16 Hotly Anticipated Video Games Still Coming In 2015

12. Rock Band 4 & Guitar Hero Live

Might as well group these two games together, as not to do a disservice to the many hours put into bringing them to life - but unless you're a fiend for plastic instruments or a particular platform-exclusive track, chances are you're only going to be buying one or the other. First up, Guitar Hero. Fairly new developer FreeStyle Games (the chaps who brought you DJ Hero and a few other rhythm titles) are backing this one, their big innovation being to record live action clips from actual gigs using a helmet cam, before using them as a backing to the more standard in-game fretboard highway. It all looks a bit hokey at the minute, but others who have played the game say it can make the experience come alive in a pretty fun way, watching an actual crowd's reaction change in semi-real time. Gone are the crazy characters and overblown 'boss fights' that NeverSoft brought to the table, as it remains to be seen just how many people even want to revisit a trend that petered out as recently as five years ago.

Rock Band on the other hand is being put together by the trusted team at Harmonix. They've ditched the 102-buttoned RB3 controller and moved away completely from the whole "This'll teach you how to play for real!" allure of the franchise. You could argue people just wanted to have fun with dumb-looking instruments the whole time anyway, not devote time to learning them properly. Instead it's a return to assembling awesome setlists and playing your favourite songs for as long as you like. A new RPG-style mechanic means you'll have to track likability and demand in various areas through the main campaign, whilst the musical maestros behind the sound design have figured out a way to let you improvise all-new guitar solos over the original master recordings should you desire - something that jumps right to the core of why we play these games in the first place; to be a goddamn ROCKSTAR, baby.