Back in the ’00s, there was no simpler way to have a good time than to invite a bunch of friends over, strap on a couple plastic guitars, and strum along to your favorite songs on Guitar Hero. The rhythm game franchise was massive, selling 25 million copies and making over $2 billion in sales. But releasing six games in five years, along with adding more expensive peripherals and paying for constant DLC would eventually exhaust interest in the franchise.
Now, a decade after the original Guitar Hero, Activision and FreeStyleGames want to bring the rock back to our living rooms with Guitar Hero Live. When we got to sit down with Jim Norris, Designer at FreeStyleGames, to actually play the game, we point blank asked him, after all these years and the particularly sour note it ended on: “Why bring Guitar Hero back?”
“We thought it had been like six years since one was out and we felt that there were a bunch of people, like kids who are maybe 10 years old that just caught the tail end of it and maybe didn’t get a chance to play Guitar Hero. But we wanted to do something really different, so we thought it was a good time for gamers that maybe missed out on the rhythm action games to bring out a new one that they might enjoy. Plus, we thought that people who participated in it originally were ready for another one. We’ve got new consoles now, so we thought now was the time to try it out. One of our guys thought of the GHTV concept and then we thought of the guitar concept and then we thought of the live concept and we thought ‘Okay, these three things are pretty cool. These are pretty different. I think this could probably make a pretty rad game.'”
For what it’s worth, that’s totally true. No longer here are a million plastic instruments that will get you nothing upon resale. They went back to basics and it’s just you and the guitar. Also helping this refresher along are the new modes: Live and TV.
Live works as a twist on the Guitar Hero of old that most familiar with the series are used to. However, instead of the animated rockers like Judy Nails and Johnny Napalm, you play the guitarist for a real band playing a festival taking place in either England or the U.S. Activision shot days worth of footage with numerous bands to accompany every scenario of how well you play. If you rock, the band and audience loves you; if you suck, the band scowls and hates you and the crowd boos and throws real garbage at you. However, there’s no more kickout mode.
“We didn’t want to bring Guitar Hero back unless we had a really good idea and a really good reason to do it… As we were filming these videos we were like ‘You wouldn’t get kicked off stage if you were playing a bad gig. Your bandmates wouldn’t just stop playing and say ‘you’re out of the band.’ You’d have to struggle through it.’ So we left it in that way, so you can experience the joy or the hardship of live performance… We want you to feel the sense of stage fright, we want you to feel like ‘Oh my gosh I’m really messing this up right now, the crowd hates me, the band hates me, I can’t do this.’ It’s part of the whole experience.”
In our time playing in Live mode, you do feel that intensity. Bandmates lean in to talk to you and voice their disapproval if you’re doing poorly. Also, the way the acoustics are filmed, if you’re looking at the drummer, the drums are louder. And the same goes with all the other band members and their instruments.
After years of playing these games, we thought it would be easy, but the redesign of the guitar had to make our brain rewire a bit and it was a little hard. Now sporting six buttons across three frets with two rows (or strings), the new layout added a level of difficulty where one didn’t previously exist. However, it doesn’t feel unearned. For example, a new player may not have the same obstacles.
But so far, everything you’ve heard just sounds like pretty good modern update to what a new Guitar Hero should be. What makes Guitar Hero Live special is Guitar Hero TV. Essentially, with multiple channels, Activision programs your TV with “shows” of music videos for you to play along with. These shows are usually in 30 minute blocks, and you play along with the entire world. There’s a leaderboard to compare your score to other players online (including your friends if they’re playing) and it gives a community experience.
Perhaps the biggest takeaway of GHTV is that they re-program the channels weekly with new content coming in all the time for absolutely free. No DLC or Season Pass required at all. You can purchase the music videos à la carte to play via an XP system or to keep with real money, but the channels will always be available to play with new stuff coming all the time at no cost.
In addition to the channels, you can earn unique content like exclusive live concerts to play along with and guitar upgrades by playing GHTV. The major emphasis that was expressed to us was that new songs to play and videos was very important:
“We’re gonna start with hundreds (of songs) and it’s gonna be something we update very regularly. It’s really easy for us to interact. We’re just using the video. As long as we can get everything licensed, then we can get it right in the game. We’re really hoping the community will get behind it and get involved and say ‘We’d like to see this, we’d like to see that.’ That’s something we’re going to pay really close attention to.”
There’s a good mix of new and old, indie and mainstream, and even spanning genres like pop and country.
“It’s a delicate balance. We’re constantly marking up songs that will never make it into the game, just so we at the studio can play it and see how it feels. We take it really personally. Basically, a song doesn’t make it in here unless it passes our rigorous tastes…we’re gonna put whatever meets the four qualifications in: what we can license, what’s popular, what we like, and what plays well. We’re not just going to put in the classic GH style songs. We’re gonna try new stuff. A lot of people who just like rock would really actually like some of this other stuff, but wouldn’t be caught dead searching for it on Spotify. So that’s why we’re gonna cast a wide net.”
With all of this mind, as well as the new upgrades to play and adjustments of Star Power and multiplayer, Guitar Hero Live truly does feel like a brand new game rather than an update or re-hash. And for $100 total with no DLC or Season Pass required, that’s a fairly good deal, considering all the money we’ve spent in the past on rhythm games. Will this game bring the magic back and take the nation by storm like it did a decade ago? There’s no way to know. But, for what it’s worth, it seems like a truly rocking experience again.
Guitar Hero Live will be released on Xbox One, PS4, Wii U, Xbox 360, and PS3 on October 20.