Guitar Hero itself has been a great success from day one. Recently there was Guitar Hero 2 for the Xbox360 and Guitar Hero Rock the 80’s for the PS2. But even with those titles out, fans of air guitar and long hair were clamoring for more. Enter stage right, Guitar Hero 3, made by development studio Neversoft after the former team, Harmonix, was bought up by MTV Games.

We found that Guitar Hero III had some great hits behind it; it is all about the music right???
Metallica, The Rolling Stones, Slayer, Iron Maiden, Aerosmith and more are all in with master recordings. Activision even got the Sex Pistols to re-record Anarchy in the UK just for the game. The same goes for Living Colour’s Cult of Personality. I have to admit I had fun playing even the cover band made songs.

Onto features a moment, a full cooperative career mode was added, complete with its own songs picked specifically for their great bass or rhythm guitar parts. A battle mode is in as well, and that is allot of fun all in itself. In a nutshell you take turns playing parts of the song, during your playing some notes have icons on them and if you get them all (kind of like star power) you get a single attack to hurl at your bud. These attacks range from breaking a string, to making you use the whammy while playing, adding double notes to all inbound notes and increasing the difficulty level by one. Since the goal is to fail out the other guy, I found a good strategy to be holding my attack until the other guy has an attack set he is about to pluck, this avoids an attack from your opponent.

One neat thing they have done when it comes to multiplayer, is that the PS3, 360 and Wii versions are all linked together online through a community site that compiles stats, manages tournaments and clans and even has a little metagame of its own. Guitar Hero has already become something of cultural phenomenon and this is only going to push it further along.

So now onto the Les Paul guitar. I have not had any lag time in hitting notes, and found it to be very comfortable even after a few hours of playing. The neck snaps in very easily and there are detachable face plates for customization. The Les Paul will also work with Guitar Hero II for the Xbox 360 also as a bonus.

Another neat thing in Guitar Hero III is the ability to play a character that you beat in a duel. Slash, of Guns n’ Roses fame, is in the game as a playable character. So is Tom Morello, beat them and then you can buy them in the store for 10K each. Not bad price to pay to be Slash eh?

Guitar Hero III really does make you feel like you are a Guitar god; this could be in part to some of the mechanics that are now implemented. First, the length of time for the game to recognize a note played was increased slightly, there is also the addition of the hammer on and pull off (both being very noticeable and in the tutorial). But, surely the game is not easy in many senses of the word. Easy mode is very easy, but I played it through to unlock Slash and Lou (the Devil). Medium mode is 4 buttons active and after you get into that you may have to go back and practice the songs before you conquer them.

The challenge has been put in largely through a new approach to how the scrolling notes are laid out. Quick changes between two and three note chords are now the status quo. There’s also a greater emphasis on strings of notes that can be played with hammer-ons and pull-offs, a technique that allows you to play notes without strumming. It’s a bit different than what we’re used to, but the notes are laid out well enough that nearly every song is fun to play.

Graphic wise I think is where I was most disappointed. The characters felt very stiff in style, heh I almost had to laugh at the drummer in some drum solos. The crowd and animations from the other group members seemed to be an afterthought in the overall design, just not enough animations. The visual work on PS3 and 360 for Guitar Hero 3 is largely comparable, but not entirely impressive on either console.

Neversoft has really done a good job in taking over the franchise of Guitar Hero, stuck with the tried and true formula of previous Guitar Hero games in most situations, added an online community to hold it together and really held to the game play itself. However the graphics, animations and more variety in characters really needs to be addressed to be really successful in this ever growing genre.