It wouldn't be wrong for you to go into Guitar Hero III with some sense
of awareness; Neversoft has a reputation for churning out bad games by
the truckload, but fear not, because Guitar Hero III is everything you
could possibly ask for: it has better music, better graphics and it has
online play. The increased difficulty is also something that veterans
of the series will greatly appreciate. From the overall craziness of
"Through the Fire and Flames" to the finger-crampingly awesome solo of
"One", Guitar Hero III is overall a harder game than the previous
entries.
A lot of the difficulty comes from the bigger emphasis on three-button chords
which leads to some small charting errors here and there. It's not bad,
but songs such as "Stricken" and "3's and 7's" could definitely benefit
from having a smaller number of three-button chords.
One thing that doesn't feel unnecessary about the game though, are the
graphics. Everything about them has gotten a considerable bump. The
game runs on the engine that powered Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 8 which
wasn't actually touted as being a technical marvel, but it looks really
good compared to the previous games. Textures are sharper, the
lighting's better and the animations are excellent. The animations in
particular are great. Every animation in the game has been motion
captured, including the singers facial expressions that look really
excellent. Guitar Hero hasn't been about the graphics, but they
certainly look nice when you aren't totally focused on the fretboard.
Gameplay wise, nothing has really changed from the previous games.
Basically, you have a guitar shaped controller (a Gibson Les Paul for
the Xbox 360, PS3 and Wii versions and a Gibson Kramer for the PS2
versions), colored circles run down the fretboard, you press the
corresponding fret button, strum with the controller at the same time
and rock is made. In Guitar Hero III's case, you will be rocking to the
best songlist of any Guitar Hero game ever made. The songlist consists
mostly of great tracks, all the way from 1960 to 2007. From the
cIassical rock song "Paint it Black" by the Rolling Stones to the poppy
"When You Were Young" by The Killers, Guitar Hero III manages to nail
the songlist. Anything you could ever want besides Led Zeppelin is in
the game. Not all of the songs are great though; Sonic Youth's "Kool
Thing" and Slayer's "Raining Blood" aren't so great. Of course, it's
all a matter of preference.
The good thing about the songlist is that over half of the songs are
master tracks from the artists. Living Colour and the Sex Pistols
actually went back in the studio to re-record the songs "Cult of
Personality" and "Anarchy in the U.K." respectively. This is a great
improvement over the previous games, since a lot of the covers in the
previous games were pretty lacking in terms of vocal accuracy. The
songs that actually are covers are, for the most part, really well
done. One of the only blemishes is Dead Kennedy's "Holiday in
Cambodia," which has been badly edited and is overall a bad attempt at
recreating the lead singer's voice.
The bonus songs have also changed a good deal. While Guitar Hero I and
II featured a lot of songs from in-house Harmonix bands, Guitar Hero
III features a more European feel. Bands like Heroes Del Silencio, Bloc
Party, Kaiser Chiefs and Die Toten Hosen are in it, further solidifying
the European feel of the bonus tracks. The bonus songs can also
congratulate themselves on having the most impossible song ever to be
featured in a Guitar Hero game in Dragonforce's "Through the Fire and
Flames."
One of the interesting additions to Guitar Hero III is co-op career
mode. Career progression is pretty much the same as playing through it
alone; you complete 4 songs plus an encore, but in this entry, you get
a short, animated clip to give the game a sense of a story, depicting
your bands rise to fame, to it going to hell (literally). It's a neat
little addition that's occasionally hilarious, although they don't
really have a reason for being there.
Although co-op career is a nice addition, straight up co-op play is
strangely missing from the game. It feels kind of limited to only being
able to play co-op career, since you won't be able to play all of the
songs unless you play through all six tiers. Six songs are co-op
exclusive, meaning that you won't unlock them, unless you play through
all six tiers, which is kind of a bummer, since the co-op exclusive
songs are pretty awesome to play.
One of the less interesting additions is Battle Mode, where the star
power notes are replaced by power-ups that consists of things like a
broken string, where your opponent has to mash the button a number of
times before he or she get to use it again; a whammy power-up, where
your opponent has to wiggle the whammy bar before he or she gets to
play again; an amplifier overload, that causes the notes to disappear
and reappear randomly; and a power-up that will bump your opponents
difficulty level up to a higher level, assuming your opponent is
playing on a level lower than expert, of course. The concept might
sound interesting on paper, but in reality, it's not. Most matches
don't last more than 30 seconds, because the power-ups are so
overpowered, making the mode practically useless.
An addition, which Guitar Hero players have been craving since the
release of the first game, is online play. You get to play all the
modes, including the less-than-stellar Battle Mode, and it's a fun,
lag-free experience. On the PS3 however, friendlist support isn't
existing, which is kind of a bummer, since finding games on the PS3
version is pretty hard.
Overall, Guitar Hero III is everything the fans could wish for: it
features great music, online play and an increased difficulty. Although newcomers of the franchise should probably start out with the
previous entries, Guitar Hero III is a great game that shouldn't be
missed.
