We'll be the first to admit, when we heard both Guitar Hero and Rock Band were coming back, we got a little giddy. Over the years, like many of you, we've had countless great nights in, sitting back, plastic guitar in hand, strumming along to the music with a group of friends, living the rock and roll dream from the comfort of our own home. So when Activision announced they'd be bringing back Guitar Hero, it was like music to our ears. Especially as it seems to be doing just about everything right.
We recently had the chance to go hands-on with Guitar Hero LIVE, and that involved getting to grips with the brand new guitar controller. Unlike Rock Band, which has kept its guitars pretty much the same, the team behind Guitar Hero have taken their axe back to the drawing board, giving the entire concept a pretty radical overhaul. While the concept behind both games is pretty much the same - notes come at you down the screen, and you have to hold the right buttons on the guitar neck, and strum as the note reaches the bottom - Guitar Hero and Rock Band are taking the genre in two separate directions. So while Rock Band sticks with the tried and tested five coloured buttons, Guitar Hero instead has six buttons, arranged in a 3x2 arrangement. But what does that change in practice? Well, just about everything.
The geetar, in all its glory.
If you've played a music game before, you may as well throw out everything you know, as Guitar Hero LIVE feels totally different to anything that's come before. If you were rocking out on expert mode before, hitting every note in a solo, with Guitar Hero LIVE, it's a level playing field again, and everyone starts over from scratch - all because of the new button arrangement. And that's not a bad thing. In fact, it makes Guitar Hero feel totally fresh, something Leamington Spa based studio Freestyle Games were apparently aiming for, as we found out when we relayed our feelings to creative director Jamie Jackson:
"So… hearing you say that makes me really happy. Because if we'd just made the same game, you'd have walked in there, you'd have played it exactly as you just played it and nailed it, and there'd have been no challenge for you. There'd be nothing for you to try and come back to and practice again. I mean, to get to expert before, you probably put a lot of time in, right? I mean, I never got past medium myself. This finger [holding up his pinky] is basically useless to me. I could literally chop it off right now and my life wouldn't be any different. So, it makes me kind of happy to hear you say that, because I think that you're going to come back to it."
Easy enough - just hold all three white buttons, and strum in triplets!
But while it may sound like a total mind meld, Guitar Hero LIVE is still actually really easy to pick up and play. In fact, there are five or six different difficulty levels on offer to help beginners find their rhythm, with the lowest two levels only using one row of notes, making things a lot easier on your brain. Happily, you change difficulty mid song, too - as we took advantage of, when we jumped into Fallout Boy's My Songs Know What You Did In The Dark, a typically Fallout Boy catchy track (with an awkward name) that's essentially non-stop power chords. Once our fingers had untangled themselves, it didn't take too long to settle down and start getting to grips with things, as we progressively jumped up difficulty levels, before finding out niche in Advanced, just under the game's Expert mode. OK, so it was an easy song - and Judas Priest's Breaking the Law shook us straight back out of our comfort zone, but still - it's proof if nothing else that Guitar Hero LIVE is easy to get started with. Even then, the only really tricky bits were the solos - having to try and read the new note track, and see if it's a top or bottom note in a split second takes a little bit of getting used to - but as we may have mentioned once or twice, it all feels fresh.
In fact, perhaps the only real question mark that currently sits over Guitar Hero, is how the game's much vaunted Guitar Hero TV mode is going to work in practice. In essence, this new mode will be replacing the series' previous staple of downloadable add-on songs, essentially providing a range of 24/7 music channels you can start watching, and play along to. Divided up into genres, you can jump in and start playing along at the touch of a button, with developers Freestyle Games telling us they're planning on adding tracks to the library on a regular basis. The downside, then, comes from the fact you can't really choose what you want to play - at least, not entirely freely. Whereas before, you'd pick a song you want, pay the £1.80 or whatever, and it's be added to your library for good, Guitar Hero TV's model skews a lot closer to a free to play system. You can pick and choose any of the songs in the library to play - but doing so will cost you an in-game currency known as "plays". You earn these by playing the game in general, and can spend them to play one-off songs - or, of course, you can buy plays for a small fee. What you may-or-may-not be able to do (it sounds like the studio hadn't entirely finalised the system when we spoke to them) is buy the tracks outright, something that's a bit of a step change compared to earlier games.
We do still wonder which part of Activison's Guitar Hero focus group said "You know, I've always wanted to play to a real crowd". Still, it's an interesting twist.
Still, for the most part, our time with Guitar Hero was unanimously positive. While we do miss the ability to get four friends together (the game only supports two guitars, both playing the same part (so no bass), and one singer), Guitar Hero looks set to pull off the unthinkable a few years ago, and become the metaphorical phoenix from the ashes. By taking the focus back to the guitar like this, Guitar Hero's doing what it should have done years ago - rather than fighting for the same market Rock Band's after, it's becoming its own, distinct game - a complimentary competitor rather than a poor man's version. And who knows. This time around, maybe, just maybe, Guitar Hero might even beat Rock Band at its own game...
