| Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock (Xbox 360) Review |
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| Written by Edwin Hernandez | ||||
| Tuesday, 29 January 2008 | ||||
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The Guitar Hero series has returned with Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock. Now developed by Neversoft instead of series creators Harmonix (who went on to create Rock Band), Guitar Hero III is basically an upgrade of Guitar Hero II with "boss battles." Like an animal that hasn’t had to evolve much through the centuries, this newest installment doesn’t tinker much with the winning press-the-button-when-you-see-the-color gameplay. Instead, Guitar Hero III is all about refining things. What’s new? Where new content is concerned, the most obvious addition is the new song list. The songs in Guitar Hero 3 pretty much run the spectrum of classic and modern rock songs out there. Some songs include Paint it, Black (The Rolling Stones), Raining Blood (Slayer) and current hits such as When You Were Young (The Killers). The game also has a bunch of downloadable songs available on Xbox Live marketplace (one of which is a free download of the Halo theme).The songs are all fairly good though I'm willing to bet someone will complain that song X by their favorite artist isn't in the game. The game's other main addition is online play via Xbox Live. The online modes include face-off, pro face-off and coop mode. Another such multiplayer mode is the new battle mode where, instead of gaining Star Power as your score multipliers, players gain Battle Power to use on their opponent. For example, one attack known as Broken String renders one of your enemies strings useless until they are able to fix it by mashing the affected button vigorously. This mode is pretty fun though not much different from the other modes. The performance of the online component is decent. I didn’t have any problems with lag (which would be disastrous for this game) but it was tough to find games as they fill up quickly. I was left many times joining 10 or more games that had become full until I finally found one. Other than that, online multiplayer is a nice addition. Speaking of battle mode, this makes an appearance in the single-player career modes. During your career you are given the opportunity to battle Slash from Guns N' Roses as well as Tom Morello from Rage Against the Machine. You'll also battle the prince of darkness himself to The Devil Went Down to Georgia. The rest of the game’s additions are small tweaks. The presentation is much more interesting this time around. For example, one level has players playing while on the back of a flatbed truck that’s really a set for filming a music video. In addition to improved levels, the career modes also have improved storyline videos. The animation seems to be of higher quality (no doubt due to higher budgets). Lastly, game play has been slightly tweaked. Though in this area most people will undoubtedly have varying opinions, to me it seems like the game is harder this time around and simultaneously easier. What I mean by this is that the game throws more buttons to hit at you on each difficulty level than before. However, the game is also more forgiving when it comes to timing for button presses. Overall, it evens out and the game seems a fraction harder then Guitar Hero II. Buy It, Rent It, or Hardcore Only? Overall, my advice is to buy this game. Because of its interesting and accesible gameplay, odds are good you'll find something to love. My other suggestion is that if you can only afford the stand-alone game disc right now, keep saving and get the guitar. Guitar Hero III is not nearly as fun if you don’t have a guitar and that little plastic Gibson Les Paul adds another layer of immersion to an already solid package. If you have the previous Guitar Hero II Gibson X-plorer guitar, you can use that as well and go for the stand-alone disc I'm sure someone is wondering how does GHIII stack up to Rock Band, which is also a great game. Well, it all comes down to what you want. If you want guitar melting songs (ex. speed and difficulty) and a max of two players, get Guitar Hero III. If you want an amazing party game that has less emphasis on DragonForce-like solos and more on teamwork, get Rock Band. If you have the money, and want to ascend to Rhythm game heaven, get both. Take out a loan if you need to. See more of Guitar Hero III here at the official web site.
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