The world of music, before Spotify and iPhones, was a very different place when the Guitar Hero debuted in 2005. In the 10 years since the kicked off, music consumption has vastly changed. Most people use streaming services to listen to music as opposed to owning songs and albums. Reflecting that, Guitar Hero Live brings forth that new style of music listening to rhythm games with an emphasis on something similar to Pandora stations or TV channels that feature never-ending streams of 200+ songs split up into half-hour or hour-long themed shows. While the Wii U version has some unfortunate technical issues, the idea of Guitar Hero Live is filled with potential and this new debut is extremely promising, all the way from the new guitar controller to the diverse song library.

First off, the idea of the new guitar controller is awesome. Instead of five buttons in a line, it’s now two rows of three buttons next to each other. If you’re a Guitar Hero or Rock Band veteran, it takes a while to adjust, but it’s a fun new challenge that feels more like playing an actual guitar as you hold down your fingers as if you were playing a chord. Unfortunately, the build quality of this first batch of guitars isn’t too great. The buttons stuck for me on occasion and there are widespread reports of them being broken almost out of the box (fortunately, word seems to be that Activision is good at replacing broken controllers).

Aside from the new-fangled instrument, the clear highlight of Guitar Hero Live is GHTV, which is the meat of the entire experience. As of now, there are two channels that you can go between that offer different content. Additionally, as you play through songs and level up, you earn “Plays,” which can be used to play any song on demand. Yes, that’s right; you don’t technically own any of the songs on GHTV. You use in-game or real-life currency to pay for more Plays. Additionally, you can spend money to unlock unfettered access for a limited time. In my more than 10 hours of play, I was never forced to spend any money and was never in danger of running out of plays. I’m also the sort of person that will play just about any song once in Guitar Hero, and if you’re not up for music discovery, GHTV isn’t likely for you. The song library is a sort-of jack of all trades, as it includes perennial Guitar Hero favorites like Queen and Boston, but also includes tunes from Katy Perry, Hilary Duff, and Luke Bryan. Fortunately, most every song is fun to play, which is the most important thing.

In addition to the lengthy list of songs, GHTV also features Premium Content that can be accessed by completing specific songs or buying in-game currency using real money. The Premium Content at launch ranges from several live songs, from Avenged Sevenfold to upcoming songs from Queen and more. It’s a neat concept, but it’s also very dependent on future support.

One of my favorite aspects of GHTV is how you’re never playing alone. Every time you play a song, whether it’s on a channel or on-demand, you’re competing with nine other players. To the side of the screen, you go from first to 10th depending on how well you’re doing on the song. It’s nothing groundbreaking or major, but it certainly made me strive to get better and improve. Improvement is experiential mostly, but you can also level up and unlock the ability to upgrade your guitar so you can get more points per note or increase your max multiplier. The rhythm game purist in me is disheartened by this, but it gave me more of a reason to play through songs and earn credit to upgrade my guitar. As you level up, you also unlock a versus mode and some customization options such as new note highways.

With all this streaming and online connectivity comes a cost, woefully. Bouts of slowdown cropped up regularly when I played, and I even had a few instances where the music video backgrounds would just disappear. The word is that this is primarily an issue on specific versions of the game, and unfortunately the Wii U version is one of those versions.

Buried beneath the technically challenged but wonderful GHTV is the Live portion of the game. It’s the mode where you play as a guitarist in the first person and play along with a live-action band and crowd. Your bandmates and the crowd act happy or sad depending on how you’re performing, which is super novel. That’s really all it is, though, and the only reason I played through the Live mode is to unlock songs. When you’re playing on stage, there’s more focus on the sound and environment around you than the song itself. I legitimately had a hard time hearing the song in spots.

Even with the disappointing Live mode, Guitar Hero Live is a refreshing take on controller-based rhythm games. The streaming focus in GHTV works extremely well despite some technical hiccups, and as long Activision keeps rolling out new songs to the library, this is the kind of game I’ll be regularly playing for a long time. This is a fantastic start to a new era of Guitar Hero games.