They’re like a covers band that can command crowds of thousands, which is an idea that’s a little hard to get onboard with. The songs being played are often by well-known superstars – and the crowd reacts as such – but the band playing them onstage is made up of nobodies, albeit impossibly good-looking nobodies. Besides its fairly brief lifespan (playing through all 42 songs won’t take more than a couple of nights) that’s the major criticism of Live mode – it’s all a bit blandly unimaginative. The overriding feeling is that this is very much a TopShop idea of what it’s like to be in a band these days. Sometimes it feels more like an attempt to make watching the game more interesting for anyone in the room with you – and with two-player mode limited to adding a second guitarist or a singer, rather than being able to put someone on bass, that might be quite important. Still, it’s much more engrossing than the old cartoons, even if you only rarely have time to stop looking at the notes and take it all in. This makes working your way up and reaching the end, only to triumphantly play a load of classic rock songs to a dingy little club, feel a little at odds with everything that’s gone before. The settings vary from woodland clearings illuminated by fairy lights (wimpy nu-folk, obviously) to huge outdoor enormo-gigs in the shadow of a big-city skyline (big-name alt-rock). Live mode doesn’t have the same feeling of career progression that previous games offered each venue is more about reflecting the genre of music being played than showing a step up to the next level. The audiences will even do things such as unfurl huge banners if you end a set in particularly triumphant manner.

The crowds and your bandmates are quick to respond to how well you play, which makes it feel very real when you’re hitting a load of bum notes. The former is the game’s ‘career’ mode, in which you play guitar for a variety of bands at two fictional festivals, all recreated in first-person video rather than the tongue-in-cheek animation of previous games.

Guitar hero live