Guitar Hero Live
Being a massive fan of the guitar hero and rock band franchises when they were first around you can imagine my excitement this year to find both were making a comeback on the new gen of consoles. After seeing how much rock band 4 cost and its failure to actually make a new game (it's a copy and paste of what has come before but with some new tracks) I focused all my attention on the new Guitar Hero. I love that they've tried to change things up and in my opinion, for the better.
For starters the new guitar controller. It feels like it has a better build to it (but I suppose time will really tell
![Stick Out Tongue :p :p](data:image/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAIAAAAAAAP///yH5BAEAAAAALAAAAAABAAEAAAIBRAA7)
) and the new buttons make a lot of the gameplay feel more like playing a real guitar. It certaintly takes some time to get used to the new style of 3 'up/black' buttons and 3 'down/white' buttons, especially seeing as there is a crazy amount of new confusing combinations to create chords - hence why the gameplay is much more similar to real guitar play.
The Live section of the game is fab, the whole design is just epic, I am in love with what they have achieved. I think the only thing letting it down is how short it is. There are currently two festivals (more planned apparently) each with various stages. Each stage tends to have two 'bands' that you join in with. Each band has 3-5 songs and sometimes the time between songs is mere seconds - caught me out a few times
![Stick Out Tongue :p :p](data:image/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAIAAAAAAAP///yH5BAEAAAAALAAAAAABAAEAAAIBRAA7)
If you start messing up the live crowd getting annoyed at you is extremely off-putting but I think that's actually a good thing. I saw one review slam it for not sticking with one band etc but I love the fact you join different bands all with different styles. For example the same band playing Queen, Skillrex and Rhianna would just be weird, the fact each band has a different style allows the live section to keep feeling fresh, having different types of band mate reactions and audience reactions depending on the type of music is much more realistic. I can't wait to see more of these to appear in the future.
The TV portion of the game is also a great asset. They currently run two channels of music TV, each with a schedule. You just tune in to either channel and just instantly join in with whoever else is playing at the same time. It's great, provides instant competition with randoms and if you do well against them then you earn even more points. Points = tokens, tokens = pretty much arcade game play - You pay to play whatever you want, when you want with these tokens. A little burdenous if you just want to play one song like 10 times but I think it forces you to play online and imo that's much more random and fun.
I also love the massive range of music it covers. It's literally got a bit of everything on there. There is another gameplay option coming in the next few months and apparently more songs are on the way but I am so satisfied with this game at the moment. I'm playing on 'regular' which is extremely tough but I'm getting used to it, can't see myself trying out the two harder levels any time soon though.