Double post, because I now have Guitar Hero III! XD
Thus, will follow my review of the game. Anyone interested, read on!
Guitar Hero III: Legends of RockRight from the beginning, Guitar Hero has been one of the top-notch games for PlayStation 2. With each installment comes new features, new modes, new songs, and new reasons to reignite the rock god within. Here in New Zealand, Guitar Hero III has just been released (as of two days ago), and thus I set out for the local thingy Smith store to get my hands on a copy of it. The main question on everyone looking at
Legends of Rock is, of course, is it as good as its predecessors?
The answer isn't so simple as yes or no. To be honest, the answer is yes AND no.
Now, I'm a fairly good GH player. Not the best by a long shot, but I'm fairly good - the only song I haven't beaten in all of GH1 and 2 is Jordan on Expert. At this skill level, this game will not take long to finish*. I'd reached the end of the Career Mode over the course of about 5 or 6 hours. There are 42 songs to play through, with a further 25 songs to unlock. I was able to 5-star the first 20 songs or so on the first time 'round.... and didn't fail any songs until about song 34. So depending on how good you are, don't expect a challenge until the later levels.
We all know how Guitar Hero works. It's basically fake guitar, so I won't bother trying to explain the details of "pressing a button and strumming". So to the GH-initiated, the GH-familiars and the GH-veterans, the following points should be noted:
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Hammer-ons and pull-offs are easier to do. I'm not the best at the really tricky HOPOs in Guitar Hero 2 (and even worse in Guitar Hero 1... Texas Flood's a nightmare to 5-star!), but in GH3, the HOPOs are much easier to do. I was able to nail some real tricky sections I wouldn't normally be able to do in GH2... which is good for the combo meter!
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Star power is MUCH harder to attain. In GH2 and GH1, SP sections were common on the meaty riffs, in the middle of deadly solos, and during parts that were just incredibly fun to play. In GH3, it's not uncommon to have to play the entire chorus perfectly just to get SP! We're talking like, 20 seconds of tagging EVERY note. Which isn't bad, but is just plain STUPID in Expert. The Star Power sections are just far too long, to be honest. I read somewhere that "If you manage to play the Star Power sections in a song, you probably won't need it." This statement is true.
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This game has a solid tracklist. The trouble is, of course, having to get through the entire game to get to the best songs. Such is to be expected, though, because it really picks up during the later stages of the game.
* This game uses master tracks for the music. By that I don't mean the bands came in and rerecorded the music (although two of the bands did!)... that means
you actually do get to play along to the album versions of the music you love, and not covers. Some of them ARE covers... but for the most part they're not.
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Boss battles suck. The idea of the boss battles is that you engage in the game's Battle Mode, and use the weapons you acquire in it to slow the boss down to a crawl, making him fail the song. The problem is, you have to make him FAIL the song to win BEFORE the end of the song. This means you HAVE to use the weapons in order to beat them, which means you HAVE to nail the Star Power sections. You must then also use the weapons at an appropriate time so as to do lots of damage. Finally, you must be sure to pick up the NEXT weapon that comes along, otherwise the boss regenerates all their health back! Thus the battle can go on for ages. It would have been much better if, say, you could win by making it to the end of the songs (which by the way, are original compositions made specifically for Guitar Hero III). But no, you have to do all your damage BEFORE YOU GET to that point. An example of a great concept executed poorly.
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The singer actually sings the words, as opposed to making random mouth movements. The drummer actually plays the correct drums. The game company took a lot of care to make sure that the actions on the screen match the song.
* They say graphics don't make a game; that if the gameplay is good enough graphics shouldn't matter, right? Having played through Guitar Hero III, I disagree with this statement. The gameplay IS good... but
the graphics are ugly. The fretboard and notes look ugly. The venues look ugly and small - there aren't really any levels that have a grand stage, or a giant concert hall.... no stage that makes you FEEL like a rock star. The audience looks empty... and static - they're all doing exactly the same actions! Even the characters and the guitars look ugly. It's almost like they took a step DOWN from the previous game. I blame the PS2 for that fault.... it probably looks right on X-Box 360 or PS3. But the PS2 version is downright ugly.
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Judy Nails is hot, though.
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Loading times are a bit on the long side. Granted, I haven't put it on the hard drive yet, but saving the game is a chore. Checking, loading, saving the game... I highly recommend turning off Autosave when playing.
Be patient the first time you load the game, it'll take forever to get into it when you create your save file on the memory card. Also, the songs take longer than the other Guitar Hero games to load -- but then, I do run those off the hard drive. Just remember: saving sparingly saves sanity!
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Through The Fire And Flames is the most fun song I've ever played (yes, it gets it's own bullet point, 'cos it's that cool, and the main reason everyone wants to play this game anyway).
To get to this seven minute machine of a song, you must finish the game. This song is your reward for finishing the game - you get to play it during the end credits. This time and this time only, you won't fail the song... at the end of the credits, the song is unlocked for you. The start is extremely difficult if you don't know how to handle it - I have troubles with getting past it, more often than not. But if you can get past it, it's a fantastic song to play.
Overall, I'd give the game 8/10. If I were to be more specific I'd actually say 7.8/10. There are some things that stop the game being perfect. It's not as revolutionary or breakthrough as the first two games... but regardless, it's definitely worth checking out. Once all the songs are unlocked, it really starts to shine, as the tracklist is probably the strongest of all three. After all, when it comes to Guitar Hero, more of the same is a good thing.
Especially if it's Metallica and Dragonforce.
* That depends on what you classify as finish, of course -- in Guitar Hero, I consider beating all the songs on Career Mode and unlocking (not passing) all the bonus songs and characters a finish (these are the important parts, after all -- the songs you can play!).