I bought Guitar Hero Live on release day, as I was that excited for any kind of new rhythm game and I feel like I have not seen much discussion of this game since so I figured I would put my thoughts about this game into words. I have always been a big fan of both Rock Band and the Guitar Hero series. While initially I was more pumped with the idea of Rock Band returning, I always enjoy playing plastic drums over other plastic instruments, but as the marketing machine went on and the time to release closer, Guitar Hero Live was the game that piqued my interest more.
A large part of this came with the fact that the tracklisting for Rock Band 4 really is just middling to me at best, as it feels like all the same bands and songs that they have used previously. Guitar Hero Live (GH Live) however, featured many more interesting newer bands that are getting a lot of publicity as up and coming bands which Rock Band seemingly don’t care to look at (think of A Day To Remember, Tonight Alive, Beartooth). While that metalcore/punk genre doesn’t apply to everyone it’s a really big genre in my life and GH Live seems like it finally tapped into that market.
The other factor which made me pickup GH Live over Rock Band 4 is that while the whole band was removed, reinventing the guitar controller with two rows of three really sounded like a fun new challenge. You could argue that this essentially removes any multiplayer or party play aspect of this game, but there are features here which help affect these, such as including a karaoke mode and support for two guitars. Initially you may think three buttons per row makes this game easier but all it does is remove the challenge of moving your hand left and right on the fretboard and introduces moving your fingers up and down it. This allows for an array of complex holds and new positions for your fingers to be in, not to mention accuracy to not hit one button over the other. Along with this if you played bass in these games you will remember the open strum note and that features in this game as well. Combining all of this truly makes this game feel fresh and new to learn, I am still struggling on a few key combinations thinking what may be the best way to hold the keys. This game features two different modes of play when you load up the game, GH Live and Guitar Hero TV (GH TV).
The first section of this game is cal
led GH Live, and is the section of the game that has been advertised the most. While this section has clearly seen most of the work towards the game, it is also the smallest part of the actual game in that it only holds around 40 songs to play. This section allows you to re enact being on stage as the guitar player within a generic real life band in a first person view format, and you play a small setlist in front of real life crowds. Billed as two different festivals set in the west coast of America and within England, each festival has multiple “bands” playing on the day which you can take control of and play their pre recorded setlists. I really like the whole package setup of this, as it has a Dirt 2 or Forza Horizon dumb feel of someone talking over the radio hyping up each set and upcoming sets later in the day. The major selling point here is the fact that you are playing to a live crowd, which means that if you do well they are all on your side and are screaming constantly, and, conversely, if you do bad the crowd (and your band) look at you as if you just kicked a small animal across the stage and assumed that was a fun thing to do in the moment. The bad side of the video is truly something special to watch, and it’s a real shame that there is no option to force that on because it entirely defeats the purpose of you playing the actual game and wanting to create a good score.
The other side of this live crowd that I found annoying is that they were clearly pulled in from the streets or just extras, as while a song is playing, 99% of that crowd will stare at you and completely ignore the fact that an entire band is on stage. It’s just really jarring, as unless you are a solo act, that never, ever happens at a gig. The other problem I have with the live crowd is the fact that around 50% or more of the songs I played through, they clearly had no clue what the song actually was. Big singalong moments normally expected are just ignored for incessant screaming and dumb PG flavoured sign waving. This section of the game though only holds around 40 or so songs set to the live crowd feel, and therefore will only take up a small portion of your time when you play this game. The small song size is also tailored to a pop audience and hosts most of the pop songs like “California King Bed” by Rihanna or “Bangarang” by Skrillex – I think largely due to how time consuming their method of recording that feature must have been, as well as licence issues. The real meat and potatoes of this piece of software lies in what is called Guitar Hero TV.
Guitar Hero TV is the main, core feature of this game. It involves an online stream of two MTV-like channels which air music videos that you play over 24/7, all for free (after initial price of purchase), as well as acts as a central hub for its song catalogue.
