A good soundtrack does not a great game make.
If you haven't given into the music game genre yet and played Guitar Hero, then skip the exercise in franchise milking and go buy Rock Band. If, however, you are a Guitar Hero enthusiast then please, pull out the leather pants and read on. The Guitar Hero fan base is practically insatiable, and I more than love the addition to the party game genre. There really is something magical about a game with plastic peripherals that makes you feel like a rock star.
Like any good rhythm game, Guitar Hero III relies heavily on a good soundtrack, and delivers. After the success of previous Guitar Hero games I can easily imagine that some bands were just a little more willing to license their music, and from Metallica and the Rolling Stones to Aerosmith and the Sex Pistols you won't be disappointed. Unless of course you wanted original recordings, because as usual, most are covers.
If you were as disheartened by Rocks the '80's as I was, take heart, Guitar Hero III introduces some much needed improvements. Among them are cooperative career mode with songs geared toward bass and rhythm parts, and battle mode in which players duel against each other in order to win the crowd over. The co-op career mode is missing from online, though perhaps a worse grievance against co-op is the inability to play the battle songs from career mode with a friend.
The online does include the aforementioned battle mode as well as non-career co-op play, and a face-off mode. Unlike the 360 version in which you can invite a friend, the PS3 version will likely leave you playing mostly strangers. I didn't really take issue with this, as most of my co-op gameplay happens when friends are over; the single-player mode is plenty consuming. All versions have an online compilation of statistics, tournament management and clans, which is nice but so expected it doesn't really garner Guitar Hero any favor.
The Les Paul guitar is one of the best improvements to the game, but if you would rather just play with your wired guitars you won't suffer for it. After all, how many guitar peripherals does the average gamer need? If you do spring for it, be warned, earlier Guitar Hero games are not compatible and apparently we can pretty much forget about using it with Rock Band.
I guess I'm supposed to be impressed that I can play as Slash or Tom Morello. I'm not, and the lack of character creation capability is pretty pronounced. The character models don't exactly raise the bar, and while mo-cap was done for the licensed avatars there are no next gen worhty improvement, particularly when you consider the crowd or band members. With this in mind, I was downright livid when the screen chugged during star power. Frame rate issues in a rhythm game? That is not rock and roll.
Neversoft's work on the game is pretty consistent with prior iterations. I know some of my Guitar Hero veteran friends were concerned about the length of time given to hit a note, but rest assured Guitar Hero III will make your fingers bleed. Quick changes are par for the course and you had better master your hammer-ons and pull-offs. If, however, you have no aspirations to the Expert level you can happily strum along on Medium. The more difficult note distribution will make you feel like you rock harder, anyway.
One loathsome addition to the campaign are boss battles. These fights are like the new battle mode, only intensely frustrating, ultimately serving like roadblocks to game progression. Another strange choice was inclusion of some story elements. They are so inconsequential that it is hard to have much of an opinion at all of them, only I wish they had been at least marginally self-aware: One snippet portrays the band being accused of selling out. Having to stomach the sold-out pitch from Activision is a bit much, particularly with an Axe Body Spray guitar in the game.
Guitar Hero III is the first of the franchise developed by Neversoft following the Harmonix departure to better, if not yet bigger, things and while they deliver on music a good soundtrack does not a great game make. Overall, the Guitar Hero presentation just looks tired, and while some may argue that the gameplay still holds strong I think the artificially difficult songs stamp the fun right out. After a couple hours this version just felt like a chore, and one that cannot help but be passed over in favor of a certain Harmonix title.
