Guitar Hero Live
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Top Critic
Guitar Hero Live's lavish reboot feels like a solid foundation, but it falls just short of feeling like the finished article just yet.
Top Critic
A smartly redesigned controller and addictive song streaming makes Guitar Hero Live a largely enjoyable music game.
Top Critic
Tracks are banging, the peripheral's bold and performing feels brilliant, but TV mode is a bust, making you rent songs rather than own them outright.
Top Critic
A spirited attempt to reinvent Guitar Hero and the music game genre, but the freemium approach to additional content has its obvious drawbacks.
Top Critic
An exciting new take on the genre hamstrung by a frustrating interaction model for getting and playing the songs you want
Top Critic
It's hard for me to mask my excitement about Guitar Hero Live, because in my opinion, there's nothing more exciting than a developer who's capable of outsmarting an entire genre's fanbase. Guitar Hero Live isn't just well-executed; it's clever and innovative in ways that no one other than FreeStyleGames ever imagined. My fears that Guitar Hero Live would be wringing blood out of the franchise's stone were unfounded; at some point, FreeStyleGames found itself a newer, better stone altogether.
Top Critic
Embarrassing acting, questionable songs choices, and unwelcome microtransactions spoil the biggest mechanical improvement to music gaming in years.
Top Critic
A Guitar Hero game that finally lives up to the name, plus playable MTV. Amazingly immersive experience, excellent new guitar. Music television reborn and made interactive. Short single-player campaign with no hope for more. Singing requires guitar accompaniment.
Top Critic
Guitar Hero Live's new guitar helps bring something fresh to the genre, and offers a new challenge for both beginners and veterans alike. GH Live is fun, though a little cheesy, but it's in GHTV where the game's most interesting aspect is found. If this continues to be built out as Activision has promised, it should deliver long-term appeal - and a great way to discover new music.
Top Critic
Though Guitar Hero Live is rough around the corners and may not convince casual Guitar Hero players to return to their guitar-shredding ways, it sets a new standard in technology for peripherals, presentation, and online connectivity.
Top Critic
Guitar Hero Live completely took me be surprise. I love the new controller design, the FMV portions work far better than they should, and Guitar Hero TV hooked me with its channel concept. Going forward, I'm hoping that the model further reinvents itself by introducing the world to new music.
Top Critic
The Live in Guitar Hero Live means a lot of things. In one mode, you're pretending to actually rock out in front of a packed arena, and in the other you're constantly competing against the rest of the world online. Your band mates overact sometimes, and you don't always get to pick the song you want to play in GHTV, but there's always a ton of music to play. So much is new, from the stage perspective, to the streaming service, to the updated guitar, that it feels like a worthy revival.
Top Critic
Guitar Hero Live is exactly what the franchise needed after its five-year hiatus, and I'd go as far to say it's what the whole genre needed. Although naysayers will lament the lack of more instruments or complain about the non-permanence of extra songs, for many, Live will become the quintessential party game and is already set to be a permanent fixture in my sitting room.
Top Critic
FreeStyleGames might have done something smart by redesigning the old Guitar Hero controller, and I like playing with their new version better then my old guitar. But Activision might have done something stupid by requiring consumers to buy new hardware if they want to play.
Top Critic
It takes a lot of effort to rebuild a fallen franchise, but Activision and FreeStyleGames have proven to be more than up for the challenge with Guitar Hero Live, taking a classic series and making it its own.
Top Critic
With a cleverly reinvented guitar and whole music video channel of songs backing it up, Guitar Hero Live is the rhythm game for the people who got bored of rhythm games.
Top Critic
Guitar Hero Live is a bold step in a new direction for Rhythm games. While everyone might not take kindly to the restrictions put on players in Guitar Hero TV, there's a seemingly endless number of playlists and challenges to complete, with room to grow going forward.
Top Critic
A truly fresh, innovative take on a genre crying out for something new. Freestylegames has utterly succeeded in making Guitar Hero relevant again.
Top Critic
In theory it sounds terrible, but Guitar Hero: Live's approximation of old-school music TV programming, coupled with the excellent hardware, makes it a winner.
Top Critic
After seeing what Freestyle Games has done, Rock Band's enormous library, and the promise of making it available across releases feels like a crutch by comparison, tying that franchise to its established model. I'll still hop back to Rock Band to play drums, but right now, Guitar Hero Live is where you'll find me clanking away, waiting for the next time I get to perform Ida Maria's "I Like You So Much Better When You're Naked."
