Guitar Hero Live Review

Several years after the plastic guitar rhythm game genre game to a screeching halt and crash after complete market over-saturation, we've apparently completed the requisite waiting period for a reboot as determined by the marketing types and this holiday season we have both Rock Band 4 and Guitar Hero Live. While Rock Band 4 has gone the straight reboot route, bringing the Rock Band 3 experience to the latest generation of consoles, Guitar Hero Live has taken a different approach. It hasn't really been that long since the last Guitar Hero game in the grand scheme of things, but a lot has changed in the music world in that time. Owning music and building enormous libraries of MP3 files is beginning to feel as an archaic way of enjoying music as buying CDs seemed back when we last saw a Guitar Hero game. The developers of Guitar Hero Live have realized this and have brought this new way of consuming music into Guitar Hero Live. They've completely abandoned the concept of DLC tracks and fully embraced streaming music. But more on that in a bit, first let's get some of the basic questions out of the way.

The answer to the first question most people will have is yes, you will have to buy new guitar controllers for Guitar Hero Live. It's not that the old controllers have been locked out of the game or anything like that, it's because the new controllers are actually new. Gone are the five color-coded buttons that sat in a nice horizontal row along the fret board of the old controllers, replaced by two stacked rows of three buttons each placed right up near the headstock. You will no longer need to slide your hand along the fret board while playing the game or make your pinky do things that it was never designed to do. In addition to learning a new way of playing tracks in the game, you'll also need to get used to keeping your fingers relatively tightly together. There is no spacing between the controller buttons as before, and it may not feel quite as natural to press and release these buttons with your fingers pressed together rather than spaced slightly apart from each other. The body at other end of the guitar will be a little more familiar to Guitar Hero veterans, as the strum bar, power bar, and whammy bar are all still there and pretty much in the same form as before. The controller functions are accomplished using a pair of knob-like controllers on the guitar's face that resemble the volume and tone controls on a real guitar, and the top three fret buttons do double duty as controller buttons while you are navigating the game's menus. The guitar interfaces with the PS4 through a USB dongle, and while this makes it impossible to startup your PS4 from standby mode with just the guitar, once the console is powered-up it's easy enough to synch up the guitar (or two).

So how do you play a track using a guitar with six buttons in two rows? Well, the basic look of the note highway (the on-screen note track that looks like a guitar fret board and sends the notes in the track from the top of the screen to the play bar at the bottom) is the same, but rather than five tracks as before the new highway has been reduced to three. Each of these three tracks corresponds to a column of buttons on the guitar. Notes to be played come down the three tracks as guitar pick icons pointing either up or down, indicating whether you are to hold the button on the upper or lower row as you flip the strum bar when the icon reaches the play bar on the bottom of the screen. In addition, square icons indicate that both the top and bottom buttons should be held down simultaneously when played, and a horizontal bar across all three tracks indicates that all buttons should be left open as the strum bar is flipped. On the easiest difficulty setting, there are a lot of these open notes that come down the highway at a leisurely pace, along with occasional single notes on just one of the tracks. This setting makes things pretty easy for players who have never played a Guitar Hero game before, but it doesn't really feel like you are doing anything remotely like playing the song blaring out of the speakers at the moment. The normal difficulty level adds more notes and some two-note chords and you begin to feel more like you're actually playing along with the music, but there are certainly times when it feels more like you're playing a rhythm game inspired by the music than playing music. At the higher difficulty levels things get a lot more challenging; you'll face three-note chords, rapid changes between the rows, and a packed note highway. It will take a little practice to work your way up to the higher difficulty levels, but in addition to the challenging gameplay you'll be rewarded with a more satisfying illusion that you're playing the track rather than pushing plastic buttons - although the strength of that illusion will vary a bit from one track to another. There are five difficulty levels in all, so players of all skill levels are covered, and if you have a Guitar Hero party you can be assured that pretty much everyone will be able to join in on a song or two.

Guitar Hero Live is focused on guitars, so there are no drum kits or keyboard accessories for the game. Two players are supported, and when there are two guitarists both play the same track, although each player is free to pick their preferred difficulty level. There are no separate bass or rhythm parts in the game because the songs are not strictly restricted to the lead guitar parts; you'll play the most interest-ing part, at least from the perspective of the developers. No more fighting over who gets to play lead and who has to play bass - sorry bassists, no insult intended, it's just that the lead parts are more fun to play from a game perspective. You can hook a USB mic up to the game and you'll get a lyric track at the top of the screen, but singing the vocals to a track is more of a karaoke feature than a playable path through the game, although the game will score your singing performance.

Guitar Hero Live is really two games in one - Live and TV. Live mode is the closer of the two to the traditional Guitar Hero experience. You play sets of songs to unlock additional sets, until you work your way through unlocking the entire catalog. However, there's no "garage band makes it big" story here. In fact, there's no story at all. The game features two music festivals, one based in the US and the other in England, and the progression takes you from the festivals' tents and side stages all the way to the main stage. Since it would certainly be odd for the same band to play a set at each stage, you'll be a part of a different band for each set. All of the bands in the game are fictional, but they all have their own style of music and personality on stage that's designed to fit the music in the three song set that you'll be playing with them. Remember how odd it was to see a big, beefy rocker avatar sing a song with female vocals back in the early days of Guitar Hero? Those days are gone, as bands with male lead singers will sing only songs with male vocals while female lead singers will handle the female voiced tracks.

The "Live" in Live mode comes from the performances, all of which are shot in video with live actors playing the band and actual concert-going crowds cheering for you beyond the edge of the stage, and it's all shot from a first-person perspective. The video visual for the sets begin backstage, with you and your bandmates going through your pre-concert rituals, pausing for photos from the press, and getting encouragement from your roadies. After your intro the band will work the crowd a bit before launching into the three song set, at which point your note highway will appear. How things go from there will depend on how well you play. Play well and the crowd will really get into it and your band will be having a great time. Play poorly and the crowd will become restless and your bandmates will start to give you dirty looks. There's a bit of a dream-like segue between these mood shifts, but those watching you play will notice it more than you do, which is probably the case for some of the other things going on in the background as most of your focus will be on the note highway. The whole thing is a bit funny, though, since it seems like there is only a love or hate relationship with your fans here with nothing in between, and whether they love or hate you, they tend to do it in extremes. I think a true concert experience must also include the "bored indifference" crowd reaction as well, with everyone hitting the beer tent or looking at their phones.

At this point I should point out that those of you who have problems watching things filmed with motion cams may have a little trouble with everything going on in the background in the Live mode. It's not filmed with a hand-held shaky cam, but it does feature a fair amount of panning that can be unsettling. One of my meatspace bandmates had too much trouble with the backgrounds to play the game in Live mode.

Even if you reach the end of your set with the crowd booing and your band hating you, you'll still be able to make progress through the festival tiers. It's impossible to fail out of a track the same way that you could in the old Guitar Hero games; you'll always make it to the end of a track. Your score will certainly suffer, the radio personality announcer will comment about the poor performance, and the tweet-like social media comments that appear on the screen after a set will reflect the public's reaction to your play. Of course if you do well, all of that will change for the positive. You can replay a venue anytime that you'd like, to improve your scores on the tracks, your position on the leaderboards, and your overall rating for the set, but you won't have to do so to advance to the other venues. Doing well does unlock some background information on the fictional bands, so completionists will want to hit the festival stages multiple times.

Once you have played all of the sets for both festivals, you will have unlocked all of the tracks that are available on the disc, 42 in all. These tracks are playable at any time, either by replaying the festival sets or by picking and choosing from the catalog in free play. When played in free play, the tracks will be backed by the same live videos as they were when played during the festival, so it's basically the same experience except that you get to choose the set lists. The songs on the on-disc track list appear to be chosen to appeal to as wide an audience as possible and not to provide the retrospective of guitar heavy rock tracks that the series was in its beginning; a series that also included entire games dedicated to Metallica and Van Halen. So depending on your taste in music, you probably won't be playing some of the tracks in the catalog at all after the first time since that catalog includes such "rock" icons as Katy Perry and Eminem. But then again we live in a world in which Janet Jackson is being considered for induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, so there you are.

Now 42 tracks isn't a lot considering that most people will never want to play at least a quarter of those tracks again simply because they don't suit their musical tastes, although I do appreciate the cosmic significance of that number. The game doesn't have a store full of downloadable tracks to purchase, either, so 42 is the final number of tracks you'll own. That isn't the end of the music, though, and that's where the game's second mode, TV, comes in.

TV consists of two 24/7 music channels (more channels are planned for the future) that constantly stream tracks for you to play (assuming that you keep your PS4 connected to the internet and are a PlayStation Plus subscriber, of course). The tracks are divided into blocks or shows that run for 30 to 60 minutes each and spotlight a particular genre or era, and it's easy to see what's on the schedule for the next several hours right on the front page of the channels' menu section. Select a channel and you'll be sent right into the currently streaming track, play to the end, see a graphic or two for "recommended" tracks (although I'm not sure what the basis is for the recommendations), and then you'll be put right into the next track. You can't select what to play next; you can either play what comes up next or back out to the menu and switch channels or take a break. This is the new way in which Guitar Hero Live presents you with new music, by becoming the video game equivalent of Pandora.

