#Guitar hero live song rating full#

Each festival has multiple sets that are broken up by genre and feature three songs each (the finale features five). Rock the Bock takes place in the US and features faux bands like “Broken Tide” and “The Jephson Hangout” performing songs from real bands like Arctic Monkeys and Elbow, while SoundDial takes place in the UK and features faux bands like “Portland Cloud Orchestra” and “Our Pasts Collide” performing songs from real bands like Lumineers and 30 Seconds to Mars. GH Live is split up into two different festivals: Rock the Block and SoundDial. The only real issue are the terrible signs some members of the crowd hold up, with sayings like “you guys are so cool,” “excited,” “fresh” and my personal favorite “!!!!!!!!.” Considering that the crowd generally sings along to the songs, you think they could have passed out some more relevant signs (a few do show up, but there’s never enough), as it’s a noticeable distraction when trying to be totally enveloped. Failing on a song and seeing the disgusted looks everybody is giving you is truly horrifying (some might not even be able to stomach the embarrassment and quickly restart) and proves just how effective the FMV is. It’s cleverly done and the FMV overall is impressive.Īll of the “bands” that were assembled are actually playing and singing the song, but all of the audio heard is actually from the original recording. This transition is possible due to your vision going hazy on screen and seeing the new reaction of your fellow bandmates and crowd when it returns to normal. While hopefully each performance will result in seeing the good FMV, they can fairly seamlessly switch between each other if things start to go south. Two different sets of performances were filmed for each song one where the band is killing it and the crowd is going wild and one where the band is failing thanks to you and the crowd is becoming belligerent, making disgusted faces and even throwing stuff at you.

This allows players to experience these concerts as if they’re actually in the band.

The guitarist of each band was in reality a cameraman, filming the entire concert in first-person as if they were actually playing along with the band. Basically, multiple faux bands were assembled to play in front of faux crowds. GH Live presents a decidedly more mature way to play Guitar Hero, as the animations have been replaced with real-life FMV. Quite frankly, this was always lame and it’s staggering Activision never broke away from it. In past Guitar Hero games, there was an animated band playing in the background that would attempt to blow the virtual roof off a virtual venue filled with virtual fans. Besides the gameplay itself (more on that later), GH Live is quite different from its predecessors.

#Guitar hero live song rating full#

The core of the experience (but not where most time will be spent) is “GH Live,” featuring a full offline single player experience to strum through.

Guitar Hero Live is split into two, almost separate, games. Shrewdly allowing the franchise to rest in purgatory for half a decade, Activision is back with the carefully planned Guitar Hero Live that hopes to recapture the lost fanbase and inspire a whole new generation of virtual rock stars. Suffice it to say, if Malcolm Gladwell were to write a book on the subject of market saturation, there’s little doubt that an entire chapter would be devoted to these games. There were more than twenty Guitar Hero releases in only five years that’s in addition to eighteen Rock Band games, two DJ Heroes and Band Hero, all of which made matters even worse. While the failure of these franchises could be attributed to them simply being a fad (á la Dance Dance Revolution), Activision and EA played the biggest roll. The world went from having nightly Guitar Hero/Rock Band bar nights to the plastic instruments popping up in landfills and thrift shops worldwide (during a trip down to the small old west town of Willcox, Arizona just last week, I encountered multiple Rock Band and Guitar Hero peripherals spread across three “antique shops,” far and away the most recently produced items there right after VHS tapes). That’s an astoundingly quick boom and bust cycle for anything, let alone a video game franchise, and quite shocking in retrospect. Just as quickly as the genre debuted as a specialized rhythm game published by RedOctane in 2005, it ceased production in 2010. Guitar Hero and Rock Band epitomize the concept of oversaturation.