Guitar Hero is back, baby.

Honestly, I left the Guitar Hero brand years ago. After spending far, far too many hours than what would be considered ‘healthy’ on Guitar Hero and Guitar Hero 2 (not to mention garnering far, far too many blisters over that period of time), Activision’s Guitar Hero 3 left me disappointed in its song selection and new mechanics, and in that, my attention shifted to Harmonix’ own Rock Band series.

At that time, all that I was interested in was playing songs with my friends (and staying far away from the microphone due to embarassment), and of course, at that time, Rock Band provided a far better group experience.

Obviously, both Guitar Hero and Rock Band disappeared for years after the all-too similar Rock Band 3 and Guitar Hero: World Tour, yearly updates, and an astronomical amount of expensive plastic controllers led to the entire rhythm genre all but disappearing entirely.

Now it’s late 2015, and both Activision and Harmonix have bet that we’re all ready to pick up our (new) plastic instruments and rock out once again, and boy were they right.

Guitar Hero Live and Rock Band 4 both launched within a few short weeks of each other, and thankfully this time around, both titles are completely different… Well, aside from the fact that you’re still playing plastic instruments.

This time, Rock Band 4 feels incredibly similar to 2010’s Rock Band 3 (but better looking, of course), and is banking on the idea that you loved Rock Band, want a similar experience, and also want access to the myriads of DLC that you likely purchased way back in the day. It’s a great idea, and the transferring of DLC alone is likely to ensure a lot of purchases from gamers who played the last game in the series, but again, things are pretty same-y with this iteration.

Guitar Hero Live? Well, it’s almost unrecognizable from any other game in the series, and it banks on an idea that I haven’t seen ever in the genre, and rarely anywhere else (well, since the 90’s, anyways): full motion video.

https://youtu.be/6SnIZgESm4c

And it’s absolutely incredible. It’s impressive to the point that during the game’s tutorial I began laughing wildly at just how impressive everything looked.

See, Guitar Hero Live removes the silly, cartoon caricatures, animated crowds, and insanely busy HUD of previous iterations, and replaces them with a simple interface and beautiful footage of real performers on real stages, performing to real crowds.

Again, it’s insane. The game is played from a first person perspective; you are the guitar player, and the HUD consists of only the fret board, the notes, and your current note streak. Gone is the gauge that tells you just how well (or poorly) you’re doing, and there’s no score onscreen either. So how do you know how you’re doing? The crowd (and your bandmates), obviously.

Play well, and your bandmates will look at you with sheer excitement as you put on the best performance of your lives. Play well, and the crowd will jump, cheer, sing along, and generally freak out. And then there’s the opposite. If you stink, your bandmates will look at you with sheer confusion, the crowd will go silent, and you’ll genuinely feel bad for what you’re doing. If you’re doing really poorly, your band will look completely pissed, and the crowd will actually begin to throw things at you.

Remember that this is Guitar Hero Live, so rather than flipping through a menu to select your music after playing just one song at a time, you’ll actually be playing setlists and different venues during two fictional festivals, SoundDial in the UK, and Rock the Block in the US. Instead of one track at a time, you’ll generally be playing three or four before returning to a menu. This is great because it keeps you in the action for far longer than in past games, and once you’re into the 2spooky4me harder modes in the game, it intensifies the challenge as your fingers are bound to get exhausted.

Speaking of fingers getting exhausted, this new controller was hard to get used to. This isn’t a fault of the controller at all, but it’s so different that it definitely impeded my playing for some time. See, instead of having five buttons across the neck of the guitar (one each for five ‘frets’), the new guitar has two sets of three buttons, one on top of the other. This means that the game should be more approachable for beginners, as they actually have to move less, but also far more challenging for expert players, as technically there’s an extra button along with the addition of chords. For me, it was kind of like trying to learn a bicycle that pedals completely differently from the kind that you already know how to ride. For instance, seeing a note coming at you on the left of the fretboard, and then on the right of the fretboard and now technically just two buttons apart, but being used to the older controllers, I’d instead reach across the neck for buttons that no longer exist.

https://youtu.be/bolwf2q9Vb8

Once I put in some substantial time with the controller, however, things were great, and I actually felt the new axe to be more comfortable than any I’d used in the past. Go figure.

There’s a myriad of tracks available in Guitar Hero Live, and I’m not sure if I’m just getting old, or if I just don’t listen to any current popular music, but I certainly recognized far fewer songs that I would have in earlier games in the series. Don’t get me wrong, they’re definitely not bad, but I did’t have the ‘oh, I already love all of these songs’ feeling that I did with earlier titles. Tracks range from classics like Warrant’s ‘Cherry Pie’, The Who’s ‘Won’t Get Fooled Again’, The Rolling Stones ‘Paint It Black’ and more, and there are also tracks that I never thought I’d see in a Guitar Hero game (and that I don’t even really know) like Eminem’s ‘Berzek’, Skrillex’ ‘Bangarang’ and many more. In any case, the game’s current setlist is right here.

