The concert action in Guitar Hero Live is everything you axe’d for

We received a copy of the game for review purposes. I play guitar. I play guitar in my car. Sometimes I also casually strum at my desk in-between thoughts or cat videos. For air guitar or real musicians anywhere Guitar Hero Live is for you.  It’s all guitar. You axe demons; Satriani wannabes and alt-rock legends get your groove on or head to the car, because this is as close to playing in front of festival crowds as most of us will get. In my case, that’s a good thing. After two hours of playing it skills improved, but not to the extent where the crowd or my band mates approved of what I was playing.

That is the amazing part of the game. While you play the game you’re on stage with your band, playing in front of various festival crowds. If you play well then the crowd and your band will praise you, yell great things, look favorably at you and shower you with compliments. For me that situation did not happen often.

More often than not, my band and the people that heard me play were looking in my direction curiously, telling me to get in gear, mouthing a couple possibly obscenities or throwing things at me on stage. However, when I really concentrated the crowd turned on a dime and started to applaud my guitar skills. For a moment even the costumed bear on the Rock the Block stage was giving me applause instead of disdain.

In Guitar Hero Live you can play the game to two real festival crowds, at Rock the Block or SounDial. When you’re setting the game up you can select your guitar experience from beginner to expert. The dials on the guitar allow you go from song to song, between levels and act as your controller for the game. It’s important to note that the guitar in Guitar Hero Live was completely redesigned and now has a 6-button interface. Beginners can use the level with 3 buttons and more advanced players can use all 6 buttons.

Using the guitar as your controller takes a little practice. I’ve never used or played guitar before. While it felt natural to use, actually using and pressing the buttons was a learning curve.

The graphics on the game are real video and immerse you into the band. You receive a guitar tutorial from a guitar tech before going on stage and then walk on stage to the level that you pre-selected. You might recognize most of the songs that you hear and play to in the game, but actually playing along to them will prove challenging.

Even as a first time player, it’s fun to play, but that was only half of the game. GHTV is the online, live element of the game that opens up your guitar skills to hundred of online songs and allows your friends to play with you.  Gamers and guitar heroes will absolutely love this element of the game.

As a novice, this aspect of the game was more intimidating. You’re playing to new music, along a real music video with untold numbers of people being able to watch you. Watch you, is relative, they’re not peering into your living room, but they can see you screen name and see how good (or bad) you shred the song.

Even in its most basic setting I found the game to be challenging, almost difficult, which was evident by the less than impressed, hostile crowd. Guitar Hero Live is great fun, but does take practice. You can work on the songs that come on the game play disc or go to GHTV with ease. You get one song for free on GHTV; the rest will cost you in awards that you earn in the game or real money.

It’s not mandatory to play GHTV, but it really compliments Guitar Hero Live. The interactivity of that aspect of the game is something that teens and guitar kids can play in for hours. Some people have said that the graphics in the game were kind of cheesy, with the band and crowd constantly fawning over you. They must have been better players than I. When you have the game intentionally play bad (or good) just to see how quickly they turn on you.

The variety of music is good with alt rock and AAA rock, while GHTV has massive amounts of many genres available to choose from. Guitar Hero Live is rated T and available on all game systems. If you get the game for some systems it will require a separate hard drive or USB drive with lots of space. Our Xbox 360 was almost empty and still needed a drive with dozens of GB to run it.