their music video game debut, claims the company.

New features abound, with Party Play and RockFest expected to prove popular. The former allows players to drop in and out of gameplay, or change difficulty, without having to restart a song.

The latter lets you play head-to-head with others in your house or online in five different modes. Also, this will be the first Guitar Hero game where all the songs are unlocked from the start - you don't have to play through to get everything.

Heavy players of Guitar Hero: World Tour will be pleased to hear that downloaded songs will remain compatible with the new version, and Activision says that almost all will be updated to include all of the enhancements of Guitar Hero 5.