Guitar Hero 3: Legends of Rock (Xbox 360)
By: D_Litch
It's no secret that Guitar Hero is one of the most successful video game franchises of the last few years, so when the game's developer/creator Harmonix left Activision, and the rights to the Guitar Hero license in the process, many people were curious to see what would come of the series. Activision wasted no time in handing over development duties to one of it's most successful studios, Neversoft. Being as Neversoft's only real success was the Tony Hawk series, many fans were worried what would happen to their beloved faux-shredding series.
Let's see how they did.
General Gameplay
When Harmonix left Activision for EA, they took the source code for Guitar Hero with them. This required Neversoft to develop another engine, and while they did a good job, there are some differences. First off, the notes have a much larger hit-detection radius, that means the player has more margin for error. While that is good for newer players, some Guitar Hero vets may find that the game has been "dumbed" down. Well you crazy Guitar hero junkies, Neversoft knew you would feel this way, so they decided to make Guitar Hero III a hell of a lot harder than Guitar Hero II in terms of note counts. If you think the solos from
Freebird and
Six were tough, wait until you try
One or
Number of the Beast. You'll either be happy, or you'll just cry like I did, and still do.
Tech Specs
Parts of the game look great in HD, especially the scorekeeper and streakcounter. The character models are another story entirely. In SD or HD, they look equally horrible. It seems like Neversoft was going for a cartoon/real life hybrid, and it failed horribly.
The sound, as expected, is great. Most of the tracks are masters, and they sound fantastic. While Guitar Hero II was littered with horrible covers(
Killing in the Name still makes me cringe), the few covers here are pretty good.
Game Rage
Each gamers Game Rage will depend on what difficulty they are playing on. Certain songs such as
Raining Blood, and
Through the Fire and Flames transcend difficulties and are equally infuriating on each level. Your Game Rage will also depend on what you are worst at. Suck at Hammer-ons? You'll hate
Cult of Personality. Hate strumming up and down?
One will get your panties in a bunch.
As long as you take it slow, and learn which techniques best suit you, you should progress without too much anger. Practice does indeed make perfect, and this game is a shining example of that cliché.
Bedtime Rating
All of the songs are edited for radio-play, so they are appropriate for all ages. This is one of the better party games to play with your family. Children as young as 8 or so can pick it up fairly quickly, and you'll have a blast playing with your kids. Really the only thing that may be too vulgar for a child's ears are the obscenities that will be pouring out of your mouth after you failed to five star
Raining Blood for the 12th time in a row.
Butt Groove
This is a title that will hook some, and make others stop playing after a few songs. If you get hooked, then Guitar Hero III will be the source of one extremely large Butt Groove in your couch. The better you get, the more fun higher difficulties become. After playing a while on medium, you'll bump up to hard to find almost a whole new game. This game has been referred to as "Crack Hero" because of it's addictive nature, and it won't take long for most gamers to find out why.
With 71 total tracks, 46 available in Career modes and the other 25 a "Bonus" songs. This game has plenty of songs to play, and they are all tons of fun.
Multiplayer
The Xbox 360 version of Guitar Hero III sports 3 versus modes and a cooperative mode for online and local play. It gets a deduction for not including the bread and butter of the co-op experience, co-op career, available for online play. But the other online modes are fun enough to suffice most Guitar Hero fans. Some may grow weary of having to start a new room after every match. See, due to the lack of an online lobby, the end of every match means both players have to go to the main menu, and then start another match. This isn't a huge inconvenience, but it does make it that much harder to convince your tired buddy to "play just one more song".
Achievements
If you asked me to sum up the Guitar Hero III achievements in one word, that word would be "ridiculous". You really have to invest a whole lot of time in this title to even break the 300GS mark. For one of the achievements you have to break 750,000 points on one song by yourself. This can only be done on the highest difficulty, and can only be done by almost perfecting the game's hardest 2 songs. Another one of these extremely difficult achievements requires you to buy everything from the store. Sounds simple enough, eh? Well, to unlock everything in the store you have to: Beat the game on every difficulty, 5-star all the songs on each difficulty, and beat the co-op career entirely. Then, you you can buy everything in the store and get the whopping 10GS from doing so. If you play this game enough, and are really freaking good at it, these are possibly achievable. But to mere mortals, these are but a pipe-dream.
Hardware Specs
The Xbox 360 and PS3 versions of Guitar Hero 3 ship with wireless Gibson Les Paul controllers. These look great, and I had no problems syncing with the system. I never lost connection, and it never seemed to have any lag in response time. The only problem some gamers have is an issue with the frets not working at times. This is directly related to the detachable neck, and can be easily fixed. This intrepid Lobbyist has shown a quick and inexpensive way to remedy this problem.
If it weren't for the neck problem these controllers would be perfect, and with the neck fix, they basically are.
Category Rankings
General Gameplay
Tech Specs
Game Rage
Bedtime Rating
Butt Groove
Multiplayer
Achievements
Hardware Specs
Overall Couch Count: 4.5 out of 5
Linear Mode
