REVIEW – This year once again scream the plastic guitars for Activision. The Guitar Hero series slowly forgotten hear from itself again but this time instead of Neversoft, the FreeStyleGames welds and polishes up the glistening stainless left behind title. What is more with the tuning it raises again the series where in recent years should have been.

The series starting in 2005 devastated the rhythm games market, more precisely during fine years it delivered twelve sessions for the music lovers console players and then it just as quickly disappeared in the gray fog as it quickly came from. The profession and the players were welcomed the plastic guitars and with its played music in classic, modern rock or heavy metal style. By 2010 they wanted to bring out much from Guitar Hero, neither the visual nor the Gibson guitars opportunities were not able to reinvent itself.

The new meat

However, in 2015 Activision pulled out again the dusty title from the hat, FreeStyle Games cleaned it out and serve it with silver tray to the song-lover gamers. It makes with maximum attention and serious transformations, which let’s face it, was really necessary.

But what is it all about? We get a similar guitar as earlier but with a much more convenient design. Moreover we can forget the animated concerts because this time we stand on a veritable stage, with an actual band in front of real audience. Furthermore (rarely highlighted before, but) with an online multiplayer, which delivers an experience like we would watching a real music channels in HD without commercials and all the inappropriate silly series.

Tuned

The new guitar is simply great. Every small detail is deliberate and makes the game more comfortable. Instead of the old Gibson with five buttons design we got a two-line, three-button layout, so three fingers is quite enough to play the sound and the so-called “highway” does not cover as much from the image. The plectrum part has not changed, although I would have been delighted if it is a bit quieter because I have always been a bit of confusion of the clatter but that is just nit-picking.

New body

The Hero Power button is the same as on the second guitars generation but now much handier in the appropriate moment, more space for the hand as the Start button have moved down a bit so you cannot accident shut down the game by pressing the Power button. The tremolo changed a bit only as it has been covered with a longer plastic part but remain just as flexible as ever. The PS button is consolidated with the „joystick” similarly to the old one but we also got a new button which on the GHTV department we can switch between the menu and play.

Behind the scenes

As I have mentioned before, the Guitar Hero Live has not been working with animated and cartoonish concerts any more as they used to do but also the guitarist’s point of view with a great or awful concert videos. It is just depends on how you play. If you are good with the stirrings the audience go crazy for you and showing boards with inscriptions such as “I love you”, “You are my Hero” and similar to these.

Moreover the band mates have a reaction on your game as well. The singer stage dives into the audience; everyone smiles and encourages you that you are good, keep on. In a nutshell if you are a king everyone loves you. However, if you set a higher difficulty levels than you can play, the audience takes out the plates again but this time with a negative inscriptions such as “You are Lame” or “Go away” and even if we continue the stunted performance they throwing the whole band with glasses and garbage. The band mates look at you sullenly and the manager are desperate in the backstage.

Before the concerts the backstage scene are very tensioning where are looking forward the action and the stage assistants, technicians as they do their work while wishing good luck, give high fives, wink and give our musical instruments to us. I have not felt this for a long time ago but the tension is almost sensible and it goes before, during and after each and every concert.

The set-list

The Guitar Hero: Live can divided into two main parts. The so-called LIVE, where we can play through the concerts, at a performance we play 3-5 music continuously without a break. Furthermore we can also do some exercise in the Quick Play menu.

At the LIVE department we can found a total of 42 songs which is completely mixed style. We can get softer melodies (Rihanna – California King Bed, The Lumineers – Ho Hey) but harder as well such as (Halestorm – Love-bit (So Do I), Bring Me The Horizon – Shadow Moses) as well as those who are far away from the instrumental guitar music though, I welcomed them and they proved to be a good choice (Eminem – Berzerk, Skrillex feat sirah. – bangarang).

The other department is the Guitar Hero: TV which is a better expression of the online multiplayer. Here 206 completely mixed (!) songs can be found and obviously we can measure ourselves with the other players. At the end of every performance we get a score compared to other players and based on this we get money and Status Points. The status will increase our rank and various power-ups can be opened with them.

With the money we can buy other “highways”, power-ups and music-players. Yes, music-players because we have to buy these at the TV department if we like to chose the music we want to play, but nothing to worry about it does not disturb the game-play because we will always have enough money to playing some music we really keen on.

In case we would entirely run out of songs, there are two channels, which although not our choice of track can be play but also a random list although in a short time of period money can be quickly collected in order to go crazy for a System Of A Down – Chop Suey on.

Slash

In my opinion Guitar Hero Live is a very good game, I can hardly mention the part where there is a disadvantage compared to its predecessors. There are two missing things altogether; one is that there is no longer possibility to play short music demos as well as game-play speed cannot be slower than the original music.

The other positive aspect will make me forget these small problems. I really like the concert-records in the LIVE; I like very much the structure of TV and of course the new guitar. If you liked a little bit either previous Guitar Hero you should try the new one at least. IT IS A MUST!

-Dazo911-

(Translator: -Martin-)

Publisher: Activision

Genre: Rhythm, Music simulator

Stílus: Vehicle combat

Relase date: 2015.10.23