Guitar Hero Live Trailer: New Guitars, Live Crowds and More
After a four year hiatus, Activision has brought the band back together in Guitar Hero Live, which will feature live crowds, real band members, music videos, a new guitar and more.
Activision has finally revealed Guitar Hero Live, which has gotten a ton of changes compared to previous titles of the series. The guitar-shredding series is back and will have you performing in front of live audiences. Gone are the cartoon-esque band members and audiences of previous Guitar Hero titles. This time around, every person, whether on stage or in the crowd, looks real and will act accordingly. If you're good, the audience will cheer, and if you suck, they'll definitely let you know. Your live action band members will let you know when you have to step things up or if you're doing a good job.
You'll actually be the main star of your own band, and you have multiple ones to choose from. These bands consist of real musicians with their own histories, but it's up to you to lead them in a new direction. For example, one band, Broken Tide, hit the mainstream scene in 2009 but failed tremendously after a lackluster debut album. After splitting up in 2009, two of its surviving members decided to restart things with a new drummer and frontman (you). Other bands you could play in include Blackout Conspiracy, Portland Cloud Orchestra, Our Pasts Collide and the Jephson hangout. We're certainly digging the narrative aspect of things.
The new, redesigned guitar peripheral features two rows of three buttoms, which is more in tune with a real guitar and to help promote actual learning. Beginners can just start with the bottom three buttons, medium-skilled players can do two-row combos and guitar pros will deal with chord-like shapes and crazy finger combos. Make sure you check the trailer above to see how the note system works. Some of the songs featured in Guitar Hero Live include the following noteworthy artists: The Black Keys, Fall Out Boy, My Chemical Romance, Gary Clark, Jr., Green Day, Ed Sheeran, The War on Drugs, The Killers, Skrillex, The Rolling Stones, The Lumineers, Carrie Underwood, Pierce the Veil and Blitz Kids.
Guitar Hero Live will be introducing Guitar Hero TV (GHTV), a 24-hour mode that lets you play in a live music video network. You can browse multiple channels and specially themed TV shows where you can pick up and play or choose other music videos you'd like to play along to. There will also be friend-based and global leaderboards for much of this content as well. Activision and FreeStyle Games are going to offer hundreds of songs incorporated with the base game and GHTV will be regularly adding dozens of songs to the lineup as time progresses.
Guitar Hero Live will launch this fall for Xbox One, PlayStation 4, Wii U, Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3. In terms of pricing, the Guitar Hero Live game itself and the new guitar peripheral will be packaged together for $99 and is available for pre-order at most major retailers. A mobile and tablet-oriented version of the game is in the works as well.