Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock: Xbox 360

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Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock: Xbox 360

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Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock: Xbox 360

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Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock: Xbox 360

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Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock: Xbox 360

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and it isn't as much like playing a guitar as in GH2. I like the variety of music, though, and one of my favorite songs to play is Slipkot's "Before I Forget" and I'm not really a fan of heavy metal at all.

Also with the game play, as others have mentioned, the move from Easy to Medium to Hard really needs some work. Easy was far too "easy"--I got 100% scores on the first 10-12 songs I played, the first time I played them (that wasn't the case in GH2). And the Medium setting is just too hard in some cases (Muse's "Knights of Cydonia," Metallica's "One"). I don't think I'll ever beat Lou at the end of the Medium setting, and I can't even imagine trying to play at Hard or Expert (I'm an older guy, and my hands can't take the stress--developers need to keep us in mind, too; these games aren't all being played by teens and pre-teens; I can't imagine the playlist really appeals to those much younger than about mid-20s).

That brings up the whole guitar battle aspect of the game. These are either far too easy or far too difficult and there really isn't a lot of rhyme or reason to how the attacks get thrown at you. Luckily, I discovered that if you fail a battle three times in a row, you get the opportunity to "wuss out," or I might never have gotten past Slash and on to the rest of the game. As for exclusive songs in the co-op mode, that's just plain a bad idea (there are unlock codes to open them up for the Quick Play mode).

Finally, though, having purchased Rock Band and seeing the wealth of stuff that's available on that disc, I just have to say that GH3 is a bit of a "bare bones" presentation. There's so much more that could have been done with this. I enjoyed playing GH3, but can't imagine when I'll come back to it, unless a friend (or relative) with a guitar controller happens to stop by. You're paying quite a bit for a game that you'll probably (depending on your age/past experience with the franchise) finish very quickly.

Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock: Xbox 360

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one thing, the initial two difficulty settings compel you to adapt your grip on the fretboard to leave your index finger on the green button, pinky on the blue button, and keep each assigned to its place. With the introduction of the orange button, that's no longer really a viable strategy if you want to avoid crippling the weaker side of your hand. Additionally, in 2, upon reaching hard difficulty, the speed of the notes down the fretboard doubled, the fifth button was introduced, and chords and note orders increased in complexity. Those three things were enough to make hard a no-go for a lot of people in principle where a gentler slope would have taken care of that.

In response, Neversoft has tried to reduce the impact of the change in difficulty by making the Medium notes move just about as fast as the Hard difficulty ones. Unfortunately, instead of making the Medium to Hard transition easier (still very difficult because of the whole hand-training thing), it just makes the Easy to Medium transition much more jarring. Hard is still so hard that I barely want to try it at all.

2. Uncomfortable Play - I swear, the designers have put some of these songs together specifically to be painful for me. Seriously - playing Knights of Cydonia I thought I was going to cripple myself. On Medium. These guys really need to get some bad players into the office to see if they're not making something dangerous. I should not find out that I'm bad at a game by giving myself a repetitive motion injury.

3. Guitar Battles - This is a new problem for the single player. Guitar battles in multiplayer might be a good idea. I don't honestly know. Seems more interesting than a score-off to me. Unfortunately, in single player, because of the way the attacks are set up, they're really just an exercise in coin flipping. Some of the attacks are utterly crippling to the computer player while others, in addition to having a large delay before they become effective, essentially have no impact whatsoever. If you get the good attacks while you're trying to play, you'll win. If you don't, you lose. Whether you're any good or not is really not of much relevance. That's bad. Guitar battles in single player, for me, tended toward exercises in frustration at the computer not giving me the tools I needed to succeed and not having any other recourse to win. They need retooling.

4. Cooperative Campaign - This is a wonderful idea. It really is. But what half-brain decided that there should be exclusive tracks squirreled away in it that I cannot get to? That's right - I am totally unable to unlock those tracks, because I cannot play the cooperative campaign online. I'll confess - I'm old. My friends are married and have families. The only time I'm going to have somebody with another guitar at my house is if I throw a party, and I'm not really a party kind of guy. That's not a good reason to keep me from playing frigging Sabotage if I want to. I will grant that they have made the songs themselves available in online coop play, but nothing I do online seems to unlock anything for me to practice (and I SERIOUSLY need to practice Helicopter before I try THAT again). Maybe I'm doing it wrong, but I'm going to assume I know what I'm doing.

5. Song List - Guitar Hero 2 was pretty good in this regard. It had a good sampling from a broad spectrum of rock (maybe a little light on new stuff). Guitar Hero 3 seems to be making a point of digging in the dustbins of rock history. It's not that the songs are bad, but many of them are outside of my experience, and that puts me off. I'm a child of the 90s. This game seems to be a schizophrenic effort to appeal to younger people than me and to older people than me. Some of the songs also puzzle me. Kool Thing? Really, guys? I can't even tell what I'm supposed to be doing there. It's barely a song. There's better Sonic Youth. There's a distressing number of songs where the lead guitar is nearly invisible, and that makes it kind of hard to play. The number of master tracks is also disappointingly small, compared to its soon-to-be-released competitor, Rock Band.

Don't get me wrong - the game is fun for what it is, but there's just so much here that could have been done better. Should have, really. I hope Neversoft takes some time on the next installment, puts in a fifth difficulty level (between Normal and Hard), and works out the kinks in their new stuff.