I was sort of exited about Guitar Hero 5, but then again, I was excited about World Tour, too, and look how poorly that turned out. But, there were two big recent events on the Guitar Hero 5 front that have almost completely rekindled my enthusiasm for the “other” fake plastic rock franchise.

First, you can import your Guitar Hero: World Tour and Guitar Hero: Smash Hits songs into Guitar Hero 5! Joystiq explains:

Guitar Hero: World Tour owners will be able to download a free update from within Guitar Hero 5 that enables backwards-compatibility for 152 of 158 available DLC tracks. In order to rip the tracks from Guitar Hero: World Tour and Guitar Hero: Smash Hits discs will need to purchase what Activision says will be a “nominal re-licensing fee” and provide the unique 20-digit code on the back of the games’ manuals. As with Rock Band 2, all songs from the discs will be re-downloaded as DLC to the hard disk, but unwanted tracks can be individually deleted.

Hooray, they’ve finally relented on the “walled disc garden” design front! All the imports are handled like downloadable content (DLC) unlocked via the codes printed in the manuals for each game. Apparently this will also be true of the upcoming Band Hero, but details are scarce on that at the moment.

This is about as much as I could have hoped for, and I’m thrilled to never have to boot up the World Tour or Smash Hits discs ever again. I can play those same great songs in the much improved Guitar Hero 5 engine. They might actually be reaching parity with Rock Band 2 in this release for solid band play — finally. This is a very positive sign. Who knows, they might actually wise up and start building a music store to rival the 800+ tracks choice that Harmonix currently offers.

Second, Guitar Hero: Van Halen will be given away for free to Guitar Hero 5 buyers for the first month! This is an official offer direct from Activision.

Receive the unreleased Guitar: Hero Van Halen game with the purchase of Guitar Hero 5!

For a limited time while supplies last. You must redeem this offer by 10/31/09. Allow up to 6 weeks for delivery. Go to www.guitarhero.com/vanhalengameoffer to redeem online, or mail (1) a letter with your name, address, platform of choice, and unique game code from your GH5 manual, (2) offer sticker from GH5 packaging, and (3) a copy of dated sales receipt, to: Van Halen Game Offer, 444 Castro St. Suite 140, Mountain View, CA 94041.

This is an amazing offer, considering GH:VH wasn’t scheduled for release until late December. Guitar Hero fans get the game not only free, but two months in advance of its release date! (Like Guitar Hero: Metallica, you can’t import these songs into GH5, but that’s sort of assumed for any band-specific music games.)

I suspect all of the above was done to counter the competitive pressure of Rock Band’s 800+ song library (not to mention The Beatles), but I’m not complaining — anything that gets the other franchise to wise up a little is a good thing in my book!

Given the great news, you may want to reconsider if you had written off this next iteration of Guitar Hero as “more of the same” as the lackluster World Tour. I already placed my Guitar Hero 5 pre-order. On top of the great importing and GH:VH news, there’s also some nice GH5 specific promotions at various retailers with even more free stuff thrown in! Worth checking out.