Guitar Hero Live Review

There were doubts about the Guitar Hero franchise from the start. At first, it seemed like an expensive arcade fad, letting people rock out with plastic guitars on their home consoles. But with the ever-increasing popularity, Activision had created a series that went on to define the new music genre, and spawned competition from the likes of Rock Band. Unfortunately, the craze did fade after a few years of seemingly dominating every house party. The game releases became too frequent, the DLC overwhelming, and the interest from the general public seemingly faded.

In the tail-end of the chaos, Activision purchased developer FreeStyleGames following their work on some of the Guitar Hero DLC. That studio went on to create the unique DJ Hero and its excellent sequel – but unfortunately, whether due to poor timing or too small of a target audience, that franchise never got a third entry. However now, five years later, FreeStyleGames, gets to take the reins once again, this time with Guitar Hero Live, as it looks to reinvigorate the genre.

The basic concept is the same – you get a new plastic guitar, and you’ll use it to simulate playing as a lead guitarist across a variety of music tracks. But let’s start with the guitar – gone are the classic five colored buttons in a row, in their place two rows of three buttons. The top three buttons are directly above the bottom three, so when you’re playing, there are immediate notable differences. With only three note lanes to work with, you’ll need to move your fingers up and down, instead of along the neck of the guitar. It makes for a more realistic, but also a much more comfortable experience – no longer do you need to stretch your wrist and pinkie finger. The notes get creatively complex – sometimes forcing you to hold down the top and bottom button of the same pair (directly above one another), or scramble your brain and press the top and bottom notes of different pairs.

Fans that spent their share of quality time with the previous Guitar Hero games will need some time to adjust, but most should be able to get comfortable rather quickly. As mentioned, it’s physically more comfortable to play, even as you crank up the difficulty. The strumming and whammy bars remain largely unchanged, and the whole build of the guitar feels of decent quality. With any rhythm game, controller precision is highly important, and in that regard the new hardware holds up well. There are occasions when it feels like the game misses or doubles up your inputs, breaking your streak, and these occasions can be frustrating. Because the game is notably lenient on missed notes, you’ll know when you’ve messed up, and when the guitar did. The whammy bar on our unit is notably squeaky. Still, the hardware seems decently well designed and will hopefully hold up over the years, unless you get unlucky with a manufacturing fault.

The innovative new guitar input translates into the same solid Guitar Hero gameplay that fans have come to expect. Frets come down the track, and you’ve got to hit them in rhythm to score points. There are notes sections that offer power-ups if you hit them all. As mentioned, note combinations may include multiple buttons at a time from different rows. It’s fun, and it also feels innovative enough to be easily distinguished from predecessors or competition.

The solid gameplay combined with a touch of novelty in the new guitar culminates in the game’s equally fresh career mode. Titled GH Live, the game offers players the opportunity to perform most of the songs included on the disk using real life footage. That means, like the rare FMV games of old, in the footage you’re greeted by bandmates, handed a guitar, and arrive on stage in front of a cheering crowd. Then, you just play. The game’s unique approach to presentation is a standout highlight – it makes Guitar Hero Live feel fresh and modern, as the cartoony visuals of old are a distant memory. Anytime there are no notes to play for a while, the HUD disappears, letting you soak in the scenes. But it’s not just generic live band footage – everyone on stage is actually performing these songs with you, everyone is into it, and even crowd sings along with the choruses. It will put a smile on your face, and give you goosebumps.

You career progress is determined not by score, but rather if you can impress the crowd at each concert. You only have one power, and the game doesn't even show your score until afterwards. Though you can’t outright fail songs, if you play poorly, the crowd will turn on you (too quickly, actually) and start booing and even throwing stuff on stage. These video transitions between crowd moods aren’t perfectly smooth, blurring your screen, but the idea is decent. The venues range from a small club where people are in your face, to big outdoor locations. Despite a few rough spots, the footage should really be credited for creating a very fun and immersive atmosphere, with tons of little fan and band interactions that will make the whole experience very memorable on your first time through the game. It may not sound very impressive in theory, but when you experience GH Live career for yourself, all doubts will be cast aside.

At these fun but brief 3-5 song concert sets, you’ll be playing a variety of songs included in the base game. Unlike older releases, there are only about 40 songs to play though, and none of the content from the previous games is supported. That’s only about half of the initial size of previous GH releases. And while there are reasons why it doesn’t support previously owned content – a whole new guitar layout makes backwards compatibility difficult – it hurts, especially for those who have invested a lot of cash in DLC. And seeing as how Rock Band was able to let users carry their content onto the new console generation, it stings even more.

The song selection offered in the game still manages a lot of variety – and will be enjoyed by some players more than others. Rock tracks from the likes of Blink-182, Rise Against, and Green Day are mixed with softer alternatives from Paramore, Good Charlotte and Fall Out Boy. It goes as soft as Katy Perry, Avril Lavigne, and One Republic. Eminem and Skrillex are odd choices as well. But thanks to the live concert footage from first person perspective, almost all songs are at least fun to experience and play, if not to listen to. And you never know, these are popular hits for a reason, they can be quite catchy and you might even consider enjoying them by the end of the set.

