Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock – Xbox 360

The gameplay is GHIII is fantastic (The Boss Battles in career mode are a little silly, but they are thankfully optional). The track list is awesome and the songs are extremely well implemented and fun to play.

The wireless controller included in this PS2 bundle, however, is a big step backwards from the wired SG controllers bundled with GH I and II. I have experienced several random drops in response from the green and yellow buttons (not due to proximity from the receiver, I was less than four feet from the console). The buttons just stopped working. Also, the whammy bar is much closer to the strum bar, and my fingers on my strumming hand kept getting caught in it. Finally, the tilt sensor on my controller only worked intermittently, which was doubly frustrating because they moved to start and pause buttons directly behind the whammy bar, so the alternate method of triggering “Star Power” (hitting the start button) is almost impossible because you have to take your strumming hand off of the strum bar and bring it up and over the whammy bar. I’m returning the bundle and buying the stand-alone GHIII game, and I’m ordering a wired GH2-style controller directly from Red Octane.
Rating: 4 / 5

Neversoft’s first take on the Guitar Hero franchise really doesn’t make any changes to the formula Harmonix created with GH1 and GH2. This isn’t really a bad thing since the GH1 and GH2 formulas are so great, but it would have really been nice to see something new for the series. Here’s a breakdown of the game:

Graphics:

The graphics on the PS2 version of the game are really nice and definitely have more detail and flair than with the previous Guitar Heroes. Unfortunately, the frame rate drops and the song slows down and gets a little choppy when you use star power. This is really too bad because I usually try to use star power on the parts of songs that I find difficult and this really messes me up even more than I would regularly.

Gameplay/Guitar:

The gameplay pretty much follows the old GH formula, except for the fact that the window of time that you can a play a note in has been extended a little bit. This isn’t such a bad thing because some of the later levels in the game would be nearly impossible without this small change. The Gibson Kramer guitar that comes bundled with GH3 is the first stab at a wireless controller for the GH franchise and unfortunately it didn’t work to well. The first guitar I got was defective and wouldn’t connect to the wireless adapter so I had to return it and get a second one, which did work. Since then my new controller has worked pretty well, but once I had to restart my PS2 to get the controller to work.

Set list:

This is where GH3 really shines. This is definitely the best set list yet. It includes songs like Paint it Black by The Rolling Stones, Welcome to the Jungle by Guns and Roses, and One by Metallica. Nearly all the songs are originals and they all sound really great. This is the best Guitar Hero set list yet. Unfortunately, there are a couple songs which you can only unlock in co-op, so if you don’t have a second guitar you’ll have to either attempt to play with a regular PS2 controller, or just forget about playing these songs. These co-op only songs aren’t small songs either, a couple of them like Suck my Kiss and Sabotage are actually advertised as some of the top songs in the game on the box.

Career/Co-op Career:

The regular career is exactly the same as the past GH game except for the addition of some little cartoons after every set and three boss battles placed throughout the sets. The cartoons are cute but really add nothing to the game. The boss battles are quite fun and challenging, but since there are only three they don’t really make up a big part of the career. Also the songs that you play during the boss battles are only playable in single-player career, so as awesome as it sounds to battle your friend to either Tom Morello or Slash’s solo filled battle song, sorry, but you can’t. The co-op career is really good and it’s really fun to be able to play through the career with a friend.

Overall:

Guitar Hero 3 is basically the same as GH1 and GH2, it has the best songs of all the GH games, and the controller is flawed but it is nice to be able to play wirelessly. It’s too bad that there’s nearly nothing new, but it still includes all the fun of the other guitar hero games.
Rating: 4 / 5

I come to Guitar Hero 3 for the Wii having played Guitar Hero 2 on the PS2 at Expert difficulty. Sometimes formula can be a bad thing, other times it’s not. This is one of those “not” times.

The game plays basically the same as its predecessor, and on top of that it’s got a better set list. After reaching 5-star level on nearly all the songs at Expert difficulty in Guitar Hero 2, I found that the list of songs that I actually just enjoyed playing was very short. That’s not so much the case with Guitar Hero 3, which has a larger collection of songs that are both fun to play and to listen to.

There are flaws, though. It seems to me that the new developers decided that they needed to tweak the Hammer On/Pull Off controls a little, and the result of this tweaking was that there were many times throughout the game where I instinctively didn’t strum because two notes were close together, but one of the notes inexplicably required you to strum. Although this increases the difficulty, it feels awkward and forced (you could, after all, just do away with HOPOs altogether rather than making them unworkable at seemingly random times).

I’m not a big fan of the boss battles, either. The battle mode seems a good idea for balancing multiplayer Guitar Hero, because Guitar Hero 2 suffered significantly from the fact that an Expert player could hardly help beating anyone playing on Medium in the Face-off mode, at least not without putting down the guitar, which isn’t exactly fun. However, the battle mode really has no place in the single-player career mode, where all I’m looking to do is play some songs.

