While the rhythm-action genre firmly remains a two horse race, with Guitar Hero and Rock Band continuing to play tug-of-war with their respective franchises, both series couldn't now be further apart in terms of ethos and the games themselves. Rock Band developer Harmonix appears to be the more laboured of the two, wisely restraining from a third yearly sequel and opting for superb DLC support, along with strong extensions of the core experience through the forthcoming tie-ins involving The Beatles and Lego. On the other hand, Guitar Hero has been all too visible this year with many gamers simply sick of the sight of it, not to mention alienating some of its long-time players by moving away from a reliance on hard rock tracks and opening the sound up to a wider demographic.

Music games have become big business, with many gamers crying foul over Activision's over-saturation of the Guitar Hero brand. However, to suggest that this fifth instalment is a lazy cash-cow or rush job is to do developer Neversoft a great disservice. Not only is this confidently the most technically accomplished and refined entry to date it is also the most promising in the long term. It seems that Neversoft has finally taken a page out the Harmonix play book and re-aligned its sights on the downloadable content approach as opposed to full retail releases every third quarter.

If anything, attempting to broaden the scope of any franchise so late into its life is incredibly brave and if you aren't picky about what you listen to, this nails the balance between heavy and soft rock perfectly, but as always in this fickle industry, you are never going to please everyone. That said there is comforting familiarity to be found here, with the core gameplay mechanic remaining untouched from World Tour, instead expanded and polished through some brilliant new features.

The scattershot career mode of World Tour has been replaced with a more back-to-basics approach. Each song played will result in a familiar end rating of up to five stars which is added to your career total. Reaching certain milestones will allow you to unlock new instruments and character customisation items. Song-specific challenges allow you to earn three additional stars per track which are awarded for meeting specific criteria, such as hitting a set streak of upstrokes on bass, holding a 4x multiplier for a required period of time or activating star power a certain number of times in one song.

Depending on how you perform, you can achieve bronze, platinum or diamond rewards, with some of the diamond unlockables testing your skills to the utmost limit. The rewards at this level are greater with hidden venues and game-altering cheats to be discovered. Challenges add another layer of depth to the career mode and are complimented by sponsorship showcases that task you with meeting certain requirements to impress the suits and earn deals with big name brands. Altogether these additions make for the deepest Guitar Hero career mode so far with a greater emphasis on replay value as you go back to earn those last few elusive stars.

Solo play aside, the multiplayer element has undergone several pivotal changes geared towards making everything more accessible and enjoyable than before. Band line-ups can consist of any combination of guitars, bass, drums and vocals, meaning participants can play the instrument they want, doing away with the classic squabble over who gets lumbered with bass. Although we're certain that playing with four drummers isn't the most cost or space-effective way to go and the loud clattering isn't going to make your neighbours very happy, but the option is there to mix up the way you play.

Online multiplayer yields a few new and thoroughly entertaining 'Rockfest' modes for you and up to three friends to enjoy locally, or you can throw down online in a ten-person battle for rock supremacy. Do or Die plays a lot like a game of H.O.R.S.E in Neversoft's classic Tony Hawk titles. If a player misses three notes in one designated segment of a track they are eliminated until the next section, making accuracy crucial. Streakers award players for how many notes they can hit without missing one, gaining one point for every ten notes hit in success, two points for 20 notes and so on.

Elimination plays out like a racing title, where every 30 seconds the player with the lowest score gets booted out of the game. Perhaps the most intriguing of the bunch is Momentum. When a player hits a streak of 20 notes their difficulty level increases by one, climbing all the way up to expert level if they can take the pressure. However, if they miss three notes, the difficulty decreases, making each game a delicate balancing act between trying to actually finish the song without failing and playing at a high enough level to score massive points. Of course, you can still resort to the classic face-off modes from past instalments if you just want to keep things simple.

Visually this tones down the saccharine comic book visuals in favour of a style that looks incredibly slick and less abstract yet still managing to deliver the same sense of fun the series if known for. The movements of your band members are fluid and even make the World Tour avatars seem robotic by comparison. This is even more apparent in the expertly motion-captured cameo characters such as Shirley Manson from Garbage, Johnny Cash and Muse front man Matt Bellamy, all looking strikingly like their real-life counterparts. Bellamy in particular throws some mean shapes while thrashing out the rousing chorus riffs of Plug-In Baby making the whole spectacle seem organic and adding a jolt of adrenaline to each gig.

Of course if you really want to go back to being abstract you can upload your Xbox avatar and play the show as them instead. There is something cutesy about your pint size rocker jumping around the stage, busting out moves and shredding like there's no tomorrow, but it does look a little out of place putting your cartoony effigy alongside hulking series mainstays Lars Umlat and Axel Steel. It almost reminds us of Sega's woeful 2006 Sonic the Hedgehog reboot, complete with the face-palmingly awful love story between Sonic and a human princess, it just didn't look, feel or sound right, but here it is incredibly charming, if not a little oddball.

Speaking of technical flair, the very promising but ultimately uninspiring GHTunes song creation kit makes a lukewarm return here, but this time comes tooled up with a wealth of new samples for you to tinker around with. Being able to make a decent song here still takes a lot of practice and painful editing for something that ends up sounding like a slightly tarted-up midi file. However, Rome wasn't built in a day and neither were PC music creation programs Cubase or Fruity Loops, so in time and with a lot of re-tooling, the creation suite could potentially evolve into something much more inviting as a sequel feature or downloadable add-on. By then hopefully users will be able produce increasingly accomplished results without the headaches that currently come with it, although you get the feeling that this will take the developer some time to perfect.

That Neversoft have delivered such a refined, accessible and well-presented Guitar Hero experience in just a year since World Tour speaks volumes about the developer's proficiency and handle on the series. This smacks of a team who have done their homework and studied what makes the series so appealing to begin with, namely fun and the ability to play with friends. But there is one fundamental issue that will be a real deal-breaker for you and that is the all important soundtrack. Neversoft always stated that they wanted to give this Guitar Hero instalment the most accessible and varied song roster to date by giving the fans a little bit of everything.

It's a noble and incredibly brave move from a developer many mistakenly thought were stuck in a happy rut of putting out yearly sequels with little room for innovation. Quite the opposite it seems and unfortunately this is where things get a tad disappointing. On one hand you have some true, no-holds barred rock anthems such as 'Plug-In Baby' by Muse, 'Du Hast' by Rammstein, 'Smells Like Teen Spirit' by Nirvana and '2 Minutes to Midnight' by Iron Maiden. These are all strong classics that uphold the rocker attitude of the series. But then you have other superb tracks that will definitely not appeal to your average Children of Bodom or Megadeth fan.

Among the other well-sourced and fun to play tracks that don't fall under the heavier , alternative Guitar Hero archetype are 'Ring of Fire' by Johnny Cash, 'Brianstorm' by Arctic Monkeys, 'Sex on Fire by Kings of Leon and 'Play that Funky Music' by Wild Cherry. All riotous fun to play with friends at parties and gatherings but guaranteed to split the fan base clean down the middle or somewhere close. It would most certainly be a shame if the gamble doesn't pay off, but time will tell if Neversoft's new pledge to fully support the DLC market fills these gaps and truly delivers the all-encompassing Guitar Hero experience we've needed for so long.

Reviewed by Dave Cook for AceGamez (All Rights Reserved).