Guitar Hero III is the latest and fourth installment in the franchise, instead of being developed by Harmonix though this time around it's developed by a few different companies: Neversoft (Xbox 360 & PS3), Aspyr Media (PC & Mac), Vicarious Visions (Wii), and Budcat Creations (PS2). The game was published yet again by RedOctane (now owned by Activision). Released in October 2007, the game debuted on the consoles first, then a month later it also showed up on PCs. In December the final Mac version was released. This widespread release would make
GHIII the very first in the franchise to be available on all forms of contemporary gaming machines.
With the success of
Guitar Hero II still fresh in the air it's no surprise that this game was anticipated by the franchise's fans. When reviews started to come in the general consensus was positive but didn't push
GHIII over the top of it's predecessors.
Review:
Graphics:
Despite the fact that the game was designed specifically for a next gen console like the Xbox 360 this time around I still found hardly any improvements in the game graphically speaking. Yes, some textures are more detailed, Star Power has a new look, and character models are clearer but overall there's no major change in visual design in this game from the last.
However, I have come across annoying glitches and frame rate drops at given times during play. For a game that's all about timing and rhythm though this is NOT a good thing nor should it be a tolerable thing. For the most I've found that when the player puts himself into Star Power mode and the fret board and such changes over to that mode, sometimes the game will visually "skip" possibly throwing you off and causing you to lose track of the song and mess up. This proves to be a major annoyance that doesn't seem to happen all the time but still is present in the game (whereas
Guitar Hero II had almost NO graphical glitches to speak of).
Graphics = 8.5
Gameplay:
Guitar Hero III doesn't bring anything drastically new to the table unlike
GHII did. In fact it has less songs available for it! There are a total of 93 songs (42 career, 6 Co-Op career, 25 bonus, 20 downloadable), 73 of which are off the disc. While this isn't detrimental to the game (seeing as how you have 73
new songs to play anyway) it's a little disappointing that the franchise didn't keep with the progressive state and deliver more tracks right out of the box. It's also note-worthy that while
GHII shipped out with only 4 master tracks for the game, of the 73 available songs in
GHIII 54 are original tracks from the artists themselves - if that's worth anything to you.
As for new things this fourth installment does bring to table...there are two new modes of play: Co-Op Career - where you and a friend can play through the game's career mode (with different setlists and some new songs differing from the single player career mode), and Battle Mode - a new version of the Pro Face-Off mode introduced in
GHII. Each player will again play the same song but to mix things up instead of achieving Star Power you get Battle Power. Battle Powers are essentially powers that you can use against your opponent in order to make them screw up and thus fail the song. Whoever fails, loses.
The original cast of characters is back minus Pandora, Clive Winston, and Eddie Knox but these characters are replaced by one new one, Midori, and five unlockable/buy-able ones in the store (Grim Ripper, Slash, Tom Morello, Lou the Devil, and The God of Rock). Personally I thought they got rid of the best characters...
GHIII also supports a more refined online play allowing players to post their scores on leaderboards, buy additional content in the Xbox Live Marketplace, and play other users.
A new controller also comes to us with the new title. This time around the model is a Gibson Les Paul, but the highlight of it is that it's now wireless. While this must sound awesome I'd say that having a wire was never much of a pain for me personally. I could see someone finding it be a distraction though depending on how you play. The new controller is nice and supposedly feels more comfortable but I'd say that it's not worth dishing out another $100 for the game/controller package if you already own a previous
GH guitar (which work fine with this game).
Unlike the past games there seems to be enough to gripe about with this title. First, when the game shipped out a Co-Op Quick Play option was not available. This was distressing to most fans who enjoyed the mode in
GHII, but a released patch can now be applied to the game to allow this mode. Second, it's disappointing that the game isn't even going to try to keep up with the rival
Rock Band - as of this moment only 20
GHIII tracks are available to download while
RB has been pumping out weekly releases since it hit shelves and will continue to do so. Finally, the most concerning and repelling of negatives about this game is the massive increase in difficulty. What's supposed to be Medium feels like Hard and what feels like Hard is more like impossible...and let's not even talk about Expert. For some ungodly reason the devs decided to drastically increase how hard the game. To more experienced
GH fans while the game will prove to be challenging anyone who's a casual player or is just starting to get into the franchise will probably be turned away by this. It actually gets quite frustrating - imagine all those really annoying and hard parts of songs from
GHII you played on Hard and Expert and pretty fill every song with them in
GHIII...yeah...the fast track to pissed off indeed.
Gameplay = 8/10
Audio:
The fact that 54 of the 73 songs to play are master tracks makes the game way more enjoyable. While the covers are still there it's nice to hear the original music. In a way it's more proper seeing as how you've probably been listening to the featured songs on your CDs or on the radio and air guitar-ing to them, this just makes the circle complete with the real song and a fake plastic guitar for you to play.
Yet again the songs touch every corner of the rock-genre. This time around however there seems to be more of a concentration on contemporary or modern rock while in the previous
GH the songs that stuck out the most were classic rock songs. This isn't a bad thing however.
Audio = 5/5
Replay Value:
It's got it...especially with the two new modes of play - Battle Mode and Co-Op Career Mode.
Replay Value = 5/5
Story/Plot:
While there is a faint semblance of a plot line in this title it's still not worth rating on any level...
Conclusion:
I think it can be agreed upon that while
GHIII is yet another great title in the franchise that'll keep you playing over and over again, it's just not as top notch as the past titles. There's something about it that just isn't as fun as the previous games.
It may be that you don't like the songs, or that the difficulty is just too hard for you to fully get your skills around in order to have fun, or it even may be that you just miss that hottie Pandora. Either way there's just something about
Legends of Rock that doesn't quite reach the meter that
Guitar Hero II easily filled (and then used Star Power on us).
Final Score = 26.5/30 or 88%
August 14, 2009, 07:04 PM
/ [Games] Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock
