"Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock" Series Still Goes Strong, But Starting To Need More

I was not a person that jumped on the Guitar Hero band wagon right off the bat even through I had heard from friends and family how good and addictive they were. My first experience was playing a couple of quick songs from first Guitar Hero just hanging at my brothers house. I had fun but, just didn't see the addictive part in just that little time. Maybe deep down I knew if I purchased the game I would get addicted just like everyone I knew that owned the game. At any rate, I finally purchased Guitar Hero III not long after it came out and "whoops", my deep fear came true. After putting it in and playing around on easy in career mode I was hooked just like a fish under water being reeled in. I couldn't pull myself away for hours that first night. This game in extremely addictive and no matter how good you do on a song you just want to get better and see a higher score.

With new developers from the franchise Tony Hawk now doing the Guitar Hero series I'm sure some wondered if there would be a huge change upcoming in the franchise. For the fans that feel in love with the first two installments of this game will be pleased that the main stay of the game has stayed the same. There are just a a couple of small tweaks, and of course a new and larger sound track to play, and that's it. Some may feel that maybe a few more additions would have been nice while others will feel happy that they didn't fix what was not broken. After buying this game, and going back and purchasing the first two game, I am glad they did not change any of the core game play. However, I do wish a little more was added just to keep my faith that the franchise will go foreword with each addition and not just be an "expansion pack". For the price of each game so far, they need to add more depth or more changes other than just different song tracks.


Game Play
The game play is pretty straight foreword. You purchase a guitar controller for the game and you act like you know how to play. You will not learn how to play an actual guitar by getting really good at this game but, it is the closest thing to playing a real guitar if you have ever been interested. The notes come down on what looks like a five string guitar and your objective is to match the notes that you see at the right time. A rhythm game in all. Each cord has a color that match your guitar controller and as a notes comes down you hold the correct button on the guitar and strum at the appropriate time. You are rewarded for hitting more notes in a row as you will get a times bonus that goes up to four as long as you keep your string alive. Missing a note restarts the bonus and you have to start over. There is a fan meter that is displayed at the bottom right of the screen. If the fans get to upset at you missing notes they will start booing and if this continues you will be booted of stage and have to start over. There are certain notes that appear as stars instead of jewels and hitting these will give you a change to do a power up which gives you more leniency on hitting the notes and give you a higher times bonus per note. This increases the fan meter much faster. The game also offers a nice tutorial section for newbies that explains enough on how to get started. The only way you will get better though is just to play more and more. This is not an easy game when you first start out, and if you have not played previous installments of this game, don't expect to be rockin' to Stricken, Raining Blood, or One the 2nd or 3rd song you play. The game responds and guitar controller respond very well. If you have a real ruff time with the guitar there is an option to play with a handle instead. You hit the right and left triggers and X button for the five notes. This may not be what the games about but, I know a few tiny ladies that just can't get the guitar down but, love the game. They play with the handle and have a blast and that's all that matters.

The difficulty levels have been enhanced this time around and even someone that is an expert on the previous games will find plenty of challenges here. There are four levels in all with each one adding more to the game making it harder. On easy you only have to worry about the first three strings and that is it. On normal they add a fourth string and an occasional double note (holding two buttons at the same time when you strum). On hard and expert you have to deal with all five strings and a lot of double and even triple notes (expert giving more than hard mode of course). Also, the speed at which the notes come down your guitar speeds up with each level. This was the first game of the series that I myself purchased and really spent time with and it was a slow process I tell you. But, once you get into the hard and expert levels you will feel a deserved accomplishment as you are playing the harder songs in the game and getting through them.

There is a Quick Play mode which is where you will problem spend most of your time once you defeat the career modes. This has every song in the game , once you get all of the unlock-able songs, and has a high score board for each song. Your objective is to try and make the board which it keeps track of the top five scores for each song. You still have to play the song good enough as the fans can boo you off the stage and you will be forced to start over. This is all I play anymore unless playing with buddy. I was very disappointed in the fact that you could not play the bonus battle tracks like Devil Went Down To Georgia, or Tom Morello's and Slash's song that you unlock in career mode. In order to play those songs again you have to go to your career and battle against them again. This means you won't get to play the song all the way through unless you toy with them just to get to the later parts in the songs. This was something I just didn't understand at all and would have liked to have played these songs with a friend or anytime I wanted.


