Guitar Hero Live
About the Game
Guitar Hero Live is an entry in the Guitar Hero series and a reboot of the franchise after the hiatus following Guitar Hero: Warriors of Rock in 2010. The core concept is identical: players use a plastic guitar peripheral to play the guitar sections of songs by following the cues on the screen and pressing the matching buttons on the instrument in time. Unlike the contemporary Rock Band 4 there is no backwards compatibility with instruments of content from earlier games. The largest difference compared to earlier titles is in the presentation.
Gameplay & Core Systems
Each song can be played in multiple difficulty levels. There is also a casual difficulty level where only the strum bar needs to be used. After collecting it, it can be unleashed at any time by tilting the controller upward or pressing a button at the bottom. There is a short, interactive tutorial in the begin that explains the controls. It is an offline story/career mode where the player becomes a guitarist for different fictitious bands playing existing tracks from popular bands on a number of fictitious festivals.
Each band plays a set of three or four songs on different stages of the festival and during the day or at night. Unlike the offline mode the channels contain video clips and live performances of the songs by the real bands as the player plays along and there are no dynamic interactions in the video. The game tracks the players performance and scores can be compared worldwide. There is a leveling system and the ability to unlock player card skins, different highways and different types of Hero Power to boost score multipliers, decrease note density or clear all notes for a short section. In-game credits earned by completing songs can be used to access a Premium channel with rotating challenges and asynchronous multiplayer against other players for the best scores.
Standout Features
- Like earlier titles Hero Power (previously called Star Power) can be collected by correctly playing a specific series of blue notes on a track.
- Using the power instantly pleases the crowd and can save a performance.
- It was launched with 200 songs and new ones are added regularly.
- This mode can also be played in split-screen multiplayer.
- The coins can be bought with points earned with performances or as microtransactions/in-app purchases for real money.
- Optionally real money can be used to buy in-game credits or a party pass to unlock all features of the game for 30 minutes or 24 hours without having to spend additional credits during that period.
Modes & Ways to Play
In the Guitar Hero Live mode each song is now played from the perspective of the guitarist during a real-world concert setting using full motion video footage. The second part of the game is the online Guitar Hero TV mode. It offers multiple channels that stream songs all day long and most of the time different from those in the Guitar Hero Live mode.
Presentation & Atmosphere
While playing the camera shifts between watching and interacting with the band members and the audience.
