The rhythm action game genre holds a special place for many music game enthusiasts, and even as mainstream interest waned, some dedicated fans eagerly awaited each new iteration of Guitar Hero and Rock Band. For those of us deeply invested, the simultaneous return of both franchises in 2015 was monumental, especially given their seemingly distinct approaches to revitalizing the genre.
However, for the average gamer, choosing between Guitar Hero Live and Rock Band 4 might be necessary. If you’re looking to pick up just one of these titles, the crucial question becomes: which game offers the superior Rock Band Guitar experience?
Having personally purchased and extensively played both games shortly after their release, this review aims to provide an unbiased and detailed comparison to help you decide which game deserves your attention. Let’s dive into the guitar-fueled showdown.
Round 1: Backwards Compatibility for Your Rock Band Guitar
For long-time fans, the question of instrument compatibility is significant. Many gamers have invested in plastic guitars and other peripherals from previous generations. A game that allows you to reuse your existing equipment is a definite advantage, saving you from additional expenses.
Guitar Hero II Controller: A sweet prince of plastic video game instruments, now potentially gathering dust.
Rock Band 4 prioritized backwards compatibility, successfully supporting a wide range of older Rock Band and Guitar Hero peripherals. For instance, my wireless Guitar Hero 3 Xbox 360 guitar worked seamlessly with the Xbox One version of Rock Band 4. This commitment to legacy hardware is a significant plus for players with existing instrument collections.
However, compatibility isn’t flawless. Due to Microsoft’s device-signing protocols, wired controllers are not supported. This meant my reliable Guitar Hero II Xplorer, my preferred guitar controller for Xbox 360 Guitar Hero and Rock Band games, was unfortunately rendered obsolete. While disappointing for specific cases like wired controllers, most wireless last-gen controllers should function with Rock Band 4 without issues.
Conversely, Guitar Hero Live takes a different approach. Its redesigned button layout, which we’ll explore further, means that the classic five-color button system is incompatible. Consequently, none of your previous controllers are compatible with Guitar Hero Live. This clean break from the past, while innovative, necessitates new hardware for everyone.
Winner: Rock Band 4
Round 2: Rock Band Guitar Gameplay – Innovation vs. Evolution
While Rock Band broadened the musical landscape with drums, vocals, and keyboards, guitar remains the central instrument for many fans. The core guitar gameplay experience is a critical factor in choosing between these two titles.
Rock Band 4 maintains the familiar five-color lane highway system. If you’re experienced with earlier Rock Band or Guitar Hero games, you’ll instantly feel at home. The core mechanics are largely unchanged, providing an evolutionary step for the franchise.
The primary addition to guitar gameplay in Rock Band 4 is freestyle guitar solo sections. These sections allow players to improvise and play any notes, with the game intelligently shaping them into coherent solos.
Rock Band 4 Guitar Solo Mode: Yellow lines indicate freestyle solo sections, offering improvisational guitar gameplay.
These freestyle solos seem inspired by similar features in Harmonix’s Fantasia: Music Evolved. However, their implementation in Rock Band 4 is somewhat debatable, as the generated solos can occasionally sound disjointed. Fortunately, the game offers the option to disable these freestyle sections for players who prefer a more traditional experience.
In contrast to Rock Band 4‘s evolutionary approach, Guitar Hero Live embraces revolution in its guitar gameplay. It completely abandons the five-color button system, introducing a newly designed guitar controller with two rows of three buttons on the guitar neck.
This innovative design fundamentally changes the feel of playing. Guitar Hero Live‘s guitar gameplay aims for a more realistic guitar playing sensation. On higher difficulty settings, players navigate complex chord shapes spanning both button rows, creating a more tactile and rewarding experience as muscle memory develops. Successfully executing these complex chords delivers a greater sense of accomplishment.
Freestyle Games, the developers behind Guitar Hero Live and the acclaimed DJ Hero, are known for their innovative peripherals. This new guitar design was a significant risk, but after an initial adjustment period, the Guitar Hero Live guitar system proves to be a genuine improvement over the established five-color standard. In terms of pure guitar playing feel and innovation, Guitar Hero Live edges out Rock Band 4.
Winner: Guitar Hero Live
Round 3: Instruments Beyond the Rock Band Guitar
This category highlights a key difference in design philosophy between the two games. The titles themselves offer a strong indication of their focus.
Rock Band 4 retains its core identity as a band-focused game. Drums, bass guitar, and vocals are all integral components. As with guitars, Rock Band 4 generally supports previous-generation wireless controllers for these instruments.
Regrettably, Rock Band 4 discontinued support for keyboards, a promising instrument introduced in earlier titles. This omission meant that the Rock Band 3 keyboard controller became incompatible, hindering the potential growth of this instrument within the series.
Rock Band 3 Keyboard: A retired instrument in Rock Band 4, leaving keyboard players sidelined.
Guitar Hero Live, in contrast, deliberately narrows its focus to the lead guitar experience. It omits drums and bass guitar entirely, emphasizing a more singular, guitar-centric gameplay.
