Games I Beat: Guitar Hero Live

Guitar Hero Live
Air Guitar Justificationer
1-2 Players
System: PS4
Developer: Freestyle Games
Year of Release: 2015
Beaten: December 6th, 2015

This one might run a little short, but I wanted to talk about it anyway. I never really got into Guitar Hero, in fact my first experience with it was doing an alright job on the normal difficulty in the third entry, after which a friend of my at-the-time-girlfriend showed me "how to play". He played one of the hardest songs on expert without missing a note and acted like some of god among us due to his mastery of plastic guitars. It was a little off putting. Furthermore, as I did play it more over the weeks I never really got comfortable with how the game played overall. Eventually Rock Band came out and I had the chance to play it at a friends house. The fake instrument genre finally clicked with me.

My friend and I would play almost every day after school. I eventually picked up the sequel, and imported the songs from his copy of the original. I don't want to think about how much money I wasted on DLC songs, at the very least I did get my enjoyment out of them, well save for a few songs that just turned out to be frustrating. Since then I've wound up with the third and even the Beatles version of Rock Band and a full set of instruments. I really do adore these games, specifically the second, but it came as no shock when the craze died down.

When rumors of Rock Band and Guitar Hero coming back sprung up I was pretty excited, while they could be a massive money sink I really enjoyed playing at least Rock Band. When they finally did come out I completely scoffed at Guitar Hero's new guitar, and was looking forward to playing the next Rock Band. But, soon enough I realized that wouldn't be worth it. I picked up an Xbox 360 long before my PS3, and as such all my Rock Band DLC is locked away on that. Since then I've gotten a PS4, and an Xbox One won't be joining my collection for at least a few years. I'm not sure exactly how DLC transfer works between the old systems and the new, I think it can be done, but certainly not between competing company's systems. Even worse, reviews claimed that Rock Band 4 wasn't really that great, sure it was competent, but much like 3 was fairly underwhelmed 4 followed suit. I resigned myself to leaving the series at 3, on my 360, with all that extra content.

But this is about fucking Guitar Hero right? While at first I completely ignored Guitar Hero Live's new guitar, after reading about it more I realized how interesting it really was. Instead of five buttons there are two rows of three, which opens up a surprisingly large amount of options of buttons to push. Plus, the way they handled future content was kind of interesting sounding. I decided I'd pick it up.

I haven't been able to yet, but my friend got it for cheap on black Friday, and last night we ran through it. First off, the single player content is pretty skimpy, the song list is alright (both in quantity and quality), but we managed to finish everything within a few hours of playing. The online bit seems to be the main draw, but neither of us have an active PS+ account right now, so we weren't able to check that out. Aside from the new guitar the other major change is that instead of polygonal characters they shot a bunch of fake concerts to play in the background. This is honestly really neat, as when you fail the crowd and your band mates turn on you, or cheer you on if you're doing great. Some may find it disheartening, but those people also lack spines. It also has some kind of neat pre-show shenanigans, but honestly these bits kind of wear thin after a while. Another minor complaint is during a set list they didn't show what the next song was anywhere on screen. Sure before you pick a set it lists them, but I still like to be told what I'm about to play, especially when I'm so unfamiliar with most of the songs in the game.

Actually playing the guitar was abysmal at first. This was mainly due to it being completely different, but also the calibration felt WAY off by default, definitely calibrate the game to what's comfortable to you. Within a few songs we both quickly grasped the new button layout and I've got to say, it really is a lot of fun. After re-calibrating my mistakes felt like my mistakes instead of the game and I not seeing eye to eye as to when I should be strumming. It really helped the game stand out, even though it's just a button rearrangement essentially it really does change how the game feels.

If you enjoy these rhythm games then I have to recommend giving Guitar Hero Live a shot, I know it's kind of expensive, but that's par for the course. Practicing on harder difficulties is going to be the main draw to the game for me, as always, but from what I've heard of the online portion it sounds really fun as well. I never thought I'd turn my back on Rock Band, but sticking with the tired and true doesn't always work out for the best.