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Editor's note: Guitar Hero Live, Activision and FreeStyle Games' reboot of the rhythm action series, releases this week. Seeing as a large part of Guitar Hero Live is built around the new online service, Guitar Hero TV, we're holding off on our review until we have adequate experience of the game on fully stressed servers, and we currently anticipate having our final impressions live by the end of the week. Before then, here are early impressions culled from a handful of days with Guitar Hero Live.In Guitar Hero's previous life, die-hard fans could seek out different faceplates to modify their controller. In the early stages of getting one's head - and fingers - around the fret riddles of Guitar Hero Live, an L-plate might be more appropriate. Of all the game's attempts to put some clear blue water between its traditional, recently resurgent rival and the franchise's own burn-bright, fade-away history, rethinking the fundamentals of the controller seems even more audacious than the you-are-there live footage gimmick. It forces veteran Guitar Heroes to admit that yeah, maybe they were stuck in as much of a worn-out groove as the game, relying on sight-reading and muscle memory to cruise through each new batch of songs while simultaneously complaining about the lack of anything new.
Of course, it's not so much of a hard reboot that the plastic guitar itself has been abandoned. Compared to Rock Band 4's rather ritzy replica Fenders, the revamped Guitar Hero Live controller is less flashy but feels solid, with a noticeably longer strum bar that, unlike its silent rival, still responds with a satisfying click. The key changes are all at the other end; fitting for a game that is sticking its neck out. Optimising the traditional five fret buttons to two stacked rows of three means there's no longer any need to move your fret-wrangling hand, so pinkies made spry and limber from years of dutifully following orange lozenge prompts suddenly have nothing to do. But if Guitar Hero Live requires considerably less physical dexterity than before, the mental demands become surprisingly intense as soon as you nudge the difficulty level above regular.
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