Game Review - Guitar Hero 3: Legends of Rock

Well, as promised, here's my review for Guitar Hero 3: Legends of Rock.

Quick Notes -

Pros:
The Controller
Most of the songs
The Graphics
Most of the Characters
The Ending (totally sweet)

Cons:
Frustrating / Poorly Balanced Boss Battles
Strange Co-op mode game design choice
Some of the unlockables
No create-a-character!
Anarchy In The UK

Initial Impressions -

Out of the box, I was very impressed with the look of the controller and the game. If you don't notice a considerable upgrade from Guitar Hero 2, you're just not looking all that closely. I must admit - when I first used the new controller, I thought it felt a little wonky, but this was probably due to the fact that I was so used to the Explorer controller. After a few days with it, it feels nice as pie. The fact that it is wireless is a MAJOR plus. This, of course, really allows you to live out your rock-star fantasy by jumping around like you're high or drunk or both. It hasn't made a terribly big difference for me, but I suppose I'm used to playing in place. That could change if I had guests over and there was more energy in the room. I did have a little bit of trouble with the star-power, but more on that later. After playing through a lot of the co-op career mode, I am pleased to report that the core game play remains unchanged. If you liked Guitar Hero 2, you'll like this game. If you hated Guitar Hero 2 with a fiery passion...why are you even reading this review?

Controls (9.25 / 10, provided you play with a guitar accessory) -

As with the previous Guitar Hero games, the guitar is essential to enjoying this game. Honestly, how cool can you feel pulling off a massive hammer-on / pull-off solo with a controller? It just doesn't have the same appeal. With that being said, I had problems with the controller, save for one. To activate "star power," a bonus that can save you from failing an especially hard solo or maximizing your score, as activated by 1) pushing the select button or 2) tilting the guitar upward, as one might see a rock guitar player do. While option 2 is definitely cooler, I found the added sensitivity actually caused star power to activate for me at undesirable times. This only happened sparingly (either completely on accident when re-adjusting the guitar or during an especially fast section of any song), but it was still irritating. This isn't the first time I've encountered this problem in a Guitar Hero game, but it is worth noting if you plan on really throwing around your guitar. For those who are worried about connectivity problems - I faced zero. Everything worked great, and I knew if I ever missed a note, it was because of me, and not the controller.

Music (8.75 / 10)

The music game genre is tricky because there is no way to accommodate everyone's musical tastes. To the game's credit, it boasts a LOT of tracks covering a few decades of music. Also, the fact that a lot of the game's recordings are master tracks really speaks to the game's recognition among those in the music industry. It helps game play a lot too - especially when you've heard the song before, and you expect it to sound a certain way. I personally have no complaints about the set list, except, perhaps, for AFI's "Miss Murder," or The Sex Pistol's, "Anarchy In The UK." The group re-united to re-record the song, but honestly it felt lacking in...energy, excitement, and an interesting note chart. By contrast, In Living Color's re-recording of "Cult of Personality," is easily one of the best songs in the game. There's some stiff competition with songs like "Cliffs of Dover," and "One," but that one is still great, even after all the years. Despite all this, the reason I gave the game an 8.75 out of 10 is because some songs suffer from weird balancing problems, either too soft, or certain parts are too loud. The Stone's "Paint It Black," is especially bad. I like the song a lot, but it's just hard to play along when you can barely hear the music. Forgive me if this sounds snooty, but I don't think a game with this high of production values should suffer from such a mistake.

Game Play (8.999... / 10)

What's not to love about a game that lets you rock out like a pro? Small annoyances that add up to hamper the experience. Before I start with my complaints, I want to say this: this is a fun, solid game. If you've ever like a Guitar Hero game in the past, pick up this one. If you have a passing interest in guitar, pick this game up. If you like rock music turned up loud, pick this game up. It's a great game that suffers some minor flaws. Allow me to explain -

1) The Story.

For the most part, I actually liked the story. I thought the different stories for Single and Co-op mode were also well put together...it just didn't seem like there was enough. A 20 second cartoon between sets that starts and ends abruptly just doesn't cut it for me.

2) Lack of Create-A-Character

For all of you who wanted desperately to express yourself through electronic media...keep waiting. This game includes more characters than previous games, but the biggest customization you can do for any given character is change the color of their outfit. (Ohhh...instead of wearing black shorts now he's wearing jeans...whopty dee.) I was not impressed by this; in fact I was disappointed, especially considering they axed one of my favorite characters from the previous game, Pandora. Sure, you don't look at the character when you are busily tearing up the track, but her replacement, Midori (a peppy j-rocker) seems out of place considering there is not a SINGLE track of J-Rock (or even J-Rock inspired) music in the game. I know there has never been a create-a-rocker mode in ANY Guitar Hero game, past or present, but honestly I think that is definitely one way Red Octane is going to have to step it up for the next installment with games like "Rock Band," on the horizon.