The channels in GH TV are the main focus of this feature, and are essentially two alternative versions of MTV – with no reality tv shows getting in the way. It’s 24 hours of almost all music filled in with breaks of other music within the catalogue and weird but really cool fake adverts specific to the channel you are currently playing on. When you enter a channel you are usually entered into a lobby with 9 other players currently playing the channel to keep things interesting with a live leader board who have a similar skill level as you. Usually the two channels have two separate genres at the same time, like “Metal hour” or “Sounds like rock”, which is usually pop songs with some sweet guitar riffs. Normally the segments are varied enough so that you are always playing a new batch of songs, but after a while it is plainly obvious that some preset playlists feature key songs more than others (“According to You” by Orianthi and “Tighten Up” by The Black Keys have been played too many times by me).
While that can be annoying, it might also be the case that I regularly play this game after work at roughly the same time, and they have not really varied up the scheduling much so I always hit the same block of tracks. Hopefully they start to vary the blocks, create new ones and highlight other, newer songs that they are adding to their catalogue. Equally so, there is a button on the guitar which pushes you straight to the main menu of GH TV which allows you to speedily check what the other channel might be playing at that point in time if it may be better than what you are currently playing. I feel like a perfect addition they could do here is to bring in guest radio presenters such as Zane Lowe and have him curate a playlist of his own or weekly get a regular voice to list the top 10 most played songs kind of like a download chart.
Where GH Live gets their money from you is through the GH TV tracklist. Mentioning the channels previously, you can play preset songs as long as you want 24 hours a day, whereas to access the song catalogue you need play tokens. Playing through and completing songs in GH TV will give you coins which you can exchange for play tokens OR you can simply buy a stack of play tokens. These allow you to play whichever song you want in their catalogue “on demand”, which means they don’t force you to buy the song for a large price before you can play them. This theoretically and quite easily allows you to play all of the songs which would normally cost around a dollar each on Rock Band for free. The problem is that you cannot play these songs in an unlimited capacity unless you spend money for an item they call the party pack which allows for unlimited play tokens for 24 hours. While this may put off some customers, it’s actually really easy to avoid purchasing play tokens within this game and the first week of November they allowed for a weekend of full access for free, which I hope they continue to do as promotional incentives later on down the line.
The song catalogue here is huge.
While it does not match the 1000+ list of Rock Band Network, it is still a giant offering for a brand new game that needs new note tracks. Unlike Rock Band, this game cannot import previous downloadable content (DLC) tracks due to the nature of the new guitar, but they include a new method of implementing DLC, and they start off by giving users access to over 200 songs in their catalogue with the intention of adding a further 70 new songs before the end of 2015. What really appeals to me is that while there are your generic lists of pop music in here, there is also a big bunch of new music featured that allows for Activision to buy the licences cost effectively, while also reaching to a younger, different or even larger audience than the current offering from previous generations of this game type. One of the biggest reasons I chose this game over Rock Band 4 is due to the song offerings being different to what we would normally get, and a fresh wave of more “metalcore” or even newer bands being highlighted that I always wished these games would add. This not only feeds me the joy of playing these songs I never would expect to appear on the Rock Band network, but also enjoy the fact that their music videos are also being played alongside this. This all comes at a cost of “play tokens”.
While this 200+ catalogue is “free” to play, you have to earn coins to buy play tokens, where each song play-through costs a single token. Where Guitar Hero also differs is that it allows for a “party pass” where for £6 you can buy 24 hours of unlimited game play. This is a genius idea that you wish Rock Band could have done. It is interesting that this game is able to run so quickly and efficiently with the vast amount of songs in the catalogue that have to be loaded and essentially streamed to you. Also, I personally prefer the music video being played in the background over whatever fake band that I have created being animated behind the highway sometimes barely in synch with the actual music. The final topic that can be touched upon later is that even though this game is still new, they are already adding new songs into this catalogue and this does not cost you a single cent.
