Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock

"Arthritis will be worth playing this game."

*Note: Since this is the 3rd Guitar Hero game, I will be doing a lot of referencing and comparing the the previous two Guitar Heroes (mainly number two, as I don't own the first) so hopefully you have some playing experience with either game.

[b]Base Gameplay:[/b] The Guitar Hero franchise has been noted for its simple to understand but fun style of gameplay that has been huge for the rhythm game genre. Guitar Hero 3 sticks to that gameplay. If you have played a previous Guitar Hero than you know what to expect. When you load up a song, you see five buttons across a fret board on screen. These five buttons are the same order as on your Guitar Hero controller. As you can expect, you have to hold down the fret(s) and strum as you see them fly past you on screen. If you hit the note or chord on screen at the right time, then it turns into a small flame and disappears. Each individual note is 50 points, a two note chord is 100 points and a three note chord is 150 points. The more notes and chords you hit in a row the higher your multiplier gets. If you hit 10 notes/chords in a row you get a x2 multiplier, 20 in a row earns a x3, and 30 in a row gets a x4. A x4 multiplier is the highest you can get. Depending on how many notes and chords you get, how well your multiplier is through the song, and how well you use star power(more on that later) you will get an overall score for the song, and get a star rating(3-star, 4-star, 5-star. Each minimum score to get four and five stars depends on your difficulty setting. Depending on the difficulty you select you will have to play only three frets through a song or all five frets. Easy difficulty is very, very slow and you only use the first three fret buttons(green, red, yellow). Medium difficulty is a bit faster than easy and uses the first four fret buttons(green, red, yellow, and blue). Hard is faster than medium and uses all five fret buttons. Expert is very fast and uses all five fret buttons with complex chords and patterns. Certain notes are shaped as stars and when you hit these notes you get star power. When you have enough star power to use it, your notes get blue and you get double points. Star power can also take the crowd out of the red on your rock meter. The rock meter measures how well you are doing. You are either in the green, yellow, or red. When you are in the red you are in danger of failing a song. Even though that was a lot to describe it, the gameplay is pretty simple. This is the hardest Guitar Hero game to date. Songs like One and Through the Fire and Flames will have people trying to 100% them for a while. Base Gameplay Score: 9.5/10

[b]Game Modes:[/b] Guitar Hero 3 has many game modes to play. The game modes make this game all the fun that it is.

Career: Career in Guitar Hero 3 is the same as in the previous Guitar Hero games. You pick a character and join in a band. You play through the songs in a tier, and once you beat the four songs in a tier, you get the encore song. After you beat the encore song, you travel to a new venue, and play another tier. As you beat songs you get paid for you performances. The higher your star rating on a song, the more cash you get. Money is used to buy all kinds of things from the store. You can get songs, characters, guitars, guitar finishes and more from the store. At certain parts in career, you get into a boss battle. I like the boss battles a lot, its a fun new way to play against someone. Basically a boss battle is like pro face off, but instead of star power you get power ups. A few power ups are broken string, and whammy. The power ups when used require your opponent to fix the damage done or something else. When broken string is used, your opponent must press the fret button that is broken until it is fixed. Boss battles are interesting and fun to play.

Co-op Career: Basically its career mode, but you play with another person, and there are no boss battles. You and a friend go through a career mode, one plays guitar and the other bass. You can switch which one you play at any song. Beating co-op career unlocks a total of six songs. Co-op career is very fun, but it is bad that the only way to get those six songs is beat co-op career or use a cheat code.

Multi Player: Multi player has three different ways to play. Face-off, Pro Face-off, and Battle. Face-off is where two people playing against each other play different parts of a song, and whoever does best on their parts wins the match. Pro Face-off is where two players play the same song on the same difficulty. You go through the whole song and whoever gets the higher score wins. Battle is the same as boss battle, but with another person instead of a computer boss.

Practice: In practice you can slow down and practice sections of all the songs. There are also tutorials on how to play the game.
Game Modes Score: 9.5/10

[b]Songlist:[/b] Guitar Hero 3 has the best songs in any of the Guitar Hero games. This may be completely different for you, depending on your tastes. I think Guitar Hero 2 had a lot of throw away tracks on it that I absolutely hated(like Girlfriend, etc). Guitar Hero 3 has a lot of rock songs in it that are great. It has all kinds of classic rock and newer rock. Many of my favorite bands have a song in this game(like Smashing Pumpkins). This game has an amazing songlist that makes me want to play all the time. The only way the songlist could be any better is if you were to make a custom version composed of all you favorites. Songlist Score: 9.5/10

[b]Graphics/Sound:[/b] Guitar Hero 3 has graphics that are not really improved from the second game. In fact, I think that the game takes a hit here. The playable characters almost all look really bad. For example Xavier Stone looks like s disco reject. Many of the characters look awful and annoy me. Although as you are playing a song the game looks good. The graphics are not amazing, but they do their job well enough. The sound of Guitar Hero 3 is very good. It does not sound bad at all, especially for a PS2 game. Since the PS2 doesn't have the high power specs of a 360 or PS3, this game may sound bad in comparison. I think that unless you are a complete 100 percent diagnosed audiophobe the sound will be plenty good for you. Graphics/Sound Score: 7/10

As for the Guitar Hero 3 controller, I can not give it a score. I have not used the PS2 version of it. My game was the two Gibson SG controller bundle. I have only played Guitar Hero 3 using the Guitar Hero 2 controllers. If I get to use the official Guitar Hero 3 controller, I'll update this review with my thoughts on it.

Reviewer's Score: 9/10, Originally Posted: 01/03/08

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