Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock (Xbox 360, 2007)

Have you had enough Guitar Hero yet? The sales totaling into the millions and growing every day say you haven't. Activision agrees. In 2007 alone we've already seen Guitar Hero 2 release on Xbox 360 and Guitar Hero Encore: Rocks the '80s on PS2, but that hasn't stopped the demand for more. Enter Guitar Hero 3, the first in the franchise made by development studio Neversoft after the former team, Harmonix, was snatched up by MTV Games. You can toss out any fears you might have had about a new developer ruining your favorite franchise right now. Guitar Hero 3 is another great reason to slip into some tight leather pants and rock out with your friends.

For music rhythm games, it often begins and ends with the soundtrack. Guitar Hero 3 has nothing to worry about. From top to bottom, this is easily the best lineup yet. Metallica, The Rolling Stones, Slayer, Iron Maiden, Aerosmith and more are all in with master recordings no less. Activision even got the Sex Pistols to re-record Anarchy in the UK just for the game. The same goes for Living Colour's Cult of Personality. The songs that were performed by cover bands, as usual, don't live up to the originals but there are less of them than ever before. This time, when you start up a Guns n' Roses track (Welcome to the Jungle), it will be Axl Rose belting out the words to accompany your shredding. And that makes all the difference in the world.

Unlike Rocks the '80s, this is indeed a full sequel. The list of additions reads like a wishlist compiled from fans across the world. A full cooperative career has finally been added, complete with its own songs picked specifically for their great bass or rhythm guitar parts. A battle mode is in as well, inspired in part by the Ralph Macchio movie Crossroads, where players duel against each other by throwing attacks at each other in an attempt to make one another miss notes and fail out. We've had a great deal of fun with this new way to go head to head with a friend. It may sound a bit odd, but don't write it off.

For the first time, the franchise goes online with co-op, face-off, pro face-off and battle mode up for play with a friend or stranger around the world. The PC version includes a open match list for browsing, quick match, and the ability to create a private match. To play with a specific friend, you'll either have to find them first on the public match list or know their handle to search for the private match after they have created it. There isn't any friend list, which is a bit of a disappointment. There's also a bit of an issue with people having poor connections online, making it a little difficult for us to find a match that we could even join. Once you're in, though, the game runs smoothly.

One thing the PC version doesn't have (yet?) is access to the guitarhero.com online community. This web tool, that pools stats and organizes tournaments from the Wii, PS3, and 360 titles, is a great addition and sorely missed on PC.

Guitar Hero 3 was built from the ground up by Neversoft without access to any of the code from the first two games and was then ported to the PC by Aspyr. The work done to ensure the game plays like its predecessors is admirable, but this title does play a tad different than what you're probably used to if you've been following the series closely. For starters, the window of time in which you can successfully hit a note has been extended by quite a bit. Buy it :)

QUICK REVIEW GUIDE
Graphics // 7.0 // Sound // 8.0 // Gameplay // 9.5 // Overall // 8.16 //

Developer – Neversoft Entertainment/Vicarious Visions
Publisher - Activision
FEATURED PLAYERS: 1-2 PlayersFEATURED PLAYERS Online : (1-2 Players)GUITAR SUPPORT : Wireless

GRAPHICS REVIEW
Although the Wii is not known to offer the best graphics compared to xbox 360 or ps3, I would have to give it to Neversoft, Activision or Nintendo for this version of Guitar Hero. The graphics are decent, considering this game is also on Xbox 360 and PS3. In Guitar Hero 3 Games, there seems to be a sense of artistic graphical freedom in this version. The graphic route the artists took in the 3rd installment of Guitar Hero matches the gameplay, so they did a great job!Even though the game runs on a wii at 480p graphics maximum, it looks very sharp on HD tv’s!

SOUND REVIEW
The music in Guitar Hero 3 is fantastic! It is stated to feature 70% of music across a 40 year span of different genres. There is a large variety of music within this game. Here is a sample of some songs you will rock to in Guitar Hero 3:
- Welcome to The Jungle (by Guns N' Roses)
- One (by Metallica)
- Paint It Black (by The Rolling Stones)
- Cherub Rock (by Smashing Pumpkins)
- Sabotage (by Beastie Boys)
- The Metal (by Tenacious D)
- My Name is Jonas (by Weezer)
- Knights of Cydonia (by Muse)
- Even Flow (by Pearl Jam)
- Lay Down (by Priestess)
- Cult of Personality (by Living Colour)
- Miss Murder (by AFI)
- Through Fire and Flames (by Dragonforce)
- Number of the Beast (by Iron Maiden)
- 3's and 7's (by Queens of the Stone Age)
- Suck My Kiss (by Red Hot Chili Peppers)
- Raining Blood (by Slayer)
- Reptillia (by The Strokes)
- Paranoid (as made famous by Black Sabbath)
- She Bangs the Drums (as made famous by The Stone Roses)
- Bulls on Parade ( as made famous by RATM)

This is a small portion of the variety of songs offered within this game! Eve if you are not a fan, you will learn to adapt and enjoy the music! That is the creative nature of this simulation! (not all songs were listed above)

GAMEPLAY REVIEW
For the new guitar hero players out there, GH is a simulitaion rhythm-based game where you hit falling notes on the screen represented by circular discs. It is very similar to DDR, Dance dance revolution, however, you will only score and progress in the game if you hit the notes on key when it meets a certain line or point of the player screen. As the notes scroll down, you will strum and hold the fret buttons down corresponding to the colors on the screen and guitar.

The game offers a variety of levels for experienced and new comer guitar hero players. You can play easy, medium, hard, and expert level.

The new addition to this version of Guitar hero are the BOSS BATTLES during your career mode. In previous installments, boss battles were never available in any of the games.

