So I think I’ve played enough of Guitar Hero Live to give a review of it.
I can’t tell if GHL is a good game in an evil shell or vice versa. While it does some things exceptionally well, it does other things exceptionally wrong. I’ll start with the good first. I like the new guitar controller. Although I never had a problem with the old one and sliding my fingers down the neck (I know that was an issue for some players) I like how with 6 buttons in 3 columns they made the game easier and harder all at the same time. It does take a little while to get used to but once you do it’s great. I also like how they tried to mix things up in the single player “campaign” by having your view be that of a guy on stage as opposed to a member of the crowd. It was smart of them to use live performances, as this was undoubtedly the result of them realizing that if they tried to render all these people they’d either look like crap or slow the game down to unplayable levels. Not a big fan though of the songs they have you play in those mode, along with the fact that you need to unlock the songs to play them when you want, similar to the older GH games. There’s a reason why they got rid of this stupid restriction back in the day and time hasn’t caused anyone to yearn for it back. Still, it is fun and I will be working to beat it.
GHTV is a mixed bag, and is where the game shines as well as frustrates. With each positive comes a negative it seems. I do like jumping in and out of songs on the playlists with the music videos playing in the background. However, this does lead to the unique problem in that whereas in the past in games like these you’d play the “master” version of the songs, now you’re playing music video versions. As a result you may be playing songs that are edited for time and are thus less satisfying (Faith No More’s
Epic) or you get songs that have unnecessary breaks in them that ruin the flow (Weezer’s
Buddy Holly and Walk the Moon’s
Shut Up And Dance.) Also when you play in GHTV you actually play against other people and your ranking is updated continuously throughout the song. It does add a cool new dynamic to playing, as you not only get satisfaction of doing well, but also of doing better than other people. Well, sort of. Now I’m by no means a GH expert but unless I really screw up I can pull off a 4-5 star performance in each song (BTW this is much harder to achieve in GHTV, and this isn’t helped by the fact that your progress towards each star isn’t shown like it was in past games.) Your ranking in each song compared to other people is reliant entirely on score, even though they show you your score, star rating, and accuracy. Normally this wouldn’t be an issue as score is often an accurate indicator of how well you did since score is affected by your accuracy. But on numerous occasions (
including this one that I’ve shown here, and yes I know that One can take screenshots in game but I had issues getting it to work with the guitar controller) I saw that people with lower star/accuracy ratings than myself were beating me because they had higher scores than me. And sometimes it would get to ridiculous levels, like to where someone would have less than 70% accuracy and fewer stars yet they’d have a better score and thus beat me. It wasn’t until recently that I saw the game remind me to purchase guitar upgrades. “What the hell are those?” I wondered. Turns out you can use in game currency to buy upgrades to your guitar which in turn will give you a higher score. So apparently these people spent all their credits buying upgrades while dumb schmucks like myself used them to buy credits to play more songs on demand. And of course, you can either earn credits in game or buy them with microtransactions. And for the higher level upgrades you will have to play a LOT to be able to unlock them. I suppose it’s not really “pay-to-win” gameplay in that you're not really rewarded for coming in 1st, but the fact that you can stack stuff in your favor like this is just dumb. Rather than just focus on score your final ranking should be an aggregate of score, star ranking, and accuracy. I mean the fact of the matter is that if I get 98% and someone gets 71%, I played the song better than they did regardless of what the score says, and I should thus get my kudos. To be fair the game doesn’t appear to punish you for not coming in first place (it seems to be based more on how much of the song you play.) And while this isn’t enough for me to stop playing the game, it does provide a constant eye rolling every time it happens.
As I said, I spent most of my credits on playing songs on demand. These are all the songs that are in the playlists but you can play them whenever you want in this mode, and it has you competing against other people like the regular version, although I don’t know how they track this as I can’t imagine that at least 9 other people at that exact time started playing “Cult of Personality” with me. And in this mode you can unlock medals for doing well. They have no monetary in game value but it is nice to see. It’s just a shame that they’re implemented horribly. The things you get rewarded for are 50 & 100 note streaks, hot start, strong finish, and 3 star ranking. So you’d think that if you played a new song and pulled off all (or more than 1) of these feats that you’d get each of those rewards, right? WRONG. They’re done in tiers of bronze, silver and gold. Bronze is 3 stars, I believe silver is hot start/end and I believe gold is 50/100 note streak. So in order to unlock all the medals for a particular song, you need to play it at least 3 times. If you didn’t have a limited # of on demand plays this would be acceptable but when you have a limited number and your only other option is to wait until they come up on the livestream, this system is just obnoxious. I mean I’m not a performance freak that needs to 100% every song and get 100% completion, but some people are, and this is just a d*ck move for those people, and I’m not thrilled to see myself play a new song great and get 4 stars and good note streaks just to see at the end, “Bronze Medal Awarded: 3 stars achieved!” And while this isn’t enough for me to stop playing the game, it does provide a constant eye rolling every time it happens.
In spite of this crap, I do have to say I recommend GHL’s new rebooted gameplay and controller as opposed to Rock Band 4’s “Games as a Service” that currently doesn’t have all the songs of the older generation nor does it work with all the old instruments and is also lacking other features the older games always had like online play and (yes this is true) quickplay setlists (I can’t believe that didn’t think to have a feature like that in as opposed to one song per session.) Maybe in due time RB4 will be worth playing for people like me that have older instruments and a ton of DLC, but at this point I can get a superior experience by just playing on my 360 (not to mention I also get to use a keyboard.) If you can get GHL for $60 or less I’d say go for it, but it may be worth waiting as they’re still adding new songs to the livestream and are adding new features to the game itself, such as the superfluous “Rival Mode” (let me go off on a small tangent here) where they have you go one on one against another player in a scoring battle. In theory this doesn’t sound like a bad idea, until you find out that they don’t match on difficulty. I was matched against someone on “Heart and Soul” and quit during the first chorus when I realized that my opponent was playing on a higher difficulty and unless they REALLY screwed up (which they weren't) there was no way I was going to beat them because you get higher scores at higher difficulties because you have more notes to hit. So there was no point in me staying in in a futile game. And while the game is fun, the microtransactions do hang over it like a dark cloud. Yes it's true that you don't NEED to spend money and I certainly haven't felt compelled to do so (and I doubt many other people have either) but the fact that I need to now work to upgrade my guitar in order to stay competitive is a rather bitter pill to swallow, as I'd prefer to just keep adding on demand credits. At this point I give GHL a B.
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