While Guitar Hero Live offers a vocal mode compatible with Logitech microphones or a companion iOS app, the game’s primary emphasis remains firmly on mastering the guitar. Other instruments are simply not part of the core Guitar Hero Live experience.
Winner: Rock Band 4
Round 4: Visual Design and Immersion in the Rock Band Experience
Visual presentation significantly impacts the overall gaming experience. This comparison considers the aesthetic choices and their effectiveness in both titles.
Rock Band 4 maintains a visual style consistent with its predecessors. While offering expected graphical enhancements, the visual upgrade is not dramatically noticeable.
The overall aesthetic remains distinctly Rock Band. Players still create bands and customize stylized, polygonal characters using a familiar character creator. This visual continuity provides a sense of familiarity for long-time Rock Band players.
Rock Band 4 Visuals: Evolutionary graphics maintain the series' familiar stylized aesthetic.
This consistent engine design facilitates seamless integration of a vast library of downloadable content. DLC songs blend visually and stylistically with the core game, with character animations and lip-syncing appropriately adapting to each track.
Guitar Hero Live adopts a radically different visual approach, centered on full-motion video. This design choice is a defining characteristic, impacting both of the game’s primary modes.
In Guitar Hero TV (GHTV) mode, the video integration is largely successful. GHTV functions as a streaming music television channel where players perform along to official music videos. This provides a dynamic and visually engaging way to discover new artists and songs within the game’s extensive library. Music discovery is a core element of the rhythm game genre, and GHTV effectively leverages music videos to enhance this aspect.
However, the GH Live section, featuring first-person live concert performances, is more divisive. While technically well-executed, the live performance visuals can feel somewhat artificial. The game dynamically switches between “good performance” and “bad performance” video feeds based on player accuracy, but the transitions can be jarring and unsubtle.
Furthermore, the aesthetic of the GH Live mode can be perceived as overly polished and unrealistic. The consistently attractive band members and audience members can detract from the sense of authenticity, creating a somewhat artificial and even off-putting visual experience for some players.
Guitar Hero Live Visuals: Full-motion video with live actors can feel artificial and overly polished in GH Live mode.
Despite the criticisms of the GH Live mode’s visuals, the engaging music video integration in GHTV mode gives Guitar Hero Live a slight edge in visual design overall, offering a more contemporary and dynamic visual experience compared to Rock Band 4‘s more traditional approach.
Winner: Guitar Hero Live
Round 5: On-Disc and Free Content for Immediate Rock Band Guitar Action
For players primarily interested in the content available immediately after purchase, without additional spending, the on-disc song selection and free content offerings are crucial.
Rock Band 4 includes 65 on-disc songs, spanning a wide range of eras, from classic tracks of the 1960s to contemporary hits. Beyond the initial disc content, expanding the song library in Rock Band 4 largely relies on purchasing downloadable content (DLC). Free songs are infrequent additions to the online catalog.
Even importing previously purchased Rock Band 3 tracks incurs a fee, highlighting the focus on paid DLC for content expansion in Rock Band 4.
Guitar Hero Live features 42 songs within its GH Live concert mode, covering a similar range of musical eras.
However, the GHTV mode significantly expands the initial content offering. At launch, GHTV provided access to over 200 streaming music videos, playable at no additional cost. This library has continued to grow, with over 90 songs added in the months following release, ensuring a continuous stream of new, freely accessible content.
Guitar Hero TV Mode: A vast library of streaming music videos provides extensive free content in Guitar Hero Live.
While GHTV‘s streaming nature means song selection is not always entirely on-demand, players can utilize play tokens to access specific songs directly. These tokens can be acquired with real currency or earned through in-game play. For players prioritizing immediate, out-of-the-box content without extra cost, Guitar Hero Live‘s GHTV mode offers a significantly larger and continuously updated library compared to Rock Band 4‘s on-disc offering.
Winner: Guitar Hero Live
Round 6: Downloadable Content and Expanding Your Rock Band Guitar Song Library
For players willing to invest in downloadable content to expand their music libraries, the DLC offerings and models of Guitar Hero Live and Rock Band 4 differ significantly.
Guitar Hero Live‘s GHTV library, while extensive, does not offer true song ownership. Accessing specific songs on demand requires using play tokens, creating a recurring cost for repeated plays of favorite tracks. Players who wish to play a particular song frequently, such as a favorite Queen track, will need to continually spend tokens.
Furthermore, the GH Live section, with its full-motion video performances, is unlikely to receive significant DLC additions due to the high production costs associated with creating bespoke first-person videos for each new song. The 42 on-disc GH Live tracks likely represent the extent of content for this mode.
Rock Band 4 adopts a more traditional DLC model. Its engine is designed for easy song integration, and it has extensively leveraged this capability. A vast majority of the Rock Band 3 DLC catalog has been ported to Rock Band 4, resulting in a library of over 1500 songs available for purchase.
Rock Band 4 DLC: Extensive downloadable content library, including tracks from artists like Audioslave, allows for a customizable music collection.
Crucially, purchasing DLC songs in Rock Band 4 grants permanent ownership, allowing unlimited replays. For players who prioritize building a personal, permanently accessible song library through DLC purchases, Rock Band 4 is the superior choice.
