The Guitar Hero franchise looked like it was in trouble when long time the developing firm Harmonix got acquired by MTV Games and third game in the series was handed over to the guys over at Neversoft. A month ago we got to put our grubby little hands on the game in San Francisco and walked away relieved, the series is as good as ever with the latest addition to the franchise, Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock. Neversoft took the reigns and ran with it, well actually they didn’t run far (change much) but the few additions to the game and the new wireless guitar rock the game into legendary music genre status.
Guitar Hero III features a brand new guitar, the Les Paul, in an entirely new form. Not only is the new guitar black, it is wireless, features a removable neck, and swappable faceplates. When holding the old and new guitar side by side the differences get even more obvious. The Les Paul is made of a much heavier plastic that just feels better; the extra weight helps the guitar handle better and just feel more realistic. The removable neck allows gamers-on-the-go to pack the guitar up and take it over to a friend’s house more easily as well as helping with the storage space when hiding it from your roommates. There is guaranteed to be a number of new faceplates on the market any day now so if that is your thing the option is there, personally the all black look is more my style. As far as the controls go most of that part of the guitar stays the same, the start/select buttons have been moved away from your strumming area and recessed which completely alleviates the “accidental” pause feature evident in GH2 and Rock Band (see Peter Moore at E3). Some veterans of the series may think that the buttons on their new guitar are sticking but that is actually a gameplay feature that Neversoft included to help new gamers feel comfortable in the series. The time limit to hit the correct key has been increased by what feels like a good bit of time, now hitting those impossible guitar solos is much easier. At first I felt like the game was too easy but the developers helped offset this issue by amping up the actual song difficulty.
The meat of GH3 is the career mode, which can be played alone or with a buddy via the all new co-op mode (main plus bass guitar). It consists of around 50 songs, three boss battles, and one hell of a good time. No matter what your level of skill is Guitar Hero III features an option, the four difficulty modes go from easy to extra hard. I have been playing the GH games for some time now and I still max out at the medium difficulty, which just goes to show how challenging this game is (or bad I am). The Guitar Hero series has never been famous for having a really long career mode and this one follows suit, clocking in at just around four hours if cruised through. The most important part of any music game is the track list and GH3 rocks that category like no other. The sheer amount of music available to rock to in this game is ridiculous and covers all different types of bands. Some of my favorites include: Hit Me With Your Best Shot by Pat Benatar, Even Flow by Pearl Jam, One by Metallica, and a Welcome to the Jungle by Guns N’ Roses. These are the more famous songs but there are plenty for every type of rock music fan out there, from famous to indie.
Besides the main tracks and encores the career mode also features three boss battles, one with Tom Morello (from Rage Against the Machine), one with Slash, and the last with Lucifer himself. These boss battles are entirely new to the Guitar Hero series and are some of the best parts of the game. The three challenges introduce the new battle feature of Guitar Hero III that uses a number of power-ups to throw off the boss’s guitar play. The best way to describe the boss battles is a rap-off with guitars, and special abilities. The challenge comes because to win a boss battle you must, by using power attacks, force your opponent into the red rating and then a total loss. Because these battles are so freaking cool I really wish they would have included many more of them in the game, hopefully that is one of the big additions we will see in Guitar Hero 4 some day. Other than the Career mode the main menu gives access to Co-op, Quick Play, Multiplayer, and the Xbox Live mode. Quick play is just what it sounds like, no battles just songs and straight up jamming. Co-op allows one person (with another guitar or controller) to play the main guitar and another to jam beside them playing the bass guitar sections of the song. This time around the developers chose much better songs for co-op play than were available in Guitar Hero 2.
