Musical Mayhem!

Guitar Hero 5 was released at the top of this month with 85 on-disc songs including 2 by Nirvana. When performed these two songs can feature a Kurt Cobain avatar performing on the virtual stage along with you. Its not the first time they have had artist's likenesses as avatars but it is the first time it's caused so much controversy. The reason being that he is also an unlockable character. Cool huh? Not really when you have him singing "Hungry Like the Wolf".  There are a lot of people fretting (pardon the pun) about this including the owner of Kurt's estate, Courtney Love, who initially allowed the avatar to be created with the expectation it would only be able to used to play his own songs. Even David Grohl, Kurt's former bandmate, spoke out against Activision saying they should update the game so he is unavailable as a playable character.

Anyway back to the game. It has a bunch of new features including a revival meter the band can raise by playing well to revive one of their downed bandmates. For Wii players you can use your custom miis as in game avatars. As well there are game modes that allow you to use your DS to give your band a helping hand through mini games. I think Rockband is gonna have trouble keeping up with Guitar Hero considering they don't seem to have another core game on the way until next year. The Beatles can only hold them up for so long before people get bored of playing "I Am the Walrus" and "Octopus's Garden".