Winner: Rock Band 4
Round 7: Single-Player Rock Band Guitar Experience
Rhythm games cater to both solo and multiplayer experiences. This section examines how Guitar Hero Live and Rock Band 4 cater to single-player gamers.
Guitar Hero Live, with its focused lead guitar gameplay, first-person perspective, and omission of other instruments, is clearly designed with single-player engagement in mind.
The GHTV mode reinforces this single-player focus through a profile-based progression system. Players earn experience points, level up, and unlock customization items like note highway styles and profile icons as they play.
GHTV songs also feature specific challenges, adding replayability for solo players seeking to improve their scores and complete objectives.
Rock Band 4 offers a less extensive single-player experience. Its Career mode is relatively short compared to previous titles like Rock Band 3. Beyond the Career mode, single players primarily engage in Quick Play mode, selecting individual songs to play.
For players seeking a robust single-player experience with a sense of progression and ongoing rewards, Guitar Hero Live offers a more compelling solo mode.
Winner: Guitar Hero Live
Round 8: Local Multiplayer Rock Band Guitar and Band Gameplay
Local multiplayer is a defining feature of the plastic instrument genre. This section compares the local multiplayer capabilities of Guitar Hero Live and Rock Band 4.
Guitar Hero Live severely limits local multiplayer functionality. It only supports two guitars in GHTV mode, and both players are restricted to guitar roles.
This guitar-centric multiplayer in GHTV transforms cooperative band play into a competitive score-based experience. Given the potential for mismatched skill levels in social settings, this competitive limitation detracts from the collaborative fun typically associated with local multiplayer rhythm games.
Guitar Hero Live Multiplayer: Limited to competitive dual guitar in GHTV mode, lacking cooperative band gameplay.
Rock Band 4 prioritizes and excels in local multiplayer band gameplay. It retains the classic Rock Band experience of four players performing together on guitar, bass, drums, and vocals.
While Rock Band 4 doesn’t radically innovate in local multiplayer, it delivers a familiar and refined experience. The core appeal of cooperative band play, achieving high multipliers through synchronized performance, remains intact and highly enjoyable. Rock Band‘s multiplayer was a highlight of the previous console generation, and Rock Band 4 successfully preserves and enhances this strength. For players prioritizing local multiplayer sessions with friends and family, Rock Band 4 is the clear winner.
Winner: Rock Band 4
Round 9: Ongoing Updates and Long-Term Support for Your Rock Band Guitar Game
Both Harmonix and Activision have positioned Rock Band 4 and Guitar Hero Live as evolving platforms, intended to receive ongoing updates and support beyond their initial releases.
Rock Band 4 has received updates adding social score challenge features, character customization options, and a challenging Brutal mode that dynamically increases difficulty based on player performance.
Guitar Hero Live has also delivered updates, primarily focused on expanding the GHTV song library with over 90 new songs added post-launch. Customization options, such as themed note highways, have also been introduced. Furthermore, Guitar Hero Live added an online multiplayer mode where players are matched against similarly skilled opponents in GHTV for score-based competition and rewards.
Guitar Hero Live Rivals Mode: Online multiplayer and ongoing updates demonstrate continued support for the game.
Both games demonstrate a commitment to ongoing support through content updates, customization options, and new gameplay features. Regardless of which game you choose, both are poised to evolve and improve over time with continued support.
Winner: Draw
The Verdict: Choosing the Right Rock Band Guitar Game for You
After a detailed comparison, the ultimate recommendation depends on your individual gaming preferences and priorities.
For single-player gamers who primarily play alone and value progression and a constantly expanding library of accessible content, Guitar Hero Live emerges as the stronger choice.
Guitar Hero Live Single Player: GHTV mode and level progression offer a compelling solo guitar gaming experience.
Despite the sometimes-questionable visuals of the GH Live mode, the GHTV mode’s content richness and level progression system provide significant long-term engagement for solo players. The innovative new guitar controller in Guitar Hero Live also offers a fresh and challenging experience for rhythm game enthusiasts seeking something different.
For players who prioritize social gaming and anticipate frequent local multiplayer sessions with friends and family, Rock Band 4 is the definitive choice.
Rock Band 4 Multiplayer: Robust local multiplayer with full band support delivers classic rock band gameplay.
While Rock Band 4 may lack the single-player depth of Guitar Hero Live, its exceptional local multiplayer and extensive DLC library make it ideal for social band gameplay. Furthermore, players with existing Rock Band DLC can leverage their previous purchases within Rock Band 4 (within the same console family).
Price is also a factor. Guitar Hero Live with a guitar controller is generally more affordable than Rock Band 4 with a guitar controller. However, Rock Band 4 offers the advantage of backwards compatibility with older instruments, potentially reducing the overall cost for players who already own compatible peripherals.
Ultimately, both Guitar Hero Live and Rock Band 4 offer compelling rhythm game experiences. The best choice depends on whether you prioritize single-player progression and content variety (Guitar Hero Live) or social multiplayer and a vast, customizable song library (Rock Band 4). Both are great games in their own right, catering to slightly different preferences within the rock band guitar game genre.