But the songs on the disk aren’t the end of the selection, and this brings us to Guitar Hero Live’s second gameplay mode, GHTV. Here, there are two music channels at launch, offering a nonstop stream of popular songs – official music videos for each track, from today to back in the day. You simply pick a channel and jump in, starting a song from whatever point it’s currently at. It feels amazing – like MTV is back in full glory, commercial-free and simply playing awesome music videos again. And you can rock out to it. From Bullet for My Valentine, Pearl Jam, Red Hot Chili Peppers, ZZ Top, and Sum41 all the way to Bruno Mars and Ed Sheeran. There are hundreds of songs available between the two channels, so you’re not likely to run into repeats even if you play for hours. And the best part – it’s all free, and new songs are promised to be added on a continuous basis. There are also Premium Shows in GHTV, which feature special song sets using live concert footage instead of music videos. It's another level of entertainment and immersion that the game can provide.

Having said that, GHTV will be highly divisive. That’s because this new TV-style format replaces traditional DLC. Casual fans will be absolutely in love – you can play a nearly endless amount of diverse music, without spending a penny. But if you want to play a specific song from the extensive catalog, you’ll need to use a “play token”. The token lets you play through a song once, on-demand, at any time. You get a few tokens initially from playing and levelling up your GHTV profile, but after that, you’ll need to spend in-game coins. On average, you can earn enough coins for a 3-pack of “play tokens” after about 10 or 11 songs completed on GHTV. It does feel pretty slow, but it’s enough to satisfy casual fans and let them occasionally play a few songs on demand. Also, if you have friends coming over, a $6 pass will unlock all songs in the GHTV catalog for 24 hours.

Then, there’s the other side. If you have any sort of urge for content ownership or competitive play, the GHTV model will frustrate and seem like a pure cash grab. You can’t ever “own” any songs in a traditional sense – everything is based on a “per play” basis. So if you want to keep playing any of the songs not on disk in GH Live, you’ll need to use a play token each time. They will run out quickly, and grinding for new tokens takes quite a while. So, the game offers the abovementioned 24 hour pass, or you can also buy play tokens with real cash. If you aim to play GHTV tracks like you have in the past Guitar Hero’s, it will become very expensive very quickly, and downright unfeasible. It’s very difficult to recommend Guitar Hero Live to fans who expect to buy songs and play them on demand as much as they want, as they did in the past.

GHTV also features a progression system and a competitive side. Those coins that you earn for play tokens can also be spent on upgrading your guitar – to gain access to new powers during songs, or unlocking new permanent score or multiplier boosts. These upgrades can’t be bought with microtransactions, and they cost quite a bit, so you’ll need to play GHTV for quite a long while to unlock everything. The various powers (except for the basic one) such as making a song easier or increasing your multiplier, all have a limited number of uses and more must be bought with coins. The game tries to help you with the grind by offering daily login coin bonuses.

Each song in GHTV features a dynamic scoreboard, so you’re competing with random players to see who can perform the best. It’s a cool system that gives the mode some edge and a very competitive feel.However, there are design issues with this system. You could finish fourth, 10k points behind the leader, despite hitting 99% of the notes and going on 200+ note streaks. That’s because the game doesn’t seem to sort players into any kind of category – you have no idea about what difficulty, powers, or guitar upgrades the other players are using. Someone could earn more points with just four stars on a song, hitting 95% of the notes, and place above another user who got 99% and five star rating. There’s no real difference on how well you do – the coins awarded depend entirely on your own performance – but it’s frustrating that the playing field isn’t level. It takes away from the competitive spirit of GHTV if the conditions aren’t the same. There are also no friend leaderboards at launch, just random players for now.

The game performs well for the most part. It did take some time getting the audio and video calibration right, and also the game only offers automatic gameplay calibration, unlike past games. Also, it didn’t help that the occasional missed notes were the fault of the controller and not the player. For some odd reason, the game’s audio output is very quiet – we needed to turn up the volume by quite a lot each play session. Some of the sound mixing in GH Live is questionable as well, drowning out either your guitar or the vocals. But on the whole, the experience is smooth; the loading times are quick, both GH Live and GHTV perform without a hitch and the framerate holds up. You can also sing along or play with a second guitar locally, but these features were not tested.

Guitar Hero Live, more than anything, shows the great degree of innovation within FreeStyleGames. This is a new beginning for the franchise – one that actually feels fresh and modern, and not just another sequel or a port. They could have taken the Rock Band route – create a new entry for a new console generation that’s largely the same as before. Instead, we get a new guitar and a whole new way to play. The presentation is excellent, and the gameplay is as immersive and addictive as it’s ever been. The lack of content on disk does disappoint, and the GHTV will feel either revolutionary or a total rip-off, depending on which player camp you fall under. In an age where services like Spotify and Google Music exist, some fans may find GHTV exactly what they wanted from an evolution in the DLC model. Others, meanwhile, will be very upset that they can't just fire up their favorite tracks on a weekend and play as long or as often as they want. On the whole, Guitar Hero Live is something new and fun – like DJ Hero was – but not without certain caveats. Check it out, rock out, but be aware of the potential deal breakers.