Strummin' On My Gee-tar Hero III

The Guitar Hero series has become quite a hit series over their first two games. I joined the craze with the second installment of the series and was instantly hooked. Therefore I was naturally excited when I heard that Guitar Hero III, obviously the third game in the series, was going to be released late in 2007. Even through I was anxious for the game to come out, I waited until a little before Christmas to get the game only and use the guitar controller that was included with Guitar Hero II. As has been the case with previous GH games, you have the option of simply purchasing the game or the game/guitar if you don't have one or simply have one that needs replacing.

Game Modes

The majority of the features of this game are carried over from the previous one. Career Mode is where your band goes from venue to venue playing progressively more difficult tracks earning money and unlocking tracks. One of the new modes is battle mode, which is incorporated into Career Mode. You take turns playing a section of a song and if you hit a stretch of notes correctly, you get a "power-up" which you use against your opponent. I don't like it because it seems like luck is the deciding factor more than skill. Another mode is Career co-op where you play with two players to get through the song list. There are actually some songs that require two players to unlock.

The core concept of the game really hasn't changed much from the second to third version of Guitar Hero, but that's mainly a good thing in my eyes. You still use the smaller scale guitar-shaped controller that has five buttons, a strum button, and a whammy bar. And very much like in previous installments, the game is similar to Dance Dance Revolution in the way that the notes are hidden until a few seconds before they need to be played and are scrolled down the screen.....sorry if that was confusing. The notes descend down the screen until the bottom where there's an indicator that you need to hit that fret button and strum at the same time.

The menu screens and the in-game screen have been given face lifts in the GH III. The look of the menu is ok, but I was fairly disappointed with the in-game screen. The look of the band on-stage and the area around the stage are well done, but I have no idea why they decided to make the rock/performance meter and star power meter smaller and slightly harder to read. You only have a second to glance up from the notes to see those meters, but they take a longer look to be able to see what they say. Although in one song they cut to the drummer playing and it looks like his arms are attached in some funky manner, the graphics compare well with other PS2 titles.

While working my way through the game, I noticed that the track list for GH III is much better and consistent overall than the GH II soundtrack. Both have their high points, it's just that III doesn't dip as low when the tracks miss the mark. A pleasant surprise was that over half the tracks in #3 are the original master versions rather than covers created specifically for the game. The cover songs are still a little painful in GH III and make me long for the originals, but are still unchanged from the guitar point of view.

I think the list is more complete because it encompasses a larger variety of music than previous games. Bands such as The Rolling Stones, Rage Against the Machine, Black Sabbath, KISS, Iron Maiden, Smashing Pumpkins, Weezer, Metallica, Alice Cooper, The Beastie Boys, AFI, and many others have tracks you work through in career mode. I liked that the some of the bonus tracks that can be purchased are bands I've actually heard of like Senses Fail, Kaiser Chiefs, and Rise Against compared to the previous games bonus tracks.

Fun/Replay Value

Despite the lack of exciting new game modes and the general sameness of GH III to the first two, this disc gets put into my PS2 and doesn't leave for quite a while. The four difficulty levels seem to be more challenging than they were in GH II and the 73 total playable songs help insure that this game won't lose it's appeal anytime soon.

Final Thought

With GH III's lack of new game modes and similar structure this simply becomes another Guitar Hero game, which is alright by me because gameplay is the main draw.