Guitar Hero Live - PlayStation 4

I've been a guitar hero player since GH2 came out. I've played both Rock Band and Guitar Hero throughout my teenage years and within a month of each other's recent release, they have both been revived into the scene. Guitar Hero Live brings a new playstyle to the board offering a new guitar with 6 buttons across 3 frets. A total of 9 possible different notes to play, along with an open chord note compared to the original 5 colored buttons the old games and Rock Band offer. The guitar is different, and a lot of people don't like that. Don't fix what isn't broken, right? But honestly, for veterans like me, it's a breath of fresh air to have a new play-style offered; it sets it apart from the previous titles that were becoming stale. It's like being a newbie all over again and working my way back up to expert mode, and that excitement & progression when I was a teenager was half the fun.The game offers a live (career) mode, where you play through pre-made setlists as the guitarist to your band and watch live reactions of the crowd as you play. Their mood changes drastically as you play, whether that be a good or bad thing. It's a breath of fresh air instead of the cartoon character models.The other mode is a new feature to Guitar Hero called GHTV. It is basically a live radio that offers a couple channels for everybody to join in and play along with, tracking your high score vs other players and letting you earn EXP and gold to buy cool new things like different power ups, chart skins, and player cards. You also can buy "plays" to specifically choose songs out of the entirety of the GHTV playlist that YOU would like to play right away, instead of waiting for the radio to play it. You do have limited plays when it comes to this, and this is where Guitar Hero Live gets a bit iffy. It offers micro-transactions to buy more plays, or a "24 hour access pass" to the playlist where you can choose the songs you'd like to play for $5.99. This can really put off some players, myself included. The idea of paying for stuff like this after already paying 60 for the game and 40 for the guitar is obscene. However, you do NOT have to pay for this, and can very easily earn in-game gold by playing songs through the live radio rotation, and then buying your plays through that gold instead of real money. You can also earn plays by leveling up and doing premium playlists (higher level content). It is fair, in my opinion, but a cheap way to earn some extra money from Activision. Overall, I think the mode is definitely unique and interesting, and I'm assuming over time they will continue to add more songs into the library, offer more free channels that rotate to play on, and likely have DLC for new songs, however that make work with this GHTV system.Also, there is a quickplay mode to play any of the songs you've played through live (career) mode just like all previous Guitar Heroes, which you have access to at all times, all difficulties, and for free. Great stuff to see!The guitar, to me, feels great. In comparison to Rock Band's guitar, like always, Guitar Hero has always had a much more comfortable and responsive controller. It has a very audible click with the strum, and is quite loud. I personally like it. It is wireless and drains 2 AA batteries, and I've yet to see the extent of it's life. I'd assume 15-30 hours. There is a giant starpower button right under where your hand rests, and it is a great thing to see unlike many previous controllers.Overall, Guitar Hero Live seems promising. It offers unique gameplay with a very broad library of songs, a seemingly responsive and comfortable guitar controller, and most importantly, is pretty damn fun to play. The micro-transaction section in GHTV is a bit worrisome, but I don't think it will affect a majority of the player-base and in the year 2015, it's not too surprising to see something like this.TL;DR: Guitar Hero Live is fun to play, a good value, a large song library and fresh new gameplay to adapt to again just like the good old days. I think this is a decent purchase for veterans and newbies. Give it a shot and hopefully it won't disappoint you! I enjoy it more than Rock Band 4.

I have both this and Rock Band 4. I had higher initial expectations for Rock Band, but after playing both...Guitar Hero is a much more fun product...with much longer staying power.Guitar Hero does have a higher learning curve, since they employed a new guitar button system for this release. For those players who have played any of the former band games, it will take some getting used to. I, however, found this to be a pleasant surprise since I was expert on all the older games...I now can enjoy getting better on the new guitar.This is all new style of gameplay as well. You are now 1st person in a real band with real people (actors). There are different bands depending on music style. All sets and actors are very well conceived and very realistic.What surprised me the most was the GH Radio. You jump to that on-line section of the game and see what looks to be a TV guide of stations and music genres. For example you might see "Classic Rock from 8:00 to 8:30 pm. You can choose a channel and jump right into the songs playing and compete against other players. There's no delay and songs just keep coming. It's amazing.The only real negative so far is that the video synching of the guitar to my TV is time-consuming. Unlike Rock Band, the guitar does not have a light senor to automatically calibrate the sound and video. It's a manual process that almost seems to be a little bit off. I found myself tweaking the settings after every 2 or 3 songs because the notes were just a little off from the actual music.Normally this might knock down the rating a star, but I found that this one frustration has not spoiled the fun of the game and the inventive new design. I'm dying to play again tonight!!!Rock On!

I have been playing the GH series since the first day of the first GH. Ok, so I love this re-imagining of the series. It has an excellent soundtrack in the Live mode, but an even better soundtrack in GHTV mode. I actually love the way the it works now with the three on three control rather than the old 5 button scheme. It does give a new level of difficulty in learning to master the new controls as you now have to "use both sides of your brain" to learn to use both sides together. Casual mode just requires that you use the bottom row of three buttons, as regular mode and higher requires using both rows, open and double notes. GHTV is really where the game shines though as you get to compete with other players for a high score and there is then there is the whole leveling up system, unlocking new power-ups and rewards and whatnot. I love just playing with the different half-hour to one hour programming blocks. You never know what song will come up and there are a lot that the game launched with and more to come. I haven't had technical issues with the guitar controller nor the dongle as other reviewers have noted and I have sat as far as 6 feet away with no problems with connectivity. I absolutely love the real footage over game characters as well. My only complaint, and a small one at that, is that you cannot share anything. I have not located anything on the controller itself that will allow you to share screenshots or stream gameplay like on a normal PS4 controller and when I did try using the share button on the normal controller it will not allow you to do either. Probably some sort of copyright thing I figure, but you cannot share your gameplay.