Guitar Hero Live Is…Well…Live

You take up your be-stickered plastic guitar and glare determinedly into your TV screen. With the familiar creak and hiss, the note highway winds into existence before you. Your fingers flex absentmindedly, the vinyl guitar strap bites your neck. This is it. The day you’ll beat DragonForce on expert. You can feel it.

The notes are up! Your hands fly, sweat beads on your forehead. Red, blue, blue, yellow, orangeorangegreenblue red. If Miguel from Road to El Dorado can do it, you certainly can.

It’s too much, you can’t keep up. Your hand aches, your eyes stream. It’s just too metal! You can’t handle this level of rock!

You collapse. It’s beaten you…again. Again. the screen goes red, the crowd boos…it’s over…

Oh hey! 30%! You’ve improved.

Guitar Hero Live Reboot

FreeStyleGames and Activision have announced the next reboot to hit stores this season, Guitar Hero Live, and it looks epic.

Guitar Hero Live will be the first new Guitar Hero game since 2010, and it will feature a bevy of cool new concepts in two major game modes.

The first will focus, as the name suggests, on live performance. Now, some of you may be saying, “of course it will, John. Guitar Hero performances have always been on stage”, and you would be right. By live, though, I mean in front of a realcrowd.

Guitar Hero Live will put YOU on the stage. The performances will be in first person in front of footage of real live crowds in real venues, from small clubs to giant stadiums all around the world.

Your adoring fans will react to you and to your performance.  Not only that, but the bands (real bands, hired by FreeStyle to be in the game) will react to you too. If you’re rocking, the crowd and your band will love you. If you’re sucking, well… you can imagine.

The second game type will be Guitar Hero TV. According to the game’s website, “hundreds of videos will be available at launch spanning all genres of music, with new videos continually added to the lineup.”

GHTV gameplay will be in “channels.” From what the website says, you’ll pick a video, and based on that, the game will find other videos and songs similar to it for you to continue playing, kind of like a Pandora for music videos. The developers are marketing it as a non-subscription 24-hour music video service. You’ll be able to change channels at any time and be able to rank up to earn access to videos on demand. Players can also pay real money to buy songs on demand.

GHTV will also serve as the game’s multiplayer mode, pitting you against your friends and against players from all around the world via leaderboard. Your friends will also be able to watch the videos, though whether the website means if they’re in the room or if they’re online isn’t yet clear.

I’m personally interested to see how Guitar Hero Live will incorporate footage of live crowds without being repetitive. They’d only have so much video, right? How will the crowd’s reactions change? Wouldn’t the developers have to cut to new footage of the disappointed fans? How will those transitions be hidden?

Hopefully FreeStyleGames or Activision will answer these questions soon. Stay tuned!

Picture Credits: GuitarHero