It doesn’t help that the boss battles are not very well executed. The final boss battle had me stuck for quite some time, simply because the battle power-ups that I was getting weren’t very useful against the opponent. When I finally got the right power-up, defeating him was trivially easy. That means the battle was far too dependent on randomness, which isn’t really fun in a game that’s good precisely because it depends completely on skill.

Add on top of this the fact that, for no obvious reason, the songs that you play in the boss battles can’t be accessed away from those battles. That means there’s no way to just play these songs. You’ve always got to be worried about defeating an opponent who’s messing up your ability to play. Along the same lines, certain songs are only unlockable by playing multiplayer mode. I wouldn’t call that a good idea in any case, but it’s especially annoying on the Wii version, because there currently is no guitar available for separate purchase, which means you must find someone else who owns both a Wii and Guitar Hero 3, and most people I know who have the game have it for PS2 or XBox 360.

The game is still lots of fun even with these flaws. There are some good new features to balance things out, such as the ability to play the game online (though again it seems that more often than not when I go looking for an online game, there aren’t any available). I think I like the Wii guitar controller better than the PS2 controllers for Guitar Hero 2, in part because they seem more responsive. A number of times when using the PS2 controller and strumming very rapidly while attempting to deploy Star Power, I have had the controller frustratingly not register my movement despite holding the controller vertically. I haven’t noticed such problems on the Wii.

As far as difficulty goes, if you played Guitar Hero 2 on Expert, then it won’t take you long to get through Guitar Hero 3 on Expert, either. Some of the songs are still difficult (and some will cramp your hand), but because the gameplay mechanics are the same (and that is a good thing), if you’re good at Guitar Hero you’re good at Guitar Hero. You won’t have too much trouble with the vast majority of the songs in the game.

All in all, if you liked Guitar Hero 2, you’ll probably like Guitar Hero 3. If you didn’t, why are you reading this?
Rating: 5 / 5

I’ve never played the previous games in this series but this game is addictive! The Wii remote is easy to tuck into the guitar and the tutorial is pretty easy. Instead of strings you have a bar you push corresponding to how fast the notes move. I’ve never strummed guitar, my husband has. And I’m thrashing him at this game!

You work you’re way up from a garage band, earning money along the way that you can spend in the games store for goodies like new outfits, real songs from around the world, and extra characters.Your current playlist is good with songs everybody knows even if their a poptart. You may even get asked to do an encore! My one gripe is their aren’t that many chick songs, at least not on the levels I’ve played.

If you can find a second guitar remote you can rock head to head, which I plan to do with the spouse. I’ll need to find a pink faceplate though. The makers said they’d have alternate fronts, so here’s hoping. The guitar/remote is about the size of a eukalalie but still manages to make you feel very boss and you’ll suddenly find yourself moving with attitude to the rhythm.

Stop reading and go play one!!!

Rating: 5 / 5

Guitar Hero 3 is great, however there are some problems with this particular version.

First, let me point out the obvious. This is the first and only Guitar Hero game for any Nintendo system. Currently only Rock Band Special Edition has been released for Wii, there are no plans for any of the three other Guitar Hero games will come to Wii. In other words this is the only game in town for GH on the Wii and sadly the game plays songs only in Mono. This means if you have a fancy surround system, the music would only come out of the center speaker. You can rig it up so that the same mono sound comes out of other speakers, but that is not even an approximation of Dolby Pro Logic II. This is a negative, but shouldn’t really prevent anyone from picking this game up.

The game itself is still as good as Guitar Hero 2 Bundle with Guitar or Guitar Hero (Game Only). In fact I would say that generally on the same difficulty level this game is a bit harder that the others. The set list, like the others, is a combination of classic and modern music. This is an online game, so you can play against people online and they claim that at some point additional songs will be available to purchase (not likely).

The new feature for this one is the battle mode. In these special boards you will face off with Slash, Tom Morello, etc… and instead of star power you get attacks to use against your opponent. It is well done, but since it is only a few songs it doesn’t play a major part in the game.

The Gibson branded guitar looks great and the Wii-mote actually plugging into it allows for better tilt functions. Also it rumbles and sound comes out of the controller, though it is rarely used (rumble for star power and speaker mostly for missed notes) it does put this version over the other guitars.

The big negative is the mono sound from the game. Even though the packaging clearly says Dolby Pro Logic 2, it is only in that sound format for the menus and whatnot. [On 12/6/07 Activision acknowledged this bug and offers a disk exchange.]

Since this is a music game, the mono sound is a negative, but really it shouldn’t prevent anyone from picking this up. There will be a disk exchange coming in the future [I totally called that one], in the meantime, rock on.

EDIT: Here is the press release from Activision spokeswoman Rhy-Ming Poon:

“We recently became aware that some consumers have not been able to enjoy the full audio output in the Nintendo Wii version of Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock. We are currently working with Nintendo and are planning to issue an improved audio experience in future versions of the game. We expect to have re-mastered discs available by early 2008 and we will be offering consumers replacement discs at no cost once they become available. We thank all of our customers for their support and patience.”
Rating: 4 / 5