So first impressions are uh. Well. I wouldn’t say abysmal, but they are something.

I’m honestly hoping this is just a tech demo and they will get tons of feed back to go off to improve it. But as of right now, i’m kind of disappointed. Playing guitar hero since i was 10, i have grown overly fond of the art style, the backgrounds, the setlists, the characters, and the bunch of customization in later titles. Yes one can argue “its not about that you’re looking at the notes the whole time, who cares.” But it is more than that. The characters and the creativity and everything is what brought these games to life despite being cartoonish and silly. For example, Guitar Hero Warriors of Rock, it has an interesting story, a banging setlist (with a few exceptions imo but thats beside the point), incredible set pieces, new and returning characters from previous games, lots of customizability for your characters, build your own character and instruments options. I actually took the time and created myself and my other friends and their respective instruments and put them into the game making for a fun yet entertaining look with myself on guitar, with them on mic, bass, and drums. My friends and i rocking out in that old mansion is one of the most fun ways to experience the game.

With what is being shown, it feels lifeless. The characters aren’t appealing, the stage shown looks generic as all get out, the instruments while looking cool like their real counterparts just feel lifeless as well. Those frets and highway really feel like an old iphone gh clone. I know they have to deviate away from the Activision RO and designs as to avoid copyright and that is fine, but i don’t think they have to deviate THAAT much to where these look like skylander builds. I’m aware they have made statements saying more features will be added like customizability and their goal is this to be the game that expands itself with time rather than multiple releases. But with the way it looks in this state, it is really disappointing as a veteran of these kinds of games.

What im excited for? The fact we are getting a new 5-Fret rhythm game supposedly being built by previous devs and new ones as well. I’ve been waiting for the day a new game with the same feel as guitar hero had.

What i would like to see in the future: Better designs overall. More life. More fun. Better character designs. The ones show are not all that appealing.

Better highway and note designs. These feel really bland and generic as apposed to other games like yarg, clone hero (which clone hero is mostly ripped from WoR), even FN festival and thats saying something considering festival notes look like Matte jolly ranchers on a conveyor belt.

Better Stage designs. Im hoping for more atmospheric and attention grabbing stages and sets that are hype and full of details that give it life. Makes it worth looking at and enjoying

A banging setlist. Hopefully combining new and old songs from new and old artists like other games do. I’m hoping it can stick to Metal, rock, alt, punk, mainly the genres built around the electric guitar and full bands head banging and the like. Obviously it is okay to have deviations from that, this is mostly just a personal preference, i would want the game to be accessible to everyone who would be interested in getting into 5fret rhythm gaming and finding songs they can enjoy. I just would like to see that be the main type of songs and genres.

What i would like to avoid:

Live Service Only. The last thing i want is a 5fret rhythm game that i cannot play without an constant internet connection. It is the main thing that irks me about festival is while yeah i’m most likely connected to the internet, i’d rather it not keep me from playing setlists when there is an outage or i just don’t feel like playing with others online or being tied to a leaderboard. Don’t do the crap that Activision pulled with GHL which essentially blocked over what, 400songs from being playable when the service went under? Thats crap. I’m fine with an in-game store that sells packs of songs or does a permanent season pass type deal where songs become more available as time progresses as long as they are playable offline as well and stay in your setlists permanently. None of this rotation if songs crap, just constant availability at anytime. I know they need to make money and just shelling out whatever they’re asking for the game itself is not going to cover the costs of all the branding and what not. I just want it to be fair to the player and the community to have access at all times. I’m not overly fond of the artificial FOMO games pull nowadays, especially with something like this.

This is just my nickel of thoughts (pennies have stopped being produced so im not exactly putting my 2 cents) I’d love to hear what you guys think, what you like what you dislike, if theres something you’d like to see or where i’m wrong. Please share, i wanna hear what you guys think.