This is something new to the mix. You play against such legendary rockers as Tom Morello or Slash to name a few. If you defeat the boss you unlock them as a playable character and continue to the encore of the set list, which is a master recording of one of the bosses own legendary songs. IN addition, They have added online play, so you can now battle and face off your friends and random guitar hero players online to test your skills! A great new addition to add to that guitar hero addiction!

THE FINAL VERDICT
Guitar Hero 3 For wii or any system is a must buy. It is fun for all ages.

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.

The process is very easy to do, and the guitar works well. Though it’s somewhat impractical for gameplay, I took the guitar about 30 feet away from the console while I was playing a song—with metal cubicle walls in between—and the controller never fluttered or broke connection once. It does seem to go through AA batteries in a couple of days of heavy play, so you may want to get some rechargables to save your wallet a bit.

The guitar also has a standard wireless headset jack, which makes it easy to chat during the multiplayer modes. We’ll discuss them in a bit, but rest assured that the headset also works like a charm when connected to the guitar, so you have some freedom of movement, if you choose.

Outside of that, the controls are essentially the same as the previous guitar, though the Back and Start Buttons have been increased on these new Les Paul replicas, which makes it easier to kick in Star Power (if you choose to do that in place of rocking the guitar up) or pausing the game.

(A quick note—or gripe, if you will—about pausing in GH3. I don’t understand why, if you pause in the middle of a song, unpausing should immediately start at full speed right where you paused, which makes it nearly impossible to avoid missing notes. If this was being treated like a true song rehearsal, you’d get counted back into the action. I make this an open plea to add this kind of feature to the next version of GH, because otherwise it isn’t worth jumping back into a song, unless you happen to find an open gap in which to take your break. There, I’ve gotten that off my chest…)
The single-player gameplay is much the same as previous versions, with the main goal being to set up a “career,” select a difficulty (from four settings) and play through a song list one at a time, earning up to five stars for how well you were able to re-create the song’s note chart on your fret buttons. Here, there are 42 songs out of the box, though you’ll be able to “purchase” bonus songs now, as well as download additional songs via Xbox Live Marketplace soon enough, which will extend your song selection. GH3 has a Training mode where you can try out any of the songs and work on your prowess should you need to polish your play on specific portions.

The number of stars you get on a certain difficulty rewards you with in-game money; the better you do, the more you put in your bank—and you occasionally get a new sponsor who’ll kick a good sum in the direction of your band for touring and such. The money you earn can be used to buy new instruments and finishes, songs, playable characters and so on. And with GH3, you also earn money in the Easy career, which is helpful given the pricing of some objects.

Neversoft has strived to improve the song list, with numerous tracks being “master songs” that are created by the original band, not re-created in a recording studio somewhere by session musicians. These include a wide range of songs from “Paint It, Black” by Rolling Stone to Living Colour’s “Cult of Personality” (which was re-recorded for specifically for the game) to “Knights of Cydonia” by Muse.

It’s important to note that, not all of the songs are that good. Some (such as “La Grange” and “Pride and Joy”) are facsimiles that just don’t capture the spirit of the original as well; others (such as The Killers’ “When We Were Young”) just don’t seem to belong in a game called Guitar Hero.
My Overall Rating- 8/10

In the next great rage in the music gaming industry, there was DDR, Karaoke Revolution and Get On Da Mic just to name a few. Guitar Hero is the newest musical hit that seems to have taken the world by storm selling 5.9 million copies so far. Wanna test out your Rock star skills? Think that you have magic hands and can complete with the world’s greatest guitarists?
Graphics – 4/5
Not enough has changed to from previous GH titles to be amazed, sorta like the Sports games differences between the 07 and 08 games are slight game engine upgrades with roster and stat changes. Though there are some notables I have to report. Crisper details and easier to use menu setup. The game is visually stunning compared to the previous titles. The characters are more textured and the cinema scenes are engaging. Between sets, you are subjected to an animated scene in which you receive an invitation to play at the next venue.
Gameplay - 3/5
I have some bone to pick with the way the controls were setup, mostly with how the tabbing of the songs. I found on Easy mode to have more difficult song tabs then Expert mode, while Expert mode seemed dummied down. Then there’s the battle system to take into account. You go and battle against the greats of the Rock world. Some of them seem too easy even on Expert mode they seem like it’s still on Easy. .There’s single, Career, Co-Op ,two player Co-op, Battle and Online play. Replay value is through the roof.

Soundtrack - 5/5
Let me break it down for ya, there’s 71 playable songs - 46 of which are "main setlist" songs, while the remaining 25 are "bonus tracks." In total, 51 of the game's songs are master recordings (the highest total of any Guitar Hero release).
The soundtrack features such songs as The Rolling Stones' "Paint It, Black", The Smashing Pumpkins' "Cherub Rock", Beastie Boys' "Sabotage", Tenacious D's "The Metal", Weezer's "My Name is Jonas", Muse's "Knights of Cydonia", Kiss' "Rock and Roll All Nite", Alice Cooper's "School's Out", Foghat's "Slow Ride", Metallica's "One", and Heart's "Barracuda."[32] It also features re-recordings of the Sex Pistols' "Anarchy in the U.K." and Living Colour's "Cult of Personality" specifically for Guitar Hero III, as the original master tracks could not be found.
Downloadable songs are always a plus, but it comes at a price either money (About $6.00 a song) for Playstation or 500 Microsoft points for X-Box. As well as free Battle Trail packs.

Overall, this game hits the mark and just alittle bit above. With awesome classic songs (But there could have been more) even though downloads will expand this, and the graphics on par, only the difficulty level really needed some tweaking.