It's been a wee while since I last picked up a plastic guitar in anger and smashed buttons in time to a cheering virtual crowd.

This time it's a touch different. The five-button controller has been replaced by a six-button jobbie that plays vastly differently.

The Live element is a terrifying experience of horrible actors lip-syncing proper tracks, with your bandmates and the crowd salivating over your performances. Or hating your guts. There's no in between. Slightly mess up the track and you might as well have kicked a panda in the face, so hostile is the reaction.

Guitar Hero TV offers up a wealth of different tracks to play, but not when you want to play them unless you want to spend some hard-earned Play money. And even then you only get to do it once. This goes one of two ways. Either it motivates you to play through the dross and earn the cash for your own choice, or you hurl the plastic controller across the room because Skrillex is just a horrible track to play on a 'guitar'. My experienced fell directly into the former channel, although I can see how having limited choice could bug the hell out of some gamers.

The new six-button configuration does breathe sweet new life into an old format. It's more difficult but feels a more natural fit with the music. But some of the new arrangements, like the in-game currency and hip-hop choices could do with a jolly good tweak.