Guitar Hero Live Is Official & Rebooting The Franchise

Guitar Hero Live

Following yesterday’s tease, Activision and FreeStyleGames have announced Guitar Hero Live to be the next reboot to the popular franchise

Hot off the tease from yesterday we now officially have Guitar Hero Live and it is looking to reboot the franchise with some new features and a new peripheral for the game. We’ll dig into all of that in a moment but here we have it; Guitar Hero Live is coming to the PS3, PS4, Xbox 360, Xbox One, Wii U, Android, and iOS platforms sometime later this year. My money would be on late October or early November to compete with Rock Band 4 as well as get all of those holiday sales a little bit early. You know; the standard fare that we were used to back when all of these guitar games were at their peak. It’s pretty much the only thing that doesn’t look to be changed for the franchise with Guitar Hero Live.

So what is new with Guitar Hero Live? Well it looks like FreeStyleGames is trying to device an experience for us all that puts us all more in a FPS style for the game. At least in terms of viewing the crowds and activity on the stage. This would be in the guise of adding a level of real world immersion while having the track scrolling over the screen for us to press the keys on the screen to keep the music flowing in Guitar Hero Live. That is something that will also be more dynamic and “immersive” as the audience is also being stated to react live to how you are performing during the song as well. That means there will be a lot of pre-recorded video/audio in Guitar Hero Live unless Activision is going to hire thousands of people to truly react live during your play sessions. That is as unlikely as there being girls who take off their tops and throw panties onto the stage in Guitar Hero Live so we’ll go with the pre-recorded stuff.

Also in the mix for Guitar Hero Live is a service that will allow us to play the music for music videos via the GHTV feature for the game. This is listed as being continually updated with official music videos that will play in the background of the screen but there is no word on what charge there will be for this. Just like the new controller that we will be forced to pick up to enjoy Guitar Hero Live that looks to be just a shifting of all the buttons into a 3 by 2 grid instead of a nice long string of five colors. All to simulate the few cords we will all actually be playing in Guitar Hero Live. Would it have been too much to ask to keep some form of backwards compatibility Activision? Maybe so.

Guitar Hero Live — Guitar Controller

I may be harshing on Guitar Hero Live a little soon as it has just been announced but it seems like a fan dis-service to make them forget everything they know for the franchise in the guise of immersion. Yes, Guitar Hero Live may make us all feel more like rock stars while playing if all of the video plays out as well as I am sure the developers want it to. I am just not a huge fan of being expected to have a rock star salary to enjoy Guitar Hero Live. Maybe it is just me here but I’ll still most likely be giving the whole new version of the franchise a try when it does come out. There is still time to sell me on it here after all. Please do.

What do you think about Guitar Hero Live though? Do you see these new features as a blessing or do you wish that the franchise would have stayed a bit closer to the same? Do you think having simulated “live” audiences will make you feel more like a star? When was the last time that you ever saw a crowd boo a performer on stage? Shout it out in the comments like one would shout at the devil.