Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock

"Near Perfection, But Not Quite There yet..."

Anyone who has played the previous Guitar Hero games, most likely enjoyed them. And what wasn't there to love about em! There were great songs, great concept, and overall a really good idea. This third Guitar Hero is no disappointment, but it does have a few flaws.

Graphics: 10/10
The graphics are pretty much all that you would expect from a PS2 game. It looks really good and all characters and backgrouns are lusciously detailed. But the thing is, when you play guitar hero, you focus mostly on the notes coming your way, and not all the extra crap going on in the background and crowds. I'm not saying that their shouldn't be a background, but it's just hard to focus on it when 25 + notes are heading your way on the fretboard. But it's a good thing they are there because its helps develope a good mood in the game.

Gameplay: 7/10
Ok, I'm kind of disappointed here. Let me break it down into a few sub-categories:

--Controls: The controls are smooth and for the most part, every note you hit will match the notes on your screen. Hammer On's and Pull Off's are improved from the previous two games which is really helpful when trying to get past intensely fast solo's. But sometime's the hammer on's and pull off's are too easy to do, which leads me to my next category...

---Difficulty: So you got some versatility here: Easy, medium, hard, and expert mode. It's a no brainer that easy mode is for begginners and expert is for, well, experts. But the way Activision transitioned the difficulty from medium to hard, and from hard to expert, is just laughable. Lets start from medium to hard: You'll get an extra orange note in hard mode which can play a pretty big impact from transitioning from medium to hard mode. But hard mode in tis game isn't even hard anymore. EVERY SINGLE SONG in this game has h-o's (hammer-on's) and p-o's (pull-off's). And considering how easy they are to do in this game, even a begginner guitarist could find themselves beating expert without much difficulty. But the transition from hard to expert mode is just.....unexplainable. Every song will provide you with difficulty. Try getting 100% on Slow Ride, the first song in the game. Yeah, it's really hard. You could try doing h-o's and p-o's, but song go really fast in expert mode so if you miss one note on a hammer-on streak, your pretty much going to miss the next couple of notes. But it's a completely differrent story for songs like One and Through The Fire and Flames, in which nearly every note requires a hammer-on, and if you miss one note in a streak, your done for. Prepare to watch your meter to go from green to red in a heartbeat. Speaking of Through The Fire and Flames, well...let's just say that not even the creator of guitar hero has gotten a 100% on the song. In fact, 50% of guitar hero players cant even beat the song on hard or expert let alone get a perfect score.

Boss Battles:
Everyone has heard about the new boss feature in GH3. No? Well you just basically use power ups to make the boss fail the same song your playing before he uses power ups on you to make you fail. It's a good concept and is easily the best and most fun feature in the game franchise. Too bad there aren't enough bosses, only 3, and when you beat a boss you unlock them...but not really. It's more like: You have won an opportunity to purchases the character you deafeated. Which is ok I guess, but the unlocked characters should be free. So this new boss ystem worked out really well.

--Guitar Controller (Kramer Version):
The original guitar the game gives you is wireless. Thank god otherwise you'll be forced to sit down in front of your tv again istead of standing up and rocking like a true rock star. But the guitar still has some flaws, one of which has NEVER been perfected in ANY of the guitar controllers EVER made. Which is the fact that each time you strum, you hear a **Click** sound. And it's not even a soft click sound, it's loud. If fact, sometimes when your playing a song, you'll hear the clicking louder than the song itself. That just isn't right, that ruins the enjoyability of the song by a big margin. You could just blast youe tv until you cant hear the clicking sound anymore, but it shouldn't even be there in the first place. Another thing, the guitar is still to small. Which isn't that bad, but it should be like an actual sized guitar for the older guitar hero players. Also, a new feature to the controller, the removable neck, is really cool but also pretty bad. I think it's great, it saves room, it can fit in luggage bags for trips, and it's easier to clean if it gets dusty (you'll know what I mean if you ever used the old GH controllers). But the two flaws I found with it is: One- If you loose the neck piece by some wierd accident, you can never use you $50 controller again because the fret buttons wont be there. And Two- The neck tends to move around a little when playing riduculouly fast solo's or just standing up and moving the guitar around. So It wasn;t a bad idea, but not a good idea either.

Sound: 9/10
This game probably has the best sondtrack in any other guita hero games. Whereas in part 2 I only like about half the songs, in this one, all the songs are just great. They're are many different versions of rock in this game: Classic, Country, Metal etc. and it just amazed me on how well the games songs are. And what's better, each artist of the songs actually has their voice in the song, meaning the people at Red Octane don't have their voices as the lead singers like in the past games. So overall, the songs are good. But when you miss notes, the sound the game makes is just awful. I know it's supposed to sound like a real guitar mistake when you miss a note, but it's just repetitive and annoying when you mess up three or more notes in a row and all you hear is **beep, boop boo, bop, beep**. This feature should really be quiter or not there in the first place.

Overall: 8/10
I'm saddened on how I can't give this game a perfect score, But it just doesn't deserve it. With the clicking sound on the guitar controller, the transition between difficulty levels, and the stupid beeping sound whenever you miss a note, this game can't get a perfect score. It should improve on all features from the last game(s), not just the extra songs, guitars and boss battles, clothing, and better song choices. But overall, you should buy it if you enjoyed the last two games. The game is great, don't get me wrong, but it's not perfect. So overall, I'd say the game was a success.

Reviewer's Score: 8/10, Originally Posted: 11/12/07

Game Release: Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock (w/Guitar) (US, 10/28/07)