This all-streaming/no-downloading approach to providing tracks to play has its good and bad points, and whether or not the good outweighs the bad is a decision that you'll have to make for yourself. The good points are that you will be exposed to a lot more music than you would have had Guitar Hero Live come with as many tracks as could possibly be crammed onto a single disc. At launch there are over 200 songs available on TV, and the service will be adding new tracks on a weekly basis. It's also a great way to discover new music while you're playing a game, and you don't have to worry about paying a couple of dollars for a track only to find out that you don't enjoy playing it that much for whatever reason. On the flip side, you'll also find yourself playing through a number of songs that you simply won't like and you'll need to schedule your time with the game to match the broadcast schedule if you are looking to play music from a particular genre (or if you're trying to avoid annoying music from bands like, say, Fun). And when you discover a new track that you enjoy the game doesn't provide you with any way to mark the track as a favorite, you'll either have to rely on memory or keep a pad of paper nearby if you're going to want to remember your new discoveries.

The game does give you a couple of options for those times when you aren't interested in what is playing on the channels or when you want to play a particular track. The entire catalog of streaming music is available on demand, and can be played using either "plays" or by purchasing a 24 hour party pass that unlocks the entire catalog for unlimited play for $5.99. One play will allow you to play one track once on demand, and while you can purchase plays through premium currency that costs real-world money, you can also earn plays several ways just by playing the game on the TV channels. You can earn coins as you play in several different ways - playing tracks, leveling up, logging into the game on consecutive days, etc. - and you can also earn plays when leveling up. If you play the game with any kind of regularity, then you'll bank plenty of plays and not have to worry about ever buying them. I seemed to always had enough available to put together a track list when I wanted to.

This model will be pretty familiar to anyone who's played freemium mobile games: daily log-in bonus-es, premium currency versus earned currency, bonuses earned through gameplay and leveling up, etc. Guitar Hero Live seems to have struck the right balance here in that the plays and premium currency are not a hindrance to enjoying and playing the game, but that the impatient or short-on-time players will end up paying some real cash while playing the game. And as in mobile games, you can also spend your coins on vanity items such as custom player banners or note highways, either with coins earned while playing or with premium currency.

Now that we have the economics out of the way, let's look at what it is like to play the game on the TV channels. First of all, the live band and crowd scenes are gone, replaced by a background that plays the track's music video, concert footage, or original video. Secondly, the tracks are always played in a multiplayer mode. The game will match you up with nine other players that it determines to be at a similar skill level to your own, and as you play you'll see a vertical bar on the side of the screen showing your ranking by score versus the other players and the tags of the players currently in the top spots. Since consecutive note streaks lead to bonus multipliers in the game, you'll see the standings change in real-time as players miss a note - and the timing of that miss can have a big impact on the final score. Players can also choose power-ups that can be earned by hitting sequences of special notes to do things like wipe out all of the notes on a difficult section, so there are some random elements to the gameplay beyond simply hitting all of your notes. Once the track completes, your final ranking and score will determine how many coins and experience points you'll earn from playing the track. And when you move to the next track, you'll find yourself matched up against another set of players. Now since the game is balancing the player skill in matchmaking, it won't let you play against friends, which I'm sure some will find disappointing. You can play with two players on the same console, but only the player tied to the primary account will actually be competing with the other players - the other is just there to have fun.

And that's Guitar Hero Live. You have new guitar controllers and a new way of playing tracks, and I give a slight edge to the new way since my pinky doesn't hurt after long play sessions. You'll either look at it as a new challenge to master or as a forced loss of all of your finely honed plastic guitar playing skills, I'll leave up to you to decide which it is. DLC is gone and streaming is here, and what constitutes the good implications and the bad of that will depend a lot on your individual tastes. I will say that it looks like it will be a great way to discover new music no matter how you look at things. And the game really needs a way to mark tracks for play later while streaming them, as well as a way to set-up favorite playlists in the on-demand track library. There are basic filters you can apply to the available tracks, but at 200 tracks and growing it's quickly going to be difficult to manage things if something isn't done to allow you to create your own lists and mark favorites. I'd also like to see more guitar heavy tracks in that library, the kind of tracks that defined the first few games in the series. Micro-transactions are present in a game that costs a fair amount of money to buy, but I can't say that I was ever in a position in which I felt I was being forced to buy something and my progress through the game was never impeded or blocked by some sort of pay wall. Overall, the game is fun and the new controller and TV channels really make it a novel experience in the Guitar Hero series. I'm really looking forward to seeing how the game will evolve over the next year.