 Review By: Nick Arvites |
Developer: | Neversoft |
| Publisher: | RedOctane | |
| Genre: | Music | |
| ESRB: | Teen | |
| # Of Players: | 1-2 | |
| Online Play: | Yes | |
| Accessories: | Gibson Guitar Les Paul controller, Xbox Live (online play) | |
| Buy Now: |   |
I’ve never really been a fan of rhythm games. I've never gotten into games like Dance Dance Revolution, and I hadn’t played Guitar Hero until the third installment (after I played this, I ran through Guitar Hero II to form some point of reference). After picking up Guitar Hero III and playing through a few songs though, I actually found myself enjoying it. It combines music with addictive gameplay, while remaining simple enough for almost anyone to pick it up and play.
The first noticeable thing about the Guitar Hero series is the controllers. The controllers (which add to the high sticker price) are essentially plastic guitars that look like something Fisher-Price would create. The Guitar Hero III pack-in is a wireless Gibson Les Paul. My natural complaint is that the controller is just too small, and it looks ridiculous when worn by anyone older the 8. That aside, it does what it’s supposed to do. The fret buttons work, and the strum bar works. For gamers who don’t have another guitar or want additional challenge though, it is playable using a standard controller.
The core of the game is essentially rhythmically pressing buttons to the beat of a song. The fret buttons are color coded (and scaled) to correspond with the fret display on the screen. As the song plays, colored buttons float down the screen, and when they hit the string you’re supposed to play that note. To simplify this, the Guitar Hero games are basically Dance Dance Revolution for your fingers. You have a rock meter, which tells you if the crowd likes you. If it gets too low, you’re booed off the stage. Star Power is gained by hitting a series of star-shaped notes. Once your Star Meter has enough power, you can activate Star Mode and gain a larger score modifier. You enter this by pulling the guitar neck upwards, which may or may not work at any given moment. I found in general that slower pulls activated it, while it wouldn’t register quick pulls.
Songs are unlocked by playing through Career Mode. In Career Mode, you select a pre-made character and name your band. This is kind of a bummer. Not having character creation in a game like this is downright lazy. Remember the jump the Tony Hawk series took when it started allowing custom skaters? Yeah, it’s fun playing as generic punk guy or generic metal girl, but I’d rather create my own character. After that, you then play a series of venues, with each venue adding more songs. If you beat a certain amount of songs for that venue, you unlock an encore song. Sometimes the encores are just songs, and sometimes they’re a boss battle. The boss battles are new to Guitar Hero III, and they’re hard at first. Your opponents are Rage Against the Machine’s Tom Morello, Slash of Guns N’ Roses and Velvet Revolver, and Lou (the devil). The boss battles are basically rock-offs, where the goal is to get your opponent booed off the stage. You each have the standard rock meters, but you can gain attacks instead of star power. The attacks include increasing the difficulty, reversing the fretboard, or breaking a string. These battles are hard at first, but once you do one they just get annoying. There are only three of them (thankfully), but they really distract from the actual career mode. In between venues, you get a few cutscenes drawn in a style reminiscent of a Gorillaz video. The story is funny, but not really essential in the grand scheme of things.
The list of songs is actually well-balanced between modern and classic, and contains tracks from every era and from numerous styles. The big improvement from Guitar Hero II is that there are far more original recordings in Guitar Hero III. The covers, while passable, are noticeably covers. The game shines when you’re actually using original tracks by original artists, and tends to suffer if the cover is bad. None of them are as bad as the covers in Guitar Hero II, but they still stick out. I’d almost rather not have covers and lose the song altogether for a song they could get the original recording.
Posted: 2007-12-14 20:59:29 PST