Don’t call it a reunion tour.
After a five-year hiatus, video game publisher Activision announced Wednesday that they’re bringing the band back together in the form of a new and improved “Guitar Hero” that promises a rock star fantasy like never before.
In “Guitar Hero Live” — which hits major gaming consoles, tablets and mobile devices this fall — the cartoonish avatars from previous games have been replaced by live action videos of actors who play your bandmates, roadies and fans. As you strum the guitar at gigs ranging from smaller divey clubs to massive Lollapalooza-like music fests in front of 100,000 people, everyone reacts in real time to your “on-stage” performance. Strike the right chords and the audience will sing along and your bandmates will love you. Hit a sour note and they’ll turn on you. It’s all filmed in first-person mode to add to the immersion factor, Activision CEO Eric Hirshberg said.
“When we look back, the [rock star] fantasy ended at the guitar-shaped controller. The screen didn’t reflect that,” Hirshberg said. “We wanted a game that really wanted you to feel like a star, that could actually give you stage fright.”
In addition to the single-player focused “Live” mode, the game will include GHTV, a service Activision calls the “world’s first playable music video network.” It will allow players connected to the Internet to play along to streams of official videos from hundreds of different artists from a wider selection of genres than in past titles. Fall Out Boy bassist Pete Wentz’s performance at the “Guitar Hero Live” press event is proof that rock still will be in heavy rotation in the game’s set list, but expect to be jamming to folk, hip-hop, pop, EDM and country as well.
“We’ve broadened our approach to the setlist,” said Jamie Jackson, “Guitar Hero Live” creative director. “It reflects the music festivals like Coachella, where you have all these different kinds of artists performing to the same audience.”
The guitar-shaped controllers also have been retooled for realism’s sake. The hand-cramping five candy-colored button layout is replaced by two rows of three plain buttons that players can manipulate using only an index, middle and ring finger.
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“We looked at how people played, a lot of people only played with three fingers, I was one of them,” Jackson said. “Once you had to use your pinky, or move your hand, it lost a lot of people. … We made a new guitar that better reflects how people play the guitar naturally.”
The “Guitar Hero Live” unveil event at the Best Buy Theater in Times Square on Wednesday — which included appearances from Wentz, New England Patriots star Rob Gronkowski and actor/singer Vanessa Hudgens — was a loud way to reintroduce a series that fell out of tune with gamers at the end of the last decade. Hordes of fake plastic instruments collected dust after the last in the series “Guitar Hero: Warriors of Rock” was released in 2010. It remains to be seen if longtime fans will be ready to pony up $99 for a new set of faux guitars.
Ryan Smith is a RedEye special contributor. @ryansmithwriter
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