Guitar Hero 5: Hands On at E3

"Music is universal... anyone from my six-year-old son to 60-year-old grandmother Cheap Rosetta Stone can enjoy it," explained Brian Bright, project director for developer Neversoft, speaking to Guitar Heros continued popularity at industry confab E3 yesterday. (Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr unveiled major competitor The Beatles: Rock Band on Monday.) Still, theres always room for improvement he asserted, promising a new approach for the brands latest iteration, Guitar Hero 5, which ships for PS2, PS3, Wii and Xbox 360 on September 1st. "This time, we focused on making the game more accessible easy to jump in and out of."(Dont miss our list of the 50 Cheap Rosetta Stone V3 Best RockRoll Video Games of All Time.)Enter Party Play, allowing four players to jam using any combination of guitar, microphone, bass and drum peripherals (including multiples of the same instrument) to playlists up to 128 songs in size. Users can drop in and out of the action or swap instruments at-will, choosing to tackle tracks like Stevie Wonders "Superstition" or pass on Tom Pettys "Running Down a Dream" as the mood strikes. By synchronizing responses with timed on-screen prompts, aspiring rock stars add harmony back to hit singles from starring acts including Rosetta Stone Italian Elton John, Jimmy Eat World, Johnny Cash, Queens of the Stone Age and Kiss. (Check out more artists with tracks on the game here.)Also demonstrated was a new RockFest mode, enjoyable with four band members locally or eight players online, expanding on the happy hour favorites competitive elements. Five distinct flavors of action include such options as "Momentum," wherein successfully shredding 20 notes in sequence increases game difficulty, while missing three chords instead causes it to drop. Likewise, "Streakers" challenges players to consistently pound out flawless successions of notes, while knockout mode "Elimination" causes the lowest-scoring player to be dropped every 30 seconds.During demonstrations, which saw live performances accompanied by animations of tattooed, kilt-sporting Cheap Rosetta Stone V3 virtual avatars playing vast outdoor arenas in sprays of sparkling motes, Bright was also quick to assure existing Guitar Hero contents compatibility.