Guitar Hero 3:Legends of rock - really does rock!
Guitar Hero 3: Legends of Rock is the fourth in a series of rhythm games in which the goal is to hit the notes as they scroll down the screen, strumming on the strum bar when they reach the right moment. As the game retails around £69.99 ($89.99) with the Red Octane Les Paul controller it's a well worth investment.
The game is pretty much the same as the others in the Guitar Hero franchise with some interesting changes to the layout. The newly designed fret board and frets, with a stylish new rock meter and points counter it altogether looks sleeker.
In previous Guitar Hero games, it was hard to 'Hammer-on' and 'Pull-off', but with a new system it is a lot easier to hit those solos and with the difficulty ever more increasing with the games, it looks like you need to take advantage of this feature. Another one of Guitar Hero 3's strong points is the note streak counter. When you get around 28 notes in a row it starts to count them and show them, this is useful to Xbox 360 users for the achievements, and it is also nice to see how well you are doing.
A major flaw in this game is the difficulty, if you are used to playing Guitar hero 2, it will seem easier due to the Hammer-on and pull off changes, but if you are a beginner it is best to start on an easier version of the game. Although hard, it is do-able so if you really want Guitar Hero 3 and you feel you will fail at it, get it anyway as by playing it you become better very quickly.
The hardest song in Guitar Hero 3 is Through the fire and the flames by Dragon Force with immense solo's you'd be lucky to get past 2%.
The Wii version of Guitar Hero 3 generally plays well with it sometimes lagging or stalling at points, when going to a new screen, requiring you to reset your console.
The new look design of the fret board, rock meter and points counter look better than previous Guitar Hero games. As Neversoft have used green screen and motion capture technology, the movement of the characters and even the singers mouth moves to the song very well, although it does look huge and kind of out of proportion.
Also the set list of Guitar Hero 3 is probably the best feature of this game with over half of the songs being original and the other half actual good covers, Guitar Hero 3, definitely is the one for music. Although the sound isn't 7.1 Dolby as it said on the box, it is still a brilliant sound output.
Red Octane has taken another step in making a better game with their wireless Les Paul Guitars. As all of the next gen systems are wireless, it works well, with the PS2 having a dongle for it to connect. They work well and are better than the old ones a you can truly rock out without the wires affecting your guitar shredding! The Wii version requires you to put your wiimote in the guitar and when you miss a note the sound comes from the remote, which adds to great effect. For storage you can now take off the neck and change face-plates to a more retro look.
The game features classics from The Rolling stones', Santana, ZZ Top, The Red Hot Chilli Peppers and many unsigned bands to add together and make a set of top bands. As it is good to have a lot of Originals, the covers still stand out and although aren't as bad as the other Guitar Hero's they are still cringe worthy.
Because of all of these new songs, and so many of them there is a lot to cover in the game. With 70 tracks for PS2 and Wii owners and 70+ for those with an Xbox 360, or PS3 connected to the Internet and want to download new ones that are added frequently.
The game still has the same characters as Guitar Hero 2 apart from the Grim Ripper, Clive Winston, Eddie Knox and Pandora. The only addition that Guitar Hero 3 adds is Lou, the devil who is unlocked at the end of the game. You can now also be Slash and Tom Morello, with new joke characters Elroy Budvis and Metal head.
The big feature for Guitar Hero 3 is the battles feature. Instead of star power you get battles so when you activate your battle attack it will either affect your opponents screen or steal one of their attacks. The attacks include Lefty Flip (when the notes bar is switched to confuse you), Whammy (where you need to whammy to start hitting notes again), Difficulty Up (where your difficulty is increased by one, unless on Expert when it doesn't come up), power-up steal (you take your opponent's power-up) and Amp Overload (where the notes flash on and off making it harder to anticipate when to strum). In total there are three battles in the career, one against Tom Morello from Rage against, one from Slash, from Guns n' Roses and the final, and very tricky one is a tribute called The devil went down to Georgia, by The Charlie Daniels band.
Although a good idea in principle when in practice battle mode simply doesn't work. People often save their power-ups and use them one after the other at hard parts, making it impossible for your opponent to recover quick enough, also people online tend to go on the easiest difficulty so that they will be able to survive the barrage of attacks and be able to get power-ups themselves. The worst aspect of the Battle feature of the game is the fact that if you pass the song, something called 'Death Drain' comes up which just drains your performance and makes it harder to see the notes, this is very quick and isn't explained very well in the game.
The online modes are available on the Wii, PS3 and Xbox 360, overall the connections are good and people seem to have a great time without many bugs. There are four modes for online, Face-off, Pro face-off, Battle or Co-op. All of your progress throughout the game is tracked with www.GuitarHero.com, which is very useful.
If you're looking for a game that has brilliant original music, battles to blow your mind and awesome online that'll rock you out of this world, this is the game to buy!