So that’s Guitar Hero Live. You’ll note that I didn’t mention anything about actually playing with friends, racking up crazy scores, or anything like that.

Well, Guitar Hero Live is actually only half of the game.

Actually, the first thing that you’re presented with each time you boot up Guitar Hero Live is which mode you’d like to play, Live, or TV.

GHTV actually feels far closer to the mechanics of Guitar Hero games of generations passed; multipliers, hero powers, and customization all make a triumphant return, but again, instead of cheesy characters and a one-song-at-a-time philosophy, GHTV becomes the ultimate party game by having you simply play over top of music videos. It’s freaking brilliant.

As of now, you have two different live channels to choose from, the aptly named GH1 and GH2. Each has different programming on at different times, so if you’re not feeling the indie tracks on GH1 at the moment, you’ll find something else entirely running on GH2. I should probably give you an ample warning about GHTV, however: it is unbelievably, undeniably addicting. Numerous times, I picked up the guitar and expected to play through a few videos before moving on with my day, and those good intentions turned into me pulling the Netflix classic ‘just one more’ for what felt like several hours. Another addictive element is the completion aspect of GHTV. Because it’s always online, you’ll see how you’re performing in your current song compared to 9 other players that are at your skill-level. This led to me swearing at my TV far, far too often as I messed up a note streak, and also had me giddy with excitement as I made some unexpected comebacks.

A great progression system certainly keeps you coming back for more, as you can unlock alternate fretboards, new hero powers, player cards, as well as in-game currency that lets you play songs on demand.

https://youtu.be/4fQccRAO40U

Here’s where Guitar Hero Live’s GHTV mode has been receiving some controversy that I really don’t understand. Gone are the old days of spending cash on DLC that you’ll either play all the time, or just a handful. Sure, this old model ensured that you could have instant access to tracks that you loved whenever you wanted to play them, but it did absolutely nothing for another very important aspect of these games: music discovery. You downloaded everything you knew and loved off of the store, and ignored everything else, because you weren’t willing to spend a few dollars on something that you weren’t already familiar with. This is totally natural, and it totally makes sense, but how much great content did you miss out on because the old games simply had no real discovery system?

GHTV is amazing because it’s almost all discovery. You play through hundreds, and hundreds, of music videos, many they’ll have never seen or heard before, and you’ll absolutely fall in love with many of them. I know that I now have plenty of bands, songs, and albums on my phone that I would have never even heard without the help of GHTV.

So the controversy comes from the fact that you never really buy anything. Every song that you play earns you in-game currency, which you can use to play any song in the game’s expansive library, on-demand. There’s no way to simply say ‘Hey, I really love Boston’s ‘ More Than A Feeling’, and pay an actual amount of money to have it in your library, forever. You access the track with the in-game currency that you’ve already earned, or you can pay some real money for a buttload of said currency.

The big thing to note here, is that in the many, many hours that I’ve played the game, I’ve never actually felt like I actually had to spend money. The game rewards you with currency at a very steady rate (after every single song you play, in fact), and it’s not tough whatsoever to buy a pack of ‘Play Tokens’ that allow you play through whatever the heck you want.

https://youtu.be/Pk69OcbOJDQ

I may be in the minority, but I actually feel like this model is incredible. Instead of spending actual, real money to download a song that I may or may not play a handful of times, I just have to play the addictive as hell GHTV channels, which I’d be doing anyways to earn the ability to play whatever I want. I actually find that I generally gravitate towards GH1 or GH2, and only actually jump into an on-demand track when I feel like I need a break, or I’ve just found a song that I’d like to play again. As of this writing I have nearly 50 Play Tokens available to me (and enough currency to buy more), and I haven’t spent a single dime. So yes, while these are technically micro-transactions, they’re definitely micro-transactions that are far, far different from a game that you’ve downloaded for free on your smart phone.

GHTV also offers very intriguing ‘Premium’ content, which you can access, again, with real money, or by completing in-game challenges. Premium content includes anything anything from new music videos in GHTV to live concert footage that you can play along to. It seems pretty neat, and if I was going to spend real money on the game, I’d rather have it be to play along to a live performance of one of my favourite bands, rather than to simply download one of their songs.

GHTV also, of course, supports multiplayer. Grab another guitar controller, and you can compete with your local friends, and you can also hook up a microphone in order to let someone perform vocals. It’s just as much fun as you’d expected to be, and it’s just as much fun as you remember from previous games. It may even be a little bit cooler, as the fact that you’re simply playing over-top of music videos is really, really slick.

I am absolutely in love with this game. After a much needed, years-long break, Guitar Hero is back, and it’s better than ever. There’s really nothing not to love about Guitar Hero Live, from its incredible full motion video-based Live mode, to the insanely addictive nature of GHTV, and at this point in 2015, it’s probably the most fun I’ve had with any video game this year. Really, I can’t wait to jump back into it, and I can’t wait to see how the game and how GHTV’s already impressive offerings evolve as time goes on.

Guitar Hero Live scores an encore-worthy 5/5.

https://youtu.be/123m8R16p04