I just fell in love with Guitar Hero all over again, thanks to this controller

PC gamers helped keep the spirit of Guitar Hero and Rock Band alive through programs like Clone Hero. The reward for this heroic effort? The return of Les Paul guitar controllers, courtesy of CRKD. We received the Blueberry Burst Pro Edition controller recently, and after a few long nights of rocking out, the nostalgia is at an all-time high.

The CRKD Les Paul range is up against some stiff competition to earn a spot on our best PC controller buying guide, but based on my first impressions, it has every shot of dethroning our current choice, the PDP Riffmaster, when our full review is ready. Whether you’re rocking out in Fortnite Festival, Clone Hero, YARG, or playing old-school Guitar Hero games, this controller works in all of these games across multiple platforms.

Guitar Hero and Rock Band were a huge part of my teen years, helping form my musical interests and forever exposing me to new artists that I still listen to today, such as Alice in Chains, Faith No More, Blue Öyster Cult, Avenged Sevenfold, and many more. It was sad to see the franchises slowly die out, but the market was oversaturated, and it was somewhat of an inevitability.

In its absence, I’ve primarily turned to Clone Hero to fill the void. Even with the return of Fortnite Festival, Clone Hero remains the best alternative thanks to the sheer wealth of community content available and its compatibility with multiple guitars and instruments.

I originally played using my old black Les Paul from Guitar Hero 3, only there was substantial input delay, which has since been attributed to the PS3 receiver when it is plugged into a PC. I then moved over to the Guitar Hero 5 controller, which I was able to grab from eBay alongside the Xbox 360 adaptor needed to make it work.

Despite working pretty well, I would have to use additional software to ensure the inputs worked correctly, which was far from ideal. It felt like there was a gap in the market for new controllers, but it wasn’t until Fortnite Festival released that this became a reality.

I moved on to the PDP Riffmaster very recently, and from an input and design front, it was a major improvement over the old GH guitars, but it still required additional software to work with Clone Hero, and certain inputs didn’t work entirely or without nauseatingly long workarounds.

This is where my initial time with the CRKD Les Paul Blueberry Burst Pro Edition has been very different. Upon connecting the guitar to my PC, it just worked. Whether I was playing Clone Hero or Fortnite Festival, the controller doesn’t require any additional software or workarounds and works as expected.

It’s brought back memories of playing the OG Guitar Hero games, where you could just plug in a guitar or wireless adaptor and be playing in a matter of seconds.

The look and feel of this guitar controller is so familiar, even though it’s stuffed with modern features like mechanical button switches, reactive RGB, a Hall Effect strum bar, and haptic feedback.

Despite this, there is a sense of simplicity to how this controller works and looks, and it is easy for me to get lost in my gameplay and forget that I’m playing on a controller released in 2025 and not one that is decades old. CRKD hasn’t tried to reinvent the wheel here, and my experience playing with the Bluberry Burst Pro Edition has been better for it.

We’ll be doing a lot more rocking out with this guitar soon, and my colleague will be writing the full review, but my initial time spent playing with the Blueberry Burst Pro Edition has been very positive.

It’s great to see instrument controllers making a comeback, and with RedOctane recently resurfacing, it’s really starting to feel like 2007 all over again.

If you want to pre-order this controller, the CRKD Les Paul Blueberry Burst is currently available for $134.99 / £129.99 for the Xbox and PC version, and $125.99 / £119.99 for the multi-platform version.