Let me tell you a tale of two music games. After years of their plastic guitars collecting dust, both Rock Band and Guitar Hero decided to make a comeback in 2015. Harmonix's new Rock Band, Rock Band 4 , is almost indistinguishable from the old Rock Band. The same look, the same feel, the same songs, and even the same instruments. Activision and FreeStyleGames' new Guitar Hero, Guitar Hero Live, on the other hand, is a huge departure from past games, yet it still holds true to the plastic guitar idea. This $99.99 game for the Xbox One ($200.00 at eBay) , PlayStation 4, and Wii U ($800.00 at Amazon) ($149.99 with two guitars) features a redesigned button layout and a high-definition first-person video perspective. It even adds a really interesting music video feature where you could play an endless stream of music. Unfortunately, in adding so many new ideas, Guitar Hero Live threw out one of the most important old ones: letting players choose their own songs.
New Guitar
The series' famous guitar controller has gotten a design update, though it's not necessarily for the best. Instead of using the same five-color controls as previous Guitar Hero games, and all Rock Band games, Guitar Hero Live uses a controller with two sets of three buttons each. The left set is black, and the right set is white. Now the game shows three columns of notes, each displaying a black or white gem (or both) to hit, instead of a single gem of a specific color across five columns. That's a new take that makes the Guitar Hero formula feel a bit fresher.
Unfortunately, the controller itself feels a bit cheaper than the competition's. It shares the same Fender Stratocaster outline as the Rock Band 4 guitar, but its neck is completely flat with painted frets rather than molded ones, the pegs on the top are flat, black plastic instead of attractive and rounded, chrome-finished plastic. Furthermore, instead of two sets of buttons on the top and bottom of the neck, all the buttons sit on the far end of the neck, so you can't do any close, axe-hugging noodling like you can in Rock Band. These are small quibbles, and both controllers feel generally the same in overall build quality, but the lack of frets makes Guitar Hero Live's axe feel cheaper. Also, unlike the Rock Band 4 controllers for the PlayStation 4 ($799.95 at Amazon) version of the game, the Guitar Hero Live controller requires a USB dongle plugged into the system to work (the dongle is included).
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Live and Lifeless
Guitar Hero Live is split into two halves, which, combined, feel like approximately three-quarters of a game. The eponymous Live half is a first-person game mode that puts you in the shoes of an unnamed band's guitarist at a series of concerts and festivals. This is where the game visually departs from previous Guitar Hero titles. There's still the standard flow of notes going down a guitar neck in the middle of the screen, but beyond that is recorded video of the audience and the band that reacts as you play. When you play well, the crowd gets excited and can even start singing along. When you play poorly, the crowd and the band looks confused and then angry with your performance.
This is a really interesting take on the music-game concept, but it feels weird and ultimately flaccid. Because it's all recorded video, you can't customize or even name the bands you're playing in, which takes out a lot of the personal touch of the series. There is some variation depending on the song and the venue, but ultimately it's the same set-up of guitarist (you) looking around at the singer, the drummer, and the bass player in between staring out at the crowd. And that arrangement is just perplexing when a completely not-played-by-this-type-of-band song like Skrillex's "Bangarang" is in the set.
The bands and crew are completely lacking in personality, too. When the roadies are completely clean-mouthed, soft-spoken fonts of encouragement, and all of your band mates look like they just came out of a 1990s-era anti-drug video involving skateboarders, it breaks the immersion of being a rock star more than any computer-generated, animated model of a band can.
It's telling that Rock Band 4's barebones campaign mode has more personality than Guitar Hero Live's recorded videos of actual people, purely through the flavor text of the loading screens. A joke about a hole in a busted van meaning less need for bathroom stops on tour is more amusing and in line with the theme of the game than the first-person view of playing a completely PG-rated rock show with a horde of generically enthusiastic/disappointed fans.
TV Killed the Music Game
The other half of the game is Guitar Hero TV. This is a live, constantly streaming online mode that lets you jump in and out of songs as they play. Music videos play in the background while you engage in the same Guitar Hero Live gameplay of hitting notes as they come down. You have your choice between a few different GHTV channels, which cycle through half-hour blocks of genre or thematic songs.
When you play Guitar Hero TV, you're pitted against nine other random players currently tuned to the same channel. At the end of each song, you're scored and ranked, with different rewards for different levels of play.
As you play, you level up to unlock new powers like clearing the screen of notes, and you earn in-game currency to buy cosmetic alterations to your player card (like the player cards in Call of Duty online modes). You also earn tokens to play individual songs from the hundred-plus-song library of Guitar Hero TV. Once.
This is where Guitar Hero Live's model comes to a screeching halt. Unlike previous Guitar Hero and Rock Band games, including Rock Band 4, you can't buy individual songs or packs of songs to play at your leisure. There is no method in the game for permanently unlocking tracks you love for play in the Guitar Hero TV side of the game. Instead, you need to earn or buy tokens to play them each time, or you can purchase a 24-hour pass that offers unlimited access to the Guitar Hero TV song library for $6.
If Only
If Guitar Hero TV was a separate free-to-play game that only required the purchase of the guitar, this would be a somewhat acceptable model, though being able to permanently unlock features is always a preferable option. If Guitar Hero TV were an additional feature on top of the conventional song library format of previous Guitar Hero games, it would be a welcome bonus that kept things fresh. For a $100 retail bundle without any option to permanently unlock songs you love, it's odious. Activision took what would have been a welcome extra in a game with an established formula, scooped out half of the established formula, and left us with a game that demands a constant grind rather than simple progression or a single microtransaction to play your favorite songs.
Guitar Hero Live introduces some really interesting ideas to the stagnant plastic-guitar genre, but the completely baffling refusal to offer piecemeal track/album/pack purchases and a reliance on a free-to-play model with, at best, rentals of songs brings it all to a screeching halt. Rock Band 4 might be more of the same, but it's the same functional, music-filled game we fell in love with. The gutted Guitar Hero Live, on the other hand, is considerably less of the same.
Guitar Hero Live adds some new ideas to the plastic instrument-driven music game genre, but it makes too many mistakes to overlook.
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