It’s late-March, and TrustedReviews is in central London to see a mysterious new Activision game. Some clues as to the identity of the game are obtainable from the choice of venue: we’re at the Scotch of St. James, which was where Jimi Hendrix played his first ever UK gig, and where the Beatles and the Rolling Stones once held their own tables. As the roaring 60s and 70s came to a close, the club was closed for 25 years, until it was restored to its former glory in 2012. Since then, Jack White, Mark Ronson and John Legend have all played there, while Harry Styles, Rita Ora and Mark Ronson regularly party here.
Obviously, it doesn’t take a genius to figure out that Activision is more likely to announce the new Guitar Hero rather than the new Call of Duty here today, but it’s a very appropriate venue for a game that also had its heyday in the past, has laid dormant for a period, and is now ready to make its return. That return is in the form of Guitar Hero Live: a new game, with a new guitar peripheral, from a new development studio, for a new set of devices.

The outfit in charge of reinventing the series is UK-based developer Freestyle Games. They’re new to the Guitar Hero franchise, but they have good form in the music genre, having created DJ Hero and DJ Hero 2 for Activision, coincidentally just as the Guitar Hero franchise was winding down. Creative Director Jamie Jackson has worked on both franchises, but where he once wore a dance music-friendly branded t-shirt and cropped beard, he now sports the rock ‘n’ roll checked shirt and long beard. The beard is actually being sported by the majority of the studio; apparently it’s a Freestyle tradition where they grow out their facial hair and shave it off once they get the game out.
“Guitar Hero Live is about making you feel like a rock star,” Jackson told TrustedReviews at the game’s unveiling. “[At the studio] all our anecdotes were about being a rock star. Our focus was “let’s make the best guitar game we can”.” That means this version of Guitar Hero is all about the axe, and all other instruments are out. Not only that, but it’s a brand new guitar made by Freestyle and RedOctane. Whereas previous guitars had five coloured fret buttons, the new guitar features two rows of three buttons. This means that you don’t have to use your little finger to master songs at the hardest difficulty anymore; dexterity is now tested by how quickly you can move your fingers between and across the two rows.
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It’s easy to be sceptical about Activision requiring a whole new guitar for its latest Guitar Hero game. After all, you probably bought enough of these lumps of plastic and contributed to Activision’s enormous profit margins on the game last time around. And there is something cynical about it, especially in how similar it is to the old guitar aside from the new fret board. The strumming board and whammy bar feel exactly the same; the only other notable change is that “Hero” mode is activated using a button by the strumming board, rather than tilting the guitar. Longtime fans of the series are likely to be even more galled by the fact that their previously-purchased tracks won’t work in the new game.
However, there is some method in Freestyle’s madness: within a minute of playing, you can appreciate how the new fret button layout has the potential to feel better, more nuanced, more natural. Rather than five coloured notes flying at you on screen, three Black and White notes appear instead. If they’re White, you need to hold down the corresponding button on the top row. If they’re black, you do the same on the bottom row. It helps beginners that the shape of the notes point up or down in relation to the corresponding row on the controller. That’s all there is to it at medium difficulty; on harder levels, you also sometimes need to strum without pressing any buttons, or hold both rows of buttons down at the same time.

According to Freestyle games, the new layout is intended to make the game more accessible to the vast number of “medium difficulty” players who were happy on Guitar Hero’s default level, but lacked the dexterity in their pinky finger to go up to higher levels. “The six button combo also allows us a lot more combinations--you can do chord shapes,” explains Jackson. “There becomes a lot more depth to it, you have to learn this new physical way of playing,” he claims.
We only played through the two songs in the demo twice, but we did enjoy the new button layout. We managed to put together 100-note streaks during our first go on Fall Out Boy’s “My Songs Know What You Did In The Dark (Light Em Up)” on medium difficulty, and 80-note streaks on the more difficult Black Keys’ “Gold On The Ceiling” on the same difficulty. The harder levels were much more problematic -- we barely managed to land a few notes before messing up, but it seemed to be more within our reach than before, especially on songs we were more familiar with.
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While the success of the controller redesign is something that can only be judged after extended play (especially for those who play at the harder difficulties), we can be much more confident about the quality of the visual redesign. Whereas previous games in the series had a colourful, cartoon-like aesthetic, Guitar Hero Live is much more realistic. It’s all based around the experience of what it’s like to play live: the pre-show nerves, the interaction with the rest of the band, the response from the audience. To that end, everything is presented in video form, from a first-person perspective. As you play, you look around to see your band and the audience: if you’re playing well, they react positively; if you’re not, they give you a “WTF” face or hurl bottles at your head.
The result was a huge improvement in atmosphere when playing the game. When you’re walking out from the dressing room to the stage, you get to see your bandmates wanting to hurl or psyching themselves up, a cute groupie telling you to have a good set, or a roadie leading you up to the stage. The footage has all been filmed at real life-venues from small clubs to massive arenas, and looking out onto a Glastonbury-sized crowd is genuinely nerve-wracking. However, once you’ve seen these preambles once you’ll probably want to skip them, and when you’re actually playing the game, you block out the peripheral distractions and focus on the notes in the centre of the screen.
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The other big new innovation is Guitar Hero TV--a set of TV-like channels that play music videos 24/7 that you can play along to. We didn’t get to experience this mode for ourselves, but we saw a video of it in action. The music videos of recent hits from Ed Sheeran and Of Monsters and Men replaced the first-person view in the career mode, and on the left of the screen, you could see your score being ranked live against other players from around the world as you played. Jamie likened GHTV to the game’s arcade mode, and the good news is that Activision says it will be free, rather than subscription-based.
The new game will support “current-gen and old-gen” according to Activision, and while no individual platforms were named, we can safely assume that means the PlayStation 3 and PlayStation 4, and Xbox 360 and Xbox One. Interestingly, the same Guitar Hero Live experience is also coming to mobiles and tablets. Again, no individual platforms were confirmed, but Activision compared the experience to the tablet release of Skylanders: Trap Team. For that reason, we can safely assume iOS and hopefully Android versions of the game are coming, with a Bluetooth guitar specifically made for mobiles. Jamie also boasted of being able to plug your mobile device into a TV and have the full Guitar Hero experience just as you would from a console.
First Impressions
Guitar Hero Live is due out in Autumn 2015, which is relatively soon. We’ve been promised more information at E3 2015 in June, and that those announcements won’t be about further peripherals--this will remain a pure guitar-based experience. We’ll wait to see how it looks in a few months time, but for now, we were left wanting to play more of the game, which is promising given how recently we thought we were over the franchise.