Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock

The Good
Let me say that I compile this brief review from the perspective of having never played any other game of this type. I've never played any other GH installment, Rockband, or even DDR. For me, Guitar Hero 3 is my first experience with this type of game.

I was very hesitant to purchase this game for the PC mainly on the grounds that there are several reviews which claim that the PC version is flawed in that there is a ridiculous amount of stutter, lag, and the like making it less enjoyable than its console counterparts. Well, I did my homework and went on YouTube and found quite a few recordings of the game in action. Truth be told, there were a LOT of videos showing the lag and choppiness of the game. However, I did notice that most of these examples were played out on machines that were borderline to system requirements and such (which are themselves quite steep).

I endeavored to put off playing, until I played the xbox 360 version at a department store and decided that I had to have it. Well, being that I’ve committed to wait for a Wii (none are available right now), the only way I could play TODAY would be to buy the PC version. What the heck I took a chance.

I was delighted to see that none of the criticisms about lagginess or unplayability were present when I took my first go at the game. My machine however, is a bit above the specifications for those that drew issue with the game. Running on an Athlon 64 x2 5200+ with 2GB RAM, Windows XP sp2, and 256MB 8600GT x2 (in SLI) mode, I have zero technical issues.

The game is just plain fun, and like other guitar hero installments there are a wide variety of popular songs that are fun to jam out to. I quickly found that being completely new, any difficulty setting above “easy” was a waste of time on me. Like a real guitar hero, I needed to practice and build my skills before moving on to bigger and faster riffs. For the really serious player, you can also practice sections of songs at reduced speed, so that you can learn the proper keys and chords without having them thrown at you at light speed.

Playing the guitar actually produces an effect. If you’re hitting the notes, you can hear the guitar prominently represented in the song. Miss notes, and it sounds like crap. This gives one the feel of really playing a guitar.

The career mode is of course the meat and potatoes of the experience. You start off by picking a character, playing a few gigs, and working your way up the ladder of fame. At one point, I had Tom Morello of “Rage Against the Machine” challenge me to a guitar battle. The way to win was to get power-ups by hitting the right notes at the proper time and then tilting the neck of the guitar upwards (the controller detects being tilted) which makes you hit Tom and messes up his playing. Beat him down enough, and you can be a guitar loser and still win. Seems silly, but adds to the variety and I like it. Once he’s defeated, you can play “Bulls On Parade” with him. Nice.

Multiplayer is present, but you aren’t missing a whole lot if you pass on it. Really this is the kind of game that one can really get into all alone, or can appreciate an audience of people watching you jam out. Multiplayer just mainly allows for you to compete against another player’s skills, but so much of the game is based on competing against oneself and one’s own abilities that it seems silly to involve other people.

The PC version was a full $20 cheaper than the other versions where I live!

The Bad
Some of the flaws are inexcusable here. For example, nothing that you buy for your characters really does anything. All of the upgrades in the world won’t make you a better player, or allow you to really do anything that you can’t at the start of your career. What’s the point of allotting me cash if nothing I buy with it makes any difference?

Some of the songs are too long and just plain annoying. I understand that there are a variety of tracks in an effort to appease just about every kind of guitar fan, but it amazes me how some of these ever made it into the game. For example, why do we have “Story of My Life” from Social Distortion in there, where I can hit the same key over and over for what, 6 or 7 minutes? Not fun. Some songs just don’t translate well to Guitar Hero as they just aren’t fun to play. I was disappointed to see that some songs I really liked are absolutely no fun at all to play, while others that I don’t really care for work out much better.

I got to thinking, how does the guitar controller detect when it’s tilted? I can only think of one answer; a mercury switch. While it’s probably pretty safe under normal circumstances, a mercury switch could pose a problem should the kiddos decide to take apart their guitar, or worse even, a drunk friend smashes the toy guitar against the ground after an encore performance, potentially scattering highly toxic material over your entire house.

I must comment on the technical issues of this game even though I have experienced none, simply because there is an overwhelming crowd of highly dissatisfied gamers that experience trouble with the game running smoothly. Make sure that if you want to enjoy smooth play here that you have a high end machine. A dual core processor is required at minimum. You’ll want to be well above recommended specs and probably running SLI to avoid problems. For this reason, if you have an alternative (such as an xbox 360 or Wii), go with that and avoid the PC version.

The Bottom Line
Guitar Hero 3 is so much fun, I feel that I wasted time writing a review when I could have been playing, “Even Flow” by Pearl Jam. Go for the game on other platforms if you can, but if you do have a high end PC and no alternative, this version will work out for you.

The Good
One of the things guitar hero has on it's side is it's relative ease to pick up and play. After running through the tutorial's, few, if any, people could say they still did not understand how to play.

The graphic's have been significantly improved over those of Guitar Hero II. Gone are its bland plastic/wood feel, now replaced with vibrant graphics and better realism. O.k, they're not photo realistic, but at least you don't feel like your looking at a toy doll. The venue's themselves as well as the interface have also been significantly improved.

