Guitar Hero Live is the last and best game in the Guitar Hero franchise. It's the byproduct of a five year hiatus brought about by Activision's oversaturation of the music game genre and a desire for money. However, unlike previous Guitar Hero games, it's not a simple cash grab. Guitar Hero Live takes bold steps in completely destroying everything that made the series fun and rebuilding it to be a little bit more realistic.
However, I'm not here to talk about the brave innovations in gameplay or genius pay-to-play system that gamers were surprisingly unwilling to adopt after shelling out £100 to buy the game and new controller. I'm here to discuss the soundtrack and whether or not it works. As the name suggests, Guitar Hero was built around a strong soundtrack of Rock songs classic and contemporary, particularly ones with excellent riffs and solos. Guitar Hero Live abandons this clunky old setlist with a fresh, exciting one featuring just under forty songs from the 21st century and just three from before the 80s.
This is a fantastically smart decision to capitalise on a small but non-fictitious audience; people who like gaming, listen to modern music and have plenty of disposable income. One of the biggest selling points of the franchise had been combining fun gameplay with an awesome soundtrack perfect for the type of gameplay involved. However, now that the gameplay is no longer fun, the soundtrack should reflect this too. Forget epic riffs and furious solos, Guitar Hero Live is all about strumming and awkward note sequences now!
But what about gamers who don't like Rock? Never fear, Activision thought of that! By focusing on one genre, the game is missing out on so many young listeners who need to listen to the latest chart topping songs in order to function properly, hence the inclusion of artists such as Eminem, Rihanna, Katy Perry and Skrillex. Their generic music translates well into this new form of realistic gameplay as you play riffs sampled from much greater Rock songs or electronic dubstep beats on guitar.
The setlist also reflects the fact that the gameplay has taken a step backwards in removing playable instruments. Guitar Hero soundtracks used to have to include tracks with fun drum and bass charts but now the developers can focus on tracks with catchy vocals to sing along to or guitar rhythms to play such as "The Rock Show" - Blink-182 and "The Kill" - Thirty Seconds To Mars, songs that have already been in the Guitar Hero franchise but have now been revitalised with the changes in gameplay.
Whilst it would've been easy for the developers to include plenty of great songs on-disc, only forty two songs are playable without an Internet connection, which is less than half of the amount of songs on the last Guitar Hero game. It's a risky move but it ultimately pays off as it gives gamers more time to hone and practise those songs without worry about too much variety and music to enjoy. Also, whilst it's easy to include a random bunch of tunes without any real place in a series about living the life of a Rock star, slimming down the setlist to Avril Lavigne, Mumford & Sons and OneRepublic ensures we get a game with the best material available.
There's one more area of the game's exceptional soundtrack I've yet to discuss and that's the GHTV mode. Instead of paying money to download songs that you get to play and keep or making previous paid songs compatible with this new game, Activision took yet another intelligent step in making additional music available through a music video system where new tunes are cycled in themed playlists for free. Tracks vary from music from the 10s, music from the 00s, music from the 90s and about twenty songs from the 80s and 70s.
Whilst this means the majority of music will be contemporary, since music videos only really took off in the 80s and even then Metal music videos didn't become popular until the early 90s, the fact that you can play along with your favourite bands (provided they only started releasing music after the 90s) is incredible. It's also a great way of licensing more music due to cheaper fees to pay, meaning players get more songs to be given without any choice.
However, when you do earn coins to purchase songs to play once, it's a great experience. The riffs are more complex and the solos are challenging, even if most of them have been cut due to the fact that music videos tend to be shorter versions of songs for promotional purposes. The developers deserve credit for trying to fit challenging songs into the game despite the new note layout not accommodating sweeping solos and furious fretting.
Guitar Hero Live's soundtrack is perfect. It's beyond perfect and deserves to be recognised as one of the strongest setlists in all of gaming history along with Guitar Hero: Van Halen and Power Gig: Rise Of The SixString. It's so incredible that it transcends a score on this blog, something that has absolutely nothing to do with the date in which this review was posted.
No comments:
Post a Comment