Career Mode/Co-op mode
This has not changed much from the first two installments. Your objective is to play through a group of songs in a tiered system completing the required amount of songs in that tier to unlock more and move on. Depending on the difficulty level will determine how many songs you need to complete. Once you complete the required number of songs you unlock an end song to that tier and another tier of songs that you will have the same requirements. Some of these end songs include a battle with Tom Tom Morello and Slash. This continues with the songs getting harder as you go until you have unlocked all of the tracks. There is a small story that plays as you open other tiers but, it not noteworthy really. It basically just shows your band getting more popular as you unlock different places to play, from the backyard to stadiums. Of course you can choose who your playable character is, what guitar to use, and what outfit he/she will be wearing when your playing the songs. You can get rewarded with new guitars when you complete the difficulty levels and the outfits and unlock-able songs you purchase with the money you make for each song you complete. The better your score/stars you get for each song determines how much money you make. harder levels of difficulty means more money per song.

The co-op career mode is exactly the same as career mode except you can play with a buddy of course except you don't unlock the bonus tracks with Slash or Tom of course. When you start a song you and your buddy chooses who will play the lead guitar and who will play the bass/rhythm guitar and your off. You unlock the songs the same way with one exception. There are only four tiers and once you complete those it just unlocks the rest and tosses them in at the end of the tiers so you can play. Besides the fact that is a lot of fun playing a song with another at the same time there is no changes to the game itself.


Multi-Player
This is another multi-player mode in the game and ads a little more depth to the game. You can battle in two ways, Face Off, Pro Face Off, or Battle. You can either play a whole song against another player just going for the higher point total to see who is better or you can play only parts of the song while your opponent plays the other parts to see who is better. There is a battle mode which instead of the power ups giving you more points, it will give you a "weapon" so to speak that you can use against your buddy. Some of these include making the notes flash on and off while they are playing, giving them more doubles to hit, or my favorite, switching the guitar to the opposite hand. You can even save some up and hit them with multiple weapons at once but, you can also steal from your opponent as well. So, if you save yours your opponent may get a power up that steals what you have making you start over. When you get better and better at the games you may find yourself very bored with these modes. Especially battle mode since no matter what your opponent throws at you, you will make it through the song to a sudden death mode. All this is, a skull travels down your guitar covering it up slowly. If you miss a note the skull drops down some or if you send a weapon over the skull drops faster. Within a view seconds one of you will have your guitar covered and can't see any notes which results in a loss. For the most part, I just play face off mode for the points or me and a friend will try to beat the top score in a co-op career for fun.


Song Tracks
This is an up and down situation for me. Although there are a lot of good songs there are others that just make me tilt my head and say "huh?". There is over 70 tracks on Guitar Hero III and over half of them are by the original artists instead of covers created just for the game. This is the more than any Guitar Hero to date. Most of these songs are excellent and fit right into the purpose of the game, and that is playing the guitar a lot. The only problem with this is, the cover songs really stick out more as they are nowhere near as good as the first two installments of the game. With this I mean, the person singing the songs like "Paranoid" or "Hit Me With Your Best Shot" sound nothing like the original artists. With songs like "Welcome To The Jungle" and "Rock You Like A Hurricane" being completely original they really overshadow other songs that are just covers mainly because of the singing. However, the guitar play of these cover songs are not affected much at all and sound very good. They will have you rockin' just like you were listen to the songs on a CD from them in your living room despite hearing someone else sing them.

Maybe I am being to picky on the track selection but, when the title of the game is "Legends Of Rock" I was very surprised to find as many newer songs as I did. This includes the regular tracks and unlock-able tracks you will find in the game. For example, there are over 30 songs from the year 2000 and up with some older songs remade by newer bands. Even though some of these songs are excellent and a blast to play like, Stricken by Disturbed I just don't see how that could be considered a legend just yet. Again, maybe I am being to picky and there are a lot of good tacks on in this game that are very well deserved. There is a wide variety of songs as well which is nice. From "My Name Is Jonas to Raining Blood will keep your fingers moving all around the guitar in different variations. I just wonder how you make a game with the "Legend Of Rock" title with no Jimi Hendrix songs or AC DC. Hopefully there was just legal trouble with getting songs from certain groups and they at least attempted. I would have rather of seen other songs from earlier years or even more from the same group that fit the game title.


Graphics
The graphics of this game pretty much doesn't matter. While you be looking at the strings of your guitar playing what is being shown, you won't have time to really look up and see what your character is doing on the stage. Especially at harder difficulties. There are some songs with some breaks that you can look up and see what is happening but, they are far and few between. That is a good thing since the object is to be playing the guitar. With that said, the graphics have been improved over it's previous installments with the characters, guitars, and stages looking tighter and more stylish. The other members of your band also have noticeable improvements and look much more detailed. Even though your lead singer for the men songs could have used a slight upgrade. All I can say is, "wow", he makes Steven Tyler's jaw look just average. There is also some pretty lame and cheesy visual effects in some of the places you play. When you play a song that is the last on the list that you are doing, there is some beginning animations that take place on the stage no matter where you are playing. Some of these flat out ruin the look of the stage as I think some of Activision's early Commodore games looked as good. The crowed also looks pretty bad as they are more stick like figures jumping together throughout the song and even before you play a note.

There is an actual frame-rate issue on just a couple of songs on the harder difficulty levels which is to bad. A game like this depends so much on everything running smoothly. For example, playing "Through Fire And Flames" on hard or "Rock You Like A Hurricane" on hard or expert there is a spot that will through you off towards the beginning of these songs until you get used to it and know where the frame rate issue takes place. Just hit the notes as if it wasn't going to skip slightly and you should be fine. You just have to know it's coming and re-act accordingly as they happen every time you play the song. At least they happen every time as it would be really hard if these happened more sporadic and you never knew when it was going to happen. In all, the character models, stages, guitars look well above average and will all of the different outfits you can get for each one makes the game look good. You just have to get over the other parts and again, while you are playing you will not even notice anyway.


*Note: Small Warning
We have two different guitars here, one cordless and one regular. The cordless guitar has been much trouble than it was worth. For some reason, we have to plug it in and restart the game a few times just to get the game to register that the guitar is plugged in. We have went through way to many batteries as it sucks them up pretty fast. And trying to figure out if it was the batteries or the controller when we can't get it to register we have waisted some that way as well. Unless you are planning to play the game a long way away from the console or you plan on swing your arms violently while playing the game I suggest not getting the cordless version of the guitar. It is just not worth the money for any reason to me. Of course, others may not have experienced this problem. Just thought I would add this to those that may consider buying a wireless guitar.


Conclusion
This game is truly an addictive and very unique game. It will not be for everyone and a lot of it will have to do with whether you like the songs or not. It will also depend on how well you can play the game's guitar as to whether you will get really into this game or not. I did, and still do, enjoy playing this game and have family and friends come over to rock it up with me once in a while. Despite not being completely happy with the song tracks and wanting a little more out of the career mode, this game delivers some excellent entertainment and that truly is what the game is all about. I can't imagine many not liking this game once they give it a shot even if they can't get the guitar down real well you can always use the controller if need be. A great game and worth the hype that it has received since coming out. I wish I could have gave this game 4 1/2 stars and the only reason I didn't give it 5 stars was the some song choice and the game needs add more depth in certain areas.


If you have any questions about this game just let me know.

My Ratings:
Career Mode 4/5
Battle/Duel Mode 3.5/5
Game Play: 4/5
Controls 4/5
Graphics: 4/5
Song Tracks: 3.5/5
Learning Curve: 45min
Replay Value: 5/5
Overall Rating: 4/5

Developed: Neversoft
Publisher: RedOctane
Developer: Activision
Genre: Music
ESRB Teen

Game Specs
Players: 1-2
Online Play None