Add to that, the playlist is also one of the games strong points, the chances are, there will be something to most people's taste. Or in failing that, you could end up liking some of the songs featured that you had not heard before.

If you like a lot of the songs, it also has a fair amount of replayability to it, especially if you have none of the song's on your MP3 player.

The Bad
It can be a bit daunting for new comer's to the plastic instrument genre, but the tutorials can be a big help.

If you don't like a lot of the songs, then you probably won't get much replay value out of it.

Finally, one of the big let downs of the GH series is that the instruments have an unfortunately well deserved reputation when it comes to reliability, so don't be surprised of the GH controller it comes with end's up packing in on you.

The Bottom Line
You will either get a lot amount of entertainment out of this, or not very much, depending on your skill and appreciation for the music. And be aware of the possibility of your instrument dying on you.

The Good
Guitar Hero has certainly felt like a big turning point in my life. This game changed my interest in music, and now I’m into Heavy Metal and Rock from any decade. It got me into the Sex Pistols, Queens of the Stone Age, and Pink Floyd. The neat feature of this game is the variety of music it features for you to perform, from the 70s (“Schools Out” by Alice Cooper), 80’s (“One” by Metallica), 90’s (“Bulls on Parade” by Rage against the Machine) and the 2000s (“Anarchy in the U.K.” by Sex Pistols). One good thing about this feature was that it got my parents into this game because they like a lot of the songs featured in the game. The music kind of brings back memories of the old decades even if you were not even born back then. In fact when you select a song from the list most of the songs at the top are from older decades, and most of the songs from the bottom are from more recent decades that neat too. This way the player can learn a bit of an evolution of rock and rock.

One other interesting thing this game has is the way the songs are sung and how the sound effects are used in the game. They sound pretty close to the original version and the instrument sound match what the sounds would be in real life to. Also when playing the guitar it is pretty neat when you hit a note a guitar sound is made and if you miss a note the sound disappears until you hit the next note.

There is also one neat feature about the graphics and one that is bad. The good is that in the 3D environments the performers, the people in the crowd, where the concert is taking place etc, look pretty well drawn and realistic. The actions of the performers look very well developed to. For example when you perform the song the performers in the game do neat actions like jump around, and point their guitar in all directions showing how excited they are to be performing. Also when you perform well you can hear good reactions from the audience, and the performers act positive after the song. If you perform bad you hearing bad reactions from the audience, and if you fail the performers act negative and might throw their instrument on the ground with anger.

The game developers were also did a good thing with the certain variety of ways to play the game. The four modes easy, medium, hard, and expert are put together really well. Easy has three buttons to hit and is done at a beginner’s pace. Medium has four buttons to hit and is done at a little faster pace. Hard has all five buttons, and is even faster. Expert (Which in my opinion is where anyone who has really played a guitar before should start this game at. Not easy.) also uses all five buttons and is done at the fastest pace of all the levels. Besides the choice of level I also like how you can do Quick Play mode with all the songs you perform in the game and all four levels so you can see what it is like to play that level in the real game. The bonus songs you can play when you purchase them are also a neat addition to this game. I’m also thankful for the fact that this game has a tutorial mode, (If you’re having trouble with the game even in quick play.) this way you can play the song at a certain speed and see where the keys will always be in that difficulty. Speaking of which I like how in each difficulty their may be different buttons to hit in a certain part of the song, so this way in one difficulty you may start the song by hitting just the red button, and in another you may have to start by hitting the red and yellow buttons. Career mode features good challenges to make guitar hero less like a hit the key and get a scholarship game. For example if at one point in the game you get less than 65% key hit you fail like you would on a test and that was common for me when getting used to the game even on easy. Also the three guitar battles you have to battle in have a neat feature with battle power where you and the boss try to make each other have trouble playing to show who the best is. Last, but not least this game has a good store where you can buy songs, new characters, new guitars, and more. No matter which band leader bought the songs in career mode anyone can use them in Quick Play.

The Bad
As I stated before this game does have a good thing about its graphics and a bad thing. The bad thing about the graphics are even if the 3D art looks neat, the hand drawn 2D art look as terrible as the artwork in many of today’s new cartoons on Nickelodeon and Cartoon Network. I mean the colors look bland and the people look like mere stickers in the backgrounds. This really could’ve used improvement. In fact why can’t the hand-drawn cut scenes be 3D to? I also notice this sometimes after you perform well, the instrument one of the performers was playing may float away from them (I’ve seen happen very few times though.).

The Bottom Line
I think this game will be a great way for rock fan who are only familiar to today's rock to get more into older forms of rock, and it will be a great way for them to get into playing an instrument, like it has for me.

Like an educational game it may also get the player to just eagerly try a harder level and improve their performance.

All hail the Guitar Hero!