3) The Strange Co-Op Mode choice:

This one requires a little explaining. When you play through on co-op mode, each player picks their preferred difficulty. You can then rock out with a friend, and double your scores, etc. The problem, however, is that if you play through on Hard-Medium, you don't unlock any other difficulties for play. Actually, you only unlock the lowest difficulty you play on. The cash prizes you win after each stage are awarded based only on the lower difficulty...which makes no sense. This design choice may have been put in place to encourage gamers to "step up" to a higher difficulty, but in the end, it only proves frustrating.

4) The Boss Battles.

By far, my biggest beef (which, all things considered, is a rather small beef) with the game is the boss battles. For those not in the know, Neversoft's big addition to the franchise is Battle Mode, where the player and the computer (you can do this in versus mode as well, but I have not had the occasion to try it) face off in a shred-fest to determine who is a better player. Though you get the chance to battle against 3 main opponents (Slash (Guns 'N Roses), Tom Morello (Rage Against the Machine), and a final mystery opponent), you can't practice the tunes for the battles. The only way you can try the battles is to accept them. This is a real shame, because all of the battle songs are incredibly cool (especially the last one)...I'd just like to try them without having to worry about melting the face off of another guitarist. The other problem is that the powers you use are given out at random. You still have to play a string of notes successfully to gain a power-up (kind of like star power, but much more aggressive), but the game chooses which power-up you get. These power-up range from essentially useless (amp overload, which causes the opponent's notes to flash on and off), to devastating (whammy, where the opponent has to mash their whammy bar before they can play more notes; or lefty-flip, which is a real mind bender to humans, but not terribly difficult to the computer). There are other powers like difficulty up (which does nothing if you play on expert) and double (which doubles the notes you have to play, oddly). The fact that everything is so random really seems to make winning more a matter of happening upon the right power-up. On hard mode, I was able to push over the first two bosses (Tom and Slash) in seconds. The final boss battle took me over 10 tries (12, to be exact), which is far too many for a player who has basically destroyed Guitar Hero 2 on expert...(well except for the last two songs, but still)...which brings me to my last point.

5) The Difficulty

A question you might ask yourself is, "Is this game harder than Guitar Hero 2?" The best answer I can give is yes and no. The note charts are definitely much harder. By the third tier of songs, you're already dealing with some fairly difficult rhythms with plenty of hammer-ons / pull-offs. This may come as a surprise to players who are between difficulties (i.e. hard / medium, etc). It may be a nod to the hardcore gamer, but I know it will frustrate some players. On the other hand, you now have a little longer to play the notes on the screen. This means that if your timing is a little to slow / fast, the game won't destroy you. The one problem I found with the system is that songs with extreme amounts of shred feel like randomly mashing buttons...I found this especially true with the final boss battle. Some times I felt it was better to just randomly mash buttons than to actually try to play notes. What's more, some songs just felt like they were on the wrong difficulty tier (Anarchy In the UK is a great example of this).

All in all, you can look past the above complaints if you just want to jump in and have fun. I am examining the game as a long-time fan, and putting it under the microscope. At this point, there really is no other game that feels this cool or close to actually playing guitar (that is, of course, until Rock Band comes out).

Downloadable / Online Content -

Though the Guitar Hero franchise seems like a shoe-in for online content, I found an utter lack of it at this point in time. Guitar Hero 2 also allowed players to download content (thus proving the possibility), but for the most part there wasn't a lot of material to be had (unless you like My Chemical Romance and Trivium). As of right now, the only online content available is a demo for the game (rather useless if you already bought the game in full). Interestingly, Activision and Interscope records teamed up to release a "Guitar Hero 3 Companion Pack," including 11 tracks from the game and three bonus tracks for the game available for download. Basically if you buy the XBox 360 version of the game, you can go on Xbox Live, turn in a code, and get three songs. As of this very moment, however (11-1), I have not been able to redeem my code. In fact, just to register my code and make a log in, I had to wait until Wednesday of this week (even though the game came out on Sunday). Again, it seems like such a top-shelf game should have had all this sorted out, but I'll cut them slack if they can get this issue fixed. In the end, when player created content (or at the very least player created note charts) is available, I will be much happier with this service.

Closing Thoughts

Ultimately, it will be interesting to see how this game compares to Rock Band. From the looks of it, Guitar Hero will be more of a single player experience (especially with the issue with co-op mode), while Rock Band will be more of a party / collaboration game. I can't judge it until I see it, and though I doubt Harmonix will drop a brick, Guitar Hero will definitely have to pick things up a bit if it wants to keep hold of it's spot atop the music genre.

Final Verdict: B+ / A-