I am a music fan. I’m not just a casual music fan either. I am a rabid consumer of all things with a beat ranging from pop to rock to metal and even a little redneck guitar twang. I was also a rabid consumer of all things ‘rhythm gaming’ until the inevitable oversaturation hit and we all just kind of had enough. When I heard the ‘music games are back’ chatter a few months ago I’ll admit I wasn’t as excited as I should have been. Now, after getting a better look at what Activision and developer Freestyle Games are bringing to the table, I can say without a shadow of a doubt that my reservations were misplaced.
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“Guitar Hero is back. It’s back with more innovation in one franchise sequel than I’ve seen out of a collection of other franchise sequels all put together. The game has changed, the hardware has changed, the model has changed. It’s all different and dare I say it’s all massively improved.”
At a pre-E3 preview event I sat with Jamie Jackson, Creative Director at Freestyle, to get a solid look at GHTV, the online portion of the game. GHTV is 24-hour playable music video network which lets fans play along to a continually-updated collection of official videos, from the newest releases to favorite hits. In the build we saw GHTV was running two channels consecutively and there were different shows on each channel, both with different genres available. With nothing more than the push of a button you are in the game, in the show, in the music video happily playing along.
Immediately you are taken back to the days when MTV actually played music videos. In fact, if you walk away from the game for a little bit, the note highway disappears and you have a kick ass music video channel running 24/7. Throw that sumbitch up at a house party and the entertainment portion of the evening is covered. Now as cool as that is what really matters is how you can play it all and how the game learns about you as a player.
Over the course of regular play GHTV will learn your preferred music styles and it will give you recommendations of songs to play, which you can stream on demand (with plays that you can earn in game or purchase), curate into playlists and even save to a personal ‘My Songs’ list to permanently add to your library. When you jump into channels you are matched up against other players of similar skill levels to compete with but the game will also make sure that if your friends are also playing that you’ll sync up with them.
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“Immediately you are taken back to the days when MTV actually played music videos. In fact, if you walk away from the game for a little bit, the note highway disappears and you have a kick ass music video channel running 24/7.”
We were also shown GHTV Premium and right away I know what you’re thinking… here’s where Activision gives us the gears with the high cost extras. Well, you’re wrong. While you can access Premium with real world money you can also play your way in by completing fun challenges. In fact, you’re never forced behind a paywall. You can earn everything in the game without ever spending a real world penny. Why would you want to play GHTV Premium though? Plain and simple, it has some kickass content.
We were shown a 3 song set of insanely high quality live action concert footage that we were able to play along with. It also came with challenges and competitions unique to Premium in which you could win note highways, and player cards among other things. Jamie was quick to point out, of course, that the content in Premium would eventually be pushed out to the regular GHTV channels as well so those who don’t want to venture into Premium will never lose out on content.
Overall we only got a tiny taste of what Freestyle has in store for us with Guitar Hero Live but what we did see left us wanting for more. Things such as no fail states, no pay walls (seriously, THANK YOU) and new hero powers (which you can read more about in our coverage of the single player portion of the game) are only a few of the things that look to make Guitar Hero Live one of the most exciting franchises coming our way just over the horizon.
