Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock

With a guy like Slash on the cover, it must be good right? Heh, say what you will about the guy, half the people like him, the other half don't. I don't suppose you could guess which camp I fall into. But joking aside, does the next iteration of Guitar Hero live up to all the hype? Well that is the question. It is Guitar Hero, as you remember it, with a plethora of songs to be shredded on the new Wireless Les Paul. A few new additions attempt to bring the growing staleness of the title to new heights, but with the sale of the series to Neversoft, you really notice where the game falls short, and that is in quite a few places.

First lets discuss the newness. This incorporates an all-new set list boasting 71 songs, 40 of which appear as the game's core gameplay in career mode. Alternately there are 6 songs exclusive to the two player co-op career mode, which is great, if you know someone who has a guitar and is willing to come over and spend some hours blazing through it. Unfortunately for those who don't have that friend are left high and dry short of cheating to get those songs. Another factor to consider is the fact that the guitar isn't even offered by itself, so even if you did want to jam with you significant other, you are SOL unless you enjoy having two copies of the game lying around. Then there are the songs themselves. Along with a terrible cover of Paranoid the tracks leave something to be desired. Aside from the 20+ bonus tracks from not very well known bands, the core songs really aren't that great. I would venture a guess to about 15 or 20 that you might really want to play, with the rest being fluff. There is more then one time when you say, "Will this annoying song ever end?!?" I am sure that there is a good base of people who would enjoy more then that but as for the entire group of us, I doubt it.

The co-op exclusiveness isn't the only big flaw in planning. The biggest new addition, whether you love it or hate it, and there is no gray area there, is the boss battles. Neversoft has created this new system of guitar battling which uses, of all things, power-ups to defeat your opponent. You face off against Tom Morello from the late band Rage Against the Machines, and Slash from the late Guns' n' Roses. Along with another devilish opponent, you and your foe go toe to toe in a custom song all the while trying to screw them over to the point of failure. If you don't succeed, your opponent automatically wins a draw. Now aside from the completely broken balance of this system, i.e. someone strikes first and the other is stuck trying to recover the entire time, this mode really just isn't any fun. If you were ever excited about it when it was announced, you will be disappointed. The idea, is sort of neat, but the implementation is completely lacking and gives it more of a tacked on after thought feel.

Along with the boss battle system, Sony fans get something else new to the series, multiplayer action. Now you can jam with, or against, people from all over. Just another way for people to find out that there is always someone out there who is better then they are at the game. But seriously, the online is solid and surprisingly enough has really good reliability. You don't have to worry about lag, which is key in rhythm games and the gameplay is really smooth. You can play battle, co-op, or face off, all of which work seamlessly.

With all the talk and praise of the new Les Paul controller, really the actual peripheral comes up quite short. Aside from the basic Guitar Hero feature, the only real differences are, you can remove the neck, you can change the faceplate, and its wireless. Now wireless isn't something to laugh at, everyone loves wireless guitar rocking, but the number of times that this overly glorified feature have been mentioned during production really takes away from who great it really is to be able to rock from your couch or what have you. The absolute worst part of the controller is the complete lack of backwards compatibility. Therefore, gamers, myself included, who own a backwards compatible PS3 will not be able to play the older Guitar Hero games with this controller. This to me seems like a real missed opportunity for a little extra revenue that Neversoft is so greedy for. Removing the neck is convenient for storage purposes but again, not a real winner of a feature. Changing of the faceplate is sort of lame in reality. Sony has offered skins for both their PSP and the PS2 but no one really uses that to the point where it's a great feature. If anything else, this is just another cheap way for Neversoft to squeeze more pennies out of your wallet.

All in all, you feel a lot of cheapness from this game. Certainly not from the price tag, but you definitely feel it in the overall experience. Along with shameless plugs for Axe Body Spray and other products, the whole presentation feels a little cheap, especially for a "current gen" game. The graphics are not as played up as they should be. The sound is a bit quirky and will cut out on you at times. Really the number of songs should be higher as well. With a Blue Ray disc, you have so much room for storage and there hasn't been a game yet, this one included, that really gives you that sense that you get all the bang for your buck. With lofty ambitions set by the user base, Guitar Hero III really falls short and with their obvious money centric presentation, this title really isn't all its cracked up to be. If you are looking for the same old Guitar Hero experience however, then look no further, because flawed though the game may be, it is the same Guitar Hero style that you know and love and even though it doesn't pull its weight to bring it to the big rankings, it does get the 6 out of 10 rating from me which puts it at the solid level of a "Fun" playing experience.