Guitar Hero is back!

After nearly a 4 year hiatus, the game is back with a new look, new guitar and new song library.

• Gone are the old rendered crowds, replaced with live HD video,
• Gone are the old rendered band members, also replaced with live HD video,
• Gone is being booed off stage. you can complete a song without actually hitting any notes, just lots of concerned looks from fellow band members.
• There are now two methods of playing - Live (career mode) and GHTV
• Its playable on an AppleTV, iPhone and iPad.

Availability

The usual suspects are all here - Xbox One, PS4 but most suprisingly, the Apple TV is also listed as well as an iPhone & iPad.

IOS version

The IOS version is $50 on the App store or comes as a 'trial' with two songs (Fall Out Boy - My Songs Know What You Did in The Night & Rise Against - Satellite). The game automatically unlocks to full version if you've purchased the IOS guitar ($50 anyway). As far as I can see right now, the only way to buy the Guitar Hero IOS guitar is from an Apple store or Amazon. I've not seen the product in any Best Buy, Target or other physical store.

Unfortunately the IOS version is incompatible with the Xbox and Playstation guitars (and vice versa), so you cant grab your phone, guitar and go (to a friends house). The Apple TV version also requires buffering for crowd reaction due to its limited onboard capacity so there are brief interuptions to game play (pending the speed of your internet connection), and the bitrate can sample down leaving you a completely playable game but pixels for crowds.

Real Crowds,

So the game does feature real extras posing as crowd members, along with security, band members and people behind the stage. Be aware that some of the intro's before you actually play are long and they still run even in the quick play mode, which can be a little annoying when all you want to do is practice. The camera realistically moves around as if you're looking around at the crowd, scenery, band members and occassionally a hairy guy that grunts as he changes your guitar, The better you play - the crowd cheers and goes wild, the worse you play everyone looks at you funny on stage and the crowd looks bored. Got the jist of it? lets move on.

The venues

Guitar Hero live currently has two gigs and a ton of bands, one thats installed with the game & one thats free DLC.

Rock the block - Based in the U.S,

Bands listed (just incase you couldn't read.... and for Google) Sunday Fighthound (headline), Vivid Screams The Out Outs Quantum Freqs Broken Tide Saturday The Jephson Hangout (headline) Blackout Conspiracy Our Pasts Collide Portland Cloud Orchestra Fighthound (again)

 

SoundDial - Based in the U.K,

Bands listed (Gottaa love Google..... Again) The Jephson Hangout (Headline) Blackout Conspiracy Our Pasts Collide Portland Cloud Orchestra Fighthound

You play the lead guitarist in all the bands (Presumably in GH World you stay on stage the entire gig and leave with a severely damaged wrist? just speculating....)

All the gigs have additional voice overs from DJ's at the song starts/ ends and in the selection lobbies.

Songs

Freestyle Games / Activision have worked really hard in doing licensing deals for a wide, eclectic range of songs for the career mode. They have everything listed from metal with the likes of Bring Me The Horizon and Halestorm through to folk music with Mumford & Sons through to pop music with Katy Perry.

GHTV

GHTV is the online, interactive format of Guitar Hero, you can play against other users connected to GHTV. You don't see there screens, just their scores in a leaderboard displayed inobtrusively on the left hand side of the screen. Credit to Freestyle on this, it only updates every 10 seconds or so and only really makes anything eye distracting if you rise up the board, meaning you can focus on the gameplay and glace at your leisure.

More information on GHTV will be linked to here on a future article.

Guitar

The guitar itself has been totally redesigned from previous incarnations and now features two rows of 3 game play buttons, a 'hero' button (to unlock hero power if you cant tilt the guitar up quickly), the whammy bar, a GHTV dedicated button, pause/option buttons (pause in career, quit in GHTV) and the on/off and control buttons for your xbox/playstation/appleTV.