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    Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock

    Game » consists of 15 releases. Released Oct 28, 2007

    The fourth installment of the series (Guitar Hero: Rock the 80's being the 3rd) that single handedly revitalized the music-game genre, Guitar Hero III retains the core gameplay of its predecessors while delivering a more challenging experience.

    quadrifoglio's Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock (PlayStation 3) review

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    Guitar Hero III is everything a Guitar Hero fan could want.

    It wouldn't be wrong for you to go into Guitar Hero III with some sense of awareness; Neversoft has a reputation for churning out bad games by the truckload, but fear not, because Guitar Hero III is everything you could possibly ask for: it has better music, better graphics and it has online play. The increased difficulty is also something that veterans of the series will greatly appreciate. From the overall craziness of "Through the Fire and Flames" to the finger-crampingly awesome solo of "One", Guitar Hero III is overall a harder game than the previous entries.

    A lot of the difficulty comes from the bigger emphasis on three-button chords which leads to some small charting errors here and there. It's not bad, but songs such as "Stricken" and "3's and 7's" could definitely benefit from having a smaller number of three-button chords.

    One thing that doesn't feel unnecessary about the game though, are the graphics. Everything about them has gotten a considerable bump. The game runs on the engine that powered Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 8 which wasn't actually touted as being a technical marvel, but it looks really good compared to the previous games. Textures are sharper, the lighting's better and the animations are excellent. The animations in particular are great. Every animation in the game has been motion captured, including the singers facial expressions that look really excellent. Guitar Hero hasn't been about the graphics, but they certainly look nice when you aren't totally focused on the fretboard.

    Gameplay wise, nothing has really changed from the previous games. Basically, you have a guitar shaped controller (a Gibson Les Paul for the Xbox 360, PS3 and Wii versions and a Gibson Kramer for the PS2 versions), colored circles run down the fretboard, you press the corresponding fret button, strum with the controller at the same time and rock is made. In Guitar Hero III's case, you will be rocking to the best songlist of any Guitar Hero game ever made. The songlist consists mostly of great tracks, all the way from 1960 to 2007. From the cIassical rock song "Paint it Black" by the Rolling Stones to the poppy "When You Were Young" by The Killers, Guitar Hero III manages to nail the songlist. Anything you could ever want besides Led Zeppelin is in the game. Not all of the songs are great though; Sonic Youth's "Kool Thing" and Slayer's "Raining Blood" aren't so great. Of course, it's all a matter of preference.

    The good thing about the songlist is that over half of the songs are master tracks from the artists. Living Colour and the Sex Pistols actually went back in the studio to re-record the songs "Cult of Personality" and "Anarchy in the U.K." respectively. This is a great improvement over the previous games, since a lot of the covers in the previous games were pretty lacking in terms of vocal accuracy. The songs that actually are covers are, for the most part, really well done. One of the only blemishes is Dead Kennedy's "Holiday in Cambodia," which has been badly edited and is overall a bad attempt at recreating the lead singer's voice.

    The bonus songs have also changed a good deal. While Guitar Hero I and II featured a lot of songs from in-house Harmonix bands, Guitar Hero III features a more European feel. Bands like Heroes Del Silencio, Bloc Party, Kaiser Chiefs and Die Toten Hosen are in it, further solidifying the European feel of the bonus tracks. The bonus songs can also congratulate themselves on having the most impossible song ever to be featured in a Guitar Hero game in Dragonforce's "Through the Fire and Flames."

    One of the interesting additions to Guitar Hero III is co-op career mode. Career progression is pretty much the same as playing through it alone; you complete 4 songs plus an encore, but in this entry, you get a short, animated clip to give the game a sense of a story, depicting your bands rise to fame, to it going to hell (literally). It's a neat little addition that's occasionally hilarious, although they don't really have a reason for being there.

    Although co-op career is a nice addition, straight up co-op play is strangely missing from the game. It feels kind of limited to only being able to play co-op career, since you won't be able to play all of the songs unless you play through all six tiers. Six songs are co-op exclusive, meaning that you won't unlock them, unless you play through all six tiers, which is kind of a bummer, since the co-op exclusive songs are pretty awesome to play.

    One of the less interesting additions is Battle Mode, where the star power notes are replaced by power-ups that consists of things like a broken string, where your opponent has to mash the button a number of times before he or she get to use it again; a whammy power-up, where your opponent has to wiggle the whammy bar before he or she gets to play again; an amplifier overload, that causes the notes to disappear and reappear randomly; and a power-up that will bump your opponents difficulty level up to a higher level, assuming your opponent is playing on a level lower than expert, of course. The concept might sound interesting on paper, but in reality, it's not. Most matches don't last more than 30 seconds, because the power-ups are so overpowered, making the mode practically useless.

    An addition, which Guitar Hero players have been craving since the release of the first game, is online play. You get to play all the modes, including the less-than-stellar Battle Mode, and it's a fun, lag-free experience. On the PS3 however, friendlist support isn't existing, which is kind of a bummer, since finding games on the PS3 version is pretty hard.

    Overall, Guitar Hero III is everything the fans could wish for: it features great music, online play and an increased difficulty. Although newcomers of the franchise should probably start out with the previous entries, Guitar Hero III is a great game that shouldn't be missed.


    Other reviews for Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock (PlayStation 3)

      The formula remains fun, albeit tried-and-tested. 0

      Originally developed by Harmonix, after two years the beloved Guitar Heroes series has shifted over to Neversoft in ‘Guitar Heroes III: Legends of Rock’ available for the PS3, Xbox 360, Wii, PC and Mac. Many fans will no doubt be wondering how this latest instalment weighs up. GH III follows the same formula as its predecessors. For anyone unfamiliar with the series, it’s a music/rhythm videogame. Think Dance Dance Revolution with guitars. Players use a controller shaped like a Gibson Les Paul ...

      0 out of 0 found this review helpful.

      Rock out with your co...ntroller out. 0

      Guitar Hero II was my first Guitar Hero, and it was loads of fun, so as you can guess I was looking forward to this new addition to the series. I was worried at first about the change in developer and publisher, but I'm glad to be able to say that the game was not harmed in the transition, and turned out pretty good.The graphics, while still not groundbreaking, are a giant leap ahead of Guitar Hero II. The physics engine, now powered by Havok, is great. Now the characters hair, or clothing addit...

      0 out of 0 found this review helpful.

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