Guitar Hero: Van Halen

This post coming early as my schedule has required me to move the next installment of the top 100 films to Friday. (sometime Wednesday I'll also upload two of three comic reviews I did for an application, with the third showing up 4-6 weeks later after I have an idea whether I get the position I am applying for or not.

So instead for Wednesday I have to review the sneak preview copy of Guitar Hero: Van Halen.
First off I am going to say this quickly, Not a fan of Van Halen? Don't buy this game. Fan of Van Halen but afraid there will not be enough hard songs? Well the second half of the setlist is tough, I'll give it that, but only the three solos are really going to give you much trouble.
That out of the way, this is the best set list Guitar Hero has put out since Guitar Hero 3. It is quickly looking like the specialty games are going to be the games for Hardcore players and that the series proper is going to be there to accommodate more of the casual fans.
Of the setlist, only 19 songs are not by Van Halen, but many of those 19 were suggested by Wolfgang Van Halen. The rest are all Van Halen and almost all of them are classics. There are only 4-6 classic Van Halen songs I felt were missing and those are all Sammy Hagar era songs and therefore understandable that they are missing. I hope we will eventually get them as DLC for either Van Halen(which I don't think supports DLC) or for GH5 so that it can be in our collection.
The game returns to form with the return of Hyperspeed as a cheat, Tiered Career that makes sense, Money System, and great customization.
It is the Metalica engine with Van Halen Frame. The songs are fun.
The downside? There's not even 50 songs in the setlist. So unless you really really like Van Halen, I'd wait for it to go used to get it at 20-30 dollars. And then hopefully it can hold you over until the next specialty game. The menu system and graphics have sadly reverted to The Metalica graphics and when I first started playing I thought something was wrong with my game because the note chart had gone back to it's Metalica and it doesn't look nearly as polished as five.
Nitpicking aside, this game has made Guitar Hero fun again for both the hardcore player and the casual player resulting in a hit.
This score is based on my love of Van Halen and should be warned as such:
8.7