Guitar Hero‘s Back With A Redesigned Controller And The War On Drugs

Guitar Hero and the similarly themed Rock Band were once ubiquitous, but both of them seemed to fade away as the casual gaming audience that they attracted moved primarily to mobile devices to get their fix. But both games are coming back this year — Guitar Hero has just announced Guitar Hero Live, the first new iteration of the video game series in five years. It comes paired with a brand new plastic guitar controller, meant to more closely mimic the actual feeling of playing the guitar rather than just mashing colorful buttons.

As The Verge reports, there will be two main components to the new game: a solo campaign mode –where you take on the POV of a rocker and go out to perform your songs, and the audience reacts positively or negatively based on how well you do — and an online multi-player mode designed to encourage players to stick with the game.

The game’s creators also promise a more diverse lineup than ever, including EDM and hip-hop in addition to the game’s more traditionally guitar-oriented tunes. “If it’s got a beat, and it’s got a rhythm, you can make good gameplay out of it,” the developers told The Verge. The lineup so far includes the War On Drugs (for beer commercial lead guitar shit mode), Ed Sheeran (for sleep mode), the Black Keys, the Rolling Stones, Skrillex, Fall Out Boy, the Killers, and more.

Guitar Hero Live will arrive on Xbox One, Xbox 360, PlayStation 4, PS3, Nintendo Wii U, and some mobile devices later this year. Here’s a melodramatic trailer for the game: