21 out of 21 people found this review helpful.
I want to rock and roll all night and party every day
Date of Review: Jan 28, 2008
The Bottom Line: With the right moves, you can sure look good playing this game, but it's more fun to have fun than take seriously. Recommended.
First off, let me say that I'd never played Guitar Hero prior to this. The concept of the series eluded me because I really didn't pay much attention. I had a buddy play it at Best Buy once, but I still wasn't game to play. Finally, after hanging with a buddy of mine, I decided to check it out. Lets say that the more you look silly, the better the game is.
Guitar Hero encompasses a few modes of play. There's Career, Versus, and Quick Play. There's also a training mode, but I wouldn't recommend spending excessive time here. Career mode allows you to take the role of the Guitar Hero (there's about 10, but you unlock some of them). To be honest, when I get the crazy Japanese Girl dressed in purple, I usually don't pay attention to the rest. The characters are fairly well designed. There's a throwback from Kiss, and of course a Jimmy Hendrix wannabe. Of the original characters, I can appreciate the girl with the red hair and piercings. Most of the guys are just generic as far as I can tell. As you play through career mode, you unlock songs. The more songs you unlock, the more you'll have for quick play. Quick Play is good and stinks. I love the quick selection of songs, but don't care for the fact that you can't choose your guitarist. Instead, you must play with whomever the system decides. I'll admit, I haven't had a chance to play Versus mode because this requires two guitars. Guitars are not easy to come by unless you own more than one game in the series.
The controls are the first thing you'll notice. It's a guitar. Five buttons on top, and a switch to be flicked while mimicking the strumming of strings. There's also a whammy bar. The controls are very simple. While holding the buttons at the top (I'd imagine that mimics frets) the player will flick the switch (strings, I'll call them). Similar to Dance Dance Revolution, you'll see indicators on the screen telling you which frets you'll need to hold while strumming the strings. At some points, you'll see an elongated bar. This means you can use the whammy bar. The game requires you to play along with the song. Every time you screw up, the guitar portion of the music will make a sound like one of the strings broke. At first, you start with using 2-3 frets, but when you move to hard or very hard, you'll have to slide your fingers around on the neck of the guitar a bit to make all the notes successfully.
Guitar Hero III has a good selection of music for playing. From the Rolling Stones to Aerosmith. Even bands as new as Rage Against the Machine and Dragon Force appear on the sound track. It seems more like the creators put a compilation together that matched their taste in music more so than what's popular. Still, for playing the game, GH3 does a good job of keeping up. Sadly, unlike the PS3 and 360 versions of GH3, the Wii edition doesn't allow you to download additional tracks. I was disappointed because it would have been nice to be able to add songs. Even if it's just adding your own MP3's, and the system assigns its own chords to it. But as it goes, the Wii Edition is little better than the PS2 when it comes to song content.
The graphics of the game tries to recreate the scene. Essentially, you play in a few different locations. One of my favorites is the prison. Though visually adequate, the environments feature repetitive motions by the crowd. Not a whole lot of movement to indicate if they're really enjoying the band or not. There's also a fret board that appears and indicates what frets you should be pushing while you play. Each character has their own board, reflecting their personality. It's amusing, but nothing really noticeable. The band is the core attraction. The characters do what they do to mimic playing at a gig. The most emphasis is put into the lead guitarist and the lead singer. There are two lead singers, one male and one female. I would've liked to see more, since there are different styles. For instance, there's a song (I can't recall which off hand) where the lead singer is female, but her voice is so deep that the slim little blond singer seems out of place. The guy looks like he could have some range though. If you watch long enough, they do have variety, but will begin to recycle animations. It works to put on a convincing performance, but in the end, Guitar Hero (as a series) could just be a fret board and be some fun.
Ultimately, this is a game that you get out of as much as you put into. If you just sit there and hyper concentrate on the song, then it's not nearly as fun. If you actually rock out (and put your whole body into it), Guitar Hero ROCKS! As a Christian, there are songs I just can't approve of. Beyond that, the game most certainly is fun to play. Side Effects may include an actual desire to learn to play the guitar.
I recommend owning Guitar Hero 3. There's a lot of fun to be had playing this title. I wish like the PS3 and 360 versions that you could add songs, but what's here does provide a decent amount of play time.
