The main Live portion of the game received mixed reviews, with criticism towards its weak soundtrack, lack of multiplayer and the live action videos. Guitar Hero Live was released to mostly positive reception, with critics praising the new controller design for providing trickier and more realistic gameplay in comparison to previous Guitar Hero games, as well as the wider variety of content available via the GHTV mode. The game was shipped with forty-two songs on disc and 200 songs within the GHTV library new content has been added to GHTV on a weekly basis, provided through premium shows that earn players unique rewards. The mode also allows players to pick up and play currently-streamed songs at any time or use money and in-game credits to play any song within the library, forgoing traditional downloadable content. In the other main mode, GHTV, songs are presented with the note track overlaid atop their music video or from live concert footage. The game featured two main modes GH Live, the games career mode, featured the note pattern displayed atop full motion video taken from the perspective of a lead guitarist during a concert, with the crowd and other band members dynamically reacting to the player's performance. These innovations included a new guitar controller featuring a 6 button, 3- fret layout in contrast to the 5 button controller of previous games. Activision wanted to bring back Guitar Hero for the next generation of video game consoles but wanted the new game to be innovative. The game serves as a reboot of the Guitar Hero franchise, being the first new entry in the series since Warriors of Rock in 2010. As with previous games in the series, the goal is to use a special guitar controller to match fret patterns displayed on a scrolling note pattern on screen in time with the music. The game was released for PlayStation 3, PlayStation 4, Wii U, Xbox 360, and Xbox One in October 2015.
It is the seventh and final main installment in the Guitar Hero series. Guitar Hero Live looks fresh, feels new, and sounds like it’s going to be a standalone product that should be a completely equal experience on Wii U.Guitar Hero Live is a 2015 music rhythm video game developed by FreeStyleGames and published by Activision. What I played at E3 has me surprisingly excited for this new, slightly weird take on a franchise that was stale even before going on hiatus. The idea is that you might play new songs every time you turn on the game, and all without paying any kind of subscription or per-song fee (as in Rock Band).įor the first time since Harmonix was behind the frets, Guitar Hero is a significantly different product than its rivals, and that alone makes it worth an extra look. However, there’s a big upside: all the new songs are totally free. This unusual approach may reduce player choice in which songs are available, though you have a limited number of “On Demand†plays. This other main mode effectively replaces downloadable content, since new songs are constantly streamed into the game on a predetermined schedule. The same goes for the broadcast channel of interactive songs, called “GH TVâ€. I worried that they might be distracting, but once I moved from the audience to the guitar controller, the swirling faces faded into the background. There’s no getting around it: the first-person, FMV scenes built around the main “GH Live†campaign mode are seriously goofy. Based on other songs playable in the demo, there should be plenty of depth in the new finger patterns, and I tend to enjoy that process of learning from scratch. The latter bit was actually my hurdle, but I got the hang of it all within just a few songs. Now your hand will be more stationary, but your fingers get more of a workout, while your eyes and brain get to process a whole new language of “gems†and “highwaysâ€. As soon as I picked up the new, 3x2-buttoned controller, I knew that it would be fun to re-learn this kind of game with a new kind of dexterity test that feels just as fun and arguably more realistic as the original, five-button style. That’s not to mention the free-to-play streaming service, GH TV, which I found hard to understand even as the developers walked me through its menus and demonstrated various features.īut. A long-time Guitar Hero fan checks out Activision’s bold reboot.Īlthough a re-emergence of Guitar Hero was inevitable, none of us could have predicted the form of its return: a stripped-down, single-instrument, full motion video (FMV) game.