![]() On the rock channel you?ll see a schedule something like this: 9:00-9:30 Rock Anthems - 9:30-10:30 Metal Hour - 10:30-11:00 Rock Goes Big. Channel one is focused on rock while channel two is more geared towards pop and indie music. The current schedule is to add another channel and around 70 more songs by the end of the year.įrom the GHTV menu you can view the two available channels and their lineup for the next few hours, just like a TV guide. At launch there are over 200 songs available on GHTV, spanning two music channels. ![]() That may not sound like much, but it is truly an amazing piece of work. GHTV is a 24-hour Guitar Hero music television network. ![]() Live mode is okay, but the real reason to own Guitar Hero Live isn?t for the songs on the disc, it?s for GHTV. We have not tested this on any of the other consoles. It is wildly noticeable how clean looking and sounding GHTV is by comparison, as I?ve never seen the bug in that mode. It happens just about once every song, and maybe more subtly every time you activate star power but less noticeable (audio distortion). When lots of effects go off on the screen, like star power or when a 100-hit streak explodes on the screen, the framerate drops significantly, which slows down and distorts the audio and video in the game. Unfortunately, on Xbox One, there is a nasty audio/video bug in Live mode. Even when you go back into Quickplay, it plays the same video with the same crowd effect, making it unable to hear the song cleanly. I loved it the first time I played the song on stage, but you can?t turn it off. This is both cool and crummy at the same time. While you are playing live on stage, the crowd can get really into the song and start singing along (of course they sneer and boo if you suck). Plus there is a fake Twitter feed in the bottom corner where fans comment on the groups and the festival in general. There is an announcer who narrates what you?ve done and what acts are coming up. I actually enjoyed going through and reading the extra info in between sets. They gave the fake bands a whole background story, revealed through festival photographs and notes, that is revealed as you beat songs and complete certain challenges. There is a schedule of acts showing the time and stage where the groups will be performing. Live is set up as two festivals, one running in the US and one in the UK. It?s certainly more interesting than just playing a list of songs in a row. The whole music festival idea behind Live was pulled off pretty well. Like on stage playing in front of thousands of people, am I really going to look over to the sound mixing dude for a thumbs up? Let?s be honest though, are we really watching the video in the background while playing the song, or are we focusing on the note track? The view is fine, the direction is questionable. Yes, with the live video, it feels a little bit like a Sega CD game. The twist here is that all the cartoony characters are gone, and instead you are playing in first person view on stage of a music festival. This is where you play the songs packaged on the disc to unlock them for Quickplay. Think of the Live mode as the old setlists or career modes. Guitar Hero Live brings you straight into a tutorial, and then totes you right out on stage where you play a set in the new Live mode. The learning curve is steep, but thankfully I had some preview time at the LA event, so I was at least prepared for advanced mode when I opened up the package from Activision. Plus there are more ways to combine the buttons and interweave the top and bottom keys making for an insanely challenging expert mode. It?s still no substitute for what you can achieve on a real guitar, but it feels more natural to me. Now the developers had the opportunity to create an approximation of real guitar chord shapes. Now we have two rows of three buttons on top of each other, white for the bottom row, and black for the top row. Gone are the colorful set of five buttons in a row. The first major change you can?t help but notice when you open the box is the new guitar controller. Those are changes for the good, and they have had me standing in front of a TV with a plastic guitar late into the night all over again. Guitar Hero Live, unlike Rock Band 4 ( our review here), changes up the formula a bit, both by the way we play and how we access music. It feels about right for me, as I can truly say I was missing music games and have really been looking forward to both this year. Activision and Harmonix both think that we?ve waited long enough with the return of the Guitar Hero and Rock Band franchises. Five years ago we apparently ran the video game music genre into the ground.
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