Another section within the menu shows the customization features within the game. Such options like altering player cards, having custom note highways and special guitar upgrades are covered here. All of this is your bog standard stuff to make you unique and cost coins you accumulate, however the guitar upgrades section is something a lot of players should look to. While these cost a lot of coins they can do very leader board breaking things; like increasing the max multiplier to x6, or making notes give you more points throughout the song, or even reach multipliers with less notes in a streak. It means that people who diehard play this game (or pay through the micro-transactions) will be able to dominate the top of the leader boards even if you 100% a song. By reaching the top of your session leader board you also get a slight bonus in XP, I cannot confirm if you get more coins or not though as I think that may be factored in your performance. Either way this upgrade section is something worth looking at if you have a lot of spare coins that you don’t wish to use on more play tokens.
GH TV has a unique feature called “premium” but rather than a season pass or elevated status within the franchise this area serves as a sneak peek zone into upcoming songs. As mentioned above the GH team is constantly adding new songs and an incentive for you to part with your monies is by creating 3 song tracklists which can either be unlocked by straight up paying for them OR you can get 3 or more stars on regular difficulty or higher on a predetermined three songs they choose. This allows you to still unlock the sneak peek new songs in a free manner but you will have to use your play tokens to play the three songs before you can play the new upcoming tracks (for free). Think of these as the three song packs you would normally see as DLC for Rock Band, but unlockable for free. After a set period of days they will then get moved to the song catalogue for normal consumption. How they equally incentivize you to play the songs early in this way is by having the classic AI characters names play against you (remember Judy Nails and Midori?) and the top three after the early access songs get bonuses like x2 XP for three songs and more recently free custom note highways and customizable items. The GH stream are also aiming to get live music within the game so recently there has been Avenged Sevenfold at Download Festival, Black Veil Brides from a live tour and as of writing Rival Sons at a live session. I really like this system of being able to look in there and see what new songs are upcoming and if I like the bands then I will play to unlock them early.
What really bugs me about this game is while almost everything else has been done incredibly well, overall key fundamentals are extremely lackluster and are just done in poor methods. The biggest problem with this game lies in the calibration method. Gone are the days where you would time the button presses with the sound and have video and audio lag tweaking and in Guitar Hero Live, you simply have a slider. The problem with this slider is it just feels off, where it kind of feels like my video/audio lag to actual note hitting is somewhere between two options. It’s a real bummer they removed the fine tweaking ability the previous games had and as a result the only way I am really able to play this is by playing to the time of the audio rather than the on screen timing. Along with that the options menu just feels extremely empty. There are only three simple options for your audio set-up. Included is a day/night time audio mode (which I think just takes out the bass, but I cannot confirm on that), but no option to remove the pesky very loud noise that occurs when you hit a wrong note. While I like the idea of you giving me an audible cue that I messed up that note, I can simply just see that my multiplier disappeared, and having an obnoxiously loud out of place guitar noise is one of the worst things you could have to notify me of this. Furthermore, there is no mixer to adjust sound levels. While this makes sense as this is only a guitar game (over the band experience of previous installments), it still would have been nice to at least reduce the audio of sound effects which are sampled much louder than the songs that are playing.
Some people initially are having problems with the build quality of the controller itself and while at first I did notice my leftmost upper button was squeaky, after a few hours of playing it seemed to work the squeak out. That and the neck felt weaker and more twistier, but this is most likely just more noticeable as you now have to think about putting pressure in the top and lower sections of the neck over nearer the headstock/closer to the strum bar. Equally so I also play this sitting down with no neck strap so this position may mean I slightly push harder on the neck than needs be.
So to summarize, my time with this game has been extremely enjoyable. While there are some problems, such as the lack of customization with your options, the soundtrack potentially being more focused on a younger audience, and that micro-transaction option to play the major content within the game, I still feel that this is a superb comeback by the team FreeStyle games who previously brought you DJ Hero 1 and 2. I will most likely continue to play this game for a long time to come, and hopefully this was received well enough for them to look at creating a bass guitar DLC expansion as some of the songs in the tracklist have some killer bass lines or even further expansions to bring back the whole band setup.
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