Rock Band 4 vs Guitar Hero Live: Which One Should You Buy?
My whole written article here http://cogconnected.com/feature/rock-band-4-vs-guitar-hero-live-which-one-should-you-buy/
VERDICT: Rock Band 4 is the better game, but don't discount guitar hero live, still a great game too.
2007-2010 was an exciting time for music game fans. Music games were all the rage and I would always look forward to each new release from Activision and Harmonix, even if meant buying 10 games a year. Both companies fought tooth and nail for rhythm game dominance only to have both franchises die a sudden and expected death. During the four-year battle, both companies did whatever they could to gain a competitive edge on the other, even signing artists to exclusivity contracts that would last years and years. Back then it was difficult to tell the games apart. Both featured four instruments, similar looking note highways and even the same songs.
What’s interesting with this year’s music rivalry is that both Guitar Hero and Rock Band appear to be going in completely different directions. Guitar Hero Live (GHL) is more focused on reinventing the franchise while Rock Band 4 (RB4) feels like a gradual evolution of the series. So which game is better? Let’s break down and compare each game across several categories.
Instruments & Their Features
Guitar Hero Live
Gone are the bass and drums in Guitar Hero as the game’s main core focus is the guitar and vocals. The guitar peripheral has been completely redesigned and now features six buttons. The new guitar peripheral feels terrific and playing GHL feels like a fresh new take on the series. Playing GHL for the first time offered a similar experience to playing Guitar Hero 3 for the first time (my first Guitar Hero game). As someone who played past games in the series on expert, the new button configuration offers a steep learning curve. Even after beating the campaign and putting countless hours in GHTV, I still haven’t advanced to expert difficulty.
The big downside to this new peripheral is that none of your old Guitar Hero or Rock Band instruments work on GHL (except for the microphones). If you don’t have a microphone lying around, you can download a free companion app for your mobile device and use your phone as a microphone. It works surprisingly well.
Rock Band 4
Rock Band 4 allows you to use most of your old instruments from past Guitar Hero and Rock Band games. If you’re on the Xbox One, you will need the $20.00 legacy adapter to use your old peripherals. Old peripherals work great on the game and the new features such as the freestyle guitar solos and vocals are excellent and allow you to add your own personal touch to a song. RB4 also has some new instruments. The new guitar, drums and microphone have some improved functionalities and aesthetic features, but the steep price for a band or guitar bundle maybe a high barrier to entry. If you have old instruments lying around I would recommend using them rather than buying new ones.
RB4 also contains some new gameplay enhancements for vocals, guitar and drums. Guitarists can now do freestyle guitar solos, which are mind-blowingly awesome and badass. Drummers can now play pre-authored fills during overdrive sections and vocalists can add their own spin to a song with freestyle vocals. This is something that’s sadly missing from GHL. Everything is about beat matching in GHL, while Rock Band 4 gives you some form of freedom.
Advantage –Rock Band 4, but don’t discount the new Guitar. It plays great. Now only if you could shred a freestyle guitar solo on GHL.
Song List
These song lists couldn’t be more different.
Guitar Hero Live
GHL focuses on more recent music. Even the older artists such as Pearl Jam and Soundgarden have songs featured from their most recent albums. There are a few classic rock songs spanning the Who and the Rolling Stones, but these tracks are few and far between. The soundtrack definitely has a more poppy feel to it with artists like Katy Perry, Rihanna and Avril Lavigne being present on disc. If you loved Guitar Hero’s focus on hard rock in previous iterations of the game, you maybe slightly disappointed with the song choices here. Also disappointing is the limited tracklist. Only 42 songs are available on disc, making this one of the smaller tracklists we’ve seen from a Guitar Hero title. Sadly, none of your old GH DLC works in GH Live.
GHL’s online service, Guitar Hero TV, also offers an additional 200 songs with much better variety than the on-disc songs. New songs w
