Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock UK Review
If you haven't played a Guitar Hero game by now, it's probably down to one of two reasons: you're so rhythmically disinclined that letting you loose on the dance floor is tantamount to arming an epileptic with a battle axe in a crowded room and turning the strobes on. Alternatively, I dunno, you've just woken from a coma/escaped from jail/shaved your beard for the first time in 15 years and the whole thing is a new, barely conceivable concept.
If that last lot's you, all you really need to know is that Guitar Hero III is mostly super. Of course, if you're an old hand at this pseudo-fretting lark, the most important thing to stress is that GHIII is almost exactly the same game as its gazillion-selling predecessors - online multiplayer mode aside. This time though, original developer Harmonix has left the building, the series now in the capable hands of Neversoft. Ordinarily, a switch in development duties probably wouldn't raise much of an eyebrow. However, with Harmonix's long and illustrious music game past missing from the equation, we've all been wondering whether Neversoft's rhythm-action debut would add up.
Well, for the most part, it does. Guitar Hero is still as utterly, intoxicatingly addictive as ever and, with a suitably tweaked, wire-free peripheral upgrade, even more likely to result in upholstery upheaval as the very Power of Rock grips your soul and leaps off the sofa onto the coffee table. Truthfully, aside from a handful of new additions and subtle adjustments to Guitar Hero's core mechanics, there's little in this third instalment likely surprise your face into a facsimile of a blow-up doll.
Still, here comes arbitrary explanation paragraph number one, on the off-chance you're new to this lark: plastic guitar in hand, primed and ready to rock, you're faced with a screen full of cascading coloured circles. Each one represents a portion of your selected song and corresponds to a coloured button on your guitar. It's simply a matter of having the correct fret button held down and strumming in time as a circle reaches the bottom of the screen. Hit right and the notes will wail out, wrong and you'll sound like you're strangling a cat with piano wire.
As any GH aficionado knows, practice makes perfect and, as you work your way through the slowly unlocking song roster in Career mode, you'll find your fret fingers increasingly taxed, the game introducing more complex patterns requiring more advanced skills. In the first game, those were largely limited to hammer-ons and pull-offs for those rapid note successions, with GH2 riffing on power chords. If either of those send you into frenzied palpitations, beware: Neversoft has really gone to town with these techniques this time around.
Of course, the true beauty of GH has never been its core mechanics - which have barely evolved since their debut in Harmonix's spiritual predecessors, FreQuency and Amplitude. Where Guitar Hero succeeds is in its baiting of obsessive compulsive tendencies, with a near perfect learning curve slowly ramping up the difficulty in firm but fair increments from Easy to Expert mode. With later difficulties more realistically reflecting guitar parts on a note-by-note basis, it really is hard not to feel like a genuine rock god as your learn Guitar Hero's craft. Plastic peripheral or not, it's a formula perfected by Harmonix and one that GHIII more or less abides by.
Still, it's hard to deny there's something strangely inconsistent about Guitar Hero III. For instance, the new emphasis on power chord combos to complement traditional single-note sequences makes for some of the best tab arrangements in the series to date. When it works, there's a fine balance between complexity and realism, making for an incredibly satisfying experience that really enforces the illusion you're playing the part rather than simply hitting an abstract button at an arbitrary point in the song. When it doesn't though, what should be roof-raising tracks flat-line completely, either wilting in a trail of monotony or striking such preposterously illogical fits of finger-bending, you'll wonder what the hell just happened.
Sadly, this often misjudged difficulty progression rears its head a bit too much for our liking. Even Easy mode tends to mix its tricks up a little too excitably, likely to the detriment of its previously impressive broad appeal. What's more, some utterly baffling difficulty spikes across each skill level don't so much encourage as frustrate. At its worst, there's something weirdly inhuman about Guitar Hero III - particularly evident within the (largely uninspired) roster of bonus tracks, unlocked via earned in-game currency. Patterns can become so chaotically unintelligible it almost feels like they've been shot through an algorithm without the guiding hand of someone with, well, working hands. True, it means there's plenty of challenge for anyone's who's cut their teeth on previous games, but there's none of that satisfying fluidity to proceedings.
This time, co-op progression is independent of the songs you've unlocked during solo Career play. This means that, even if you've slogged your way through on your own, you'll have to start over if you want to cherry pick tracks with a friend in tow. It doesn't help either that co-op progression is entirely bound to the lowest difficulty setting your team plays on. That means experienced players are shunted right back to the opening play list if you've got a bunch of friends at varying skill levels.
Meanwhile, Face-off, Pro Face-off and Battle all, bizarrely, base available tracks on those unlocked in solo Career mode. In other words, to make the most of all Guitar Hero III's features you're going to have to play through the entire solo and co-op Career set list at least once. For all the entertainment value inherent in multiplayer, it's a shame Neversoft demands you put so much hard graft in first. Thankfully, a recently released patch for Xbox 360 introduces co-op quick play, meaning you've free reign of all difficulty settings on unlocked songs. It eases the relentless faff somewhat but multiplayer structure is still a seriously strange call on Neversoft's part.
Of course, all this would be moot anyway if Guitar Hero III blew it at the most critical hurdle. When we reviewed Guitar Hero 2, we were a little hard on its track-listing - mainly for its focus on the more obscure end of the rock spectrum. Guitar Hero III, for better or worse, takes a cue from its originator, offering a far more populist song roster. It's certainly more accessible, with artists from The Strokes to The Stone Roses sitting alongside Muse and Metallica. Plus, it's diverse enough to ensure there's practically something for everyone, even if their musical tastes are about as deep as emo poetry.
On the downside, weird concessions seem to have been made in a bid to bump up the recognisable artist roster. Some songs just seem downright inappropriate in a game context; we're all for famous names but some of the high-profile bands here come attached to songs of such monumental tedium, from a strumming perspective, we kind of wish they hadn't bothered in the first place. Finally for quibbles, we're not completely convinced by the move to original master recordings. It's great in principle, but when you've got your console rigged up to a jackhammer sound system and the prehistoric paper-thin recording quality of, say, Alice Cooper's School's Out is dwarfed by the heavy-handed sound effects, it kind of ruins the effect.
As for other additions, Guitar Hero III's power-up-based multiplayer Battle mode offers some mild amusement, even if it's a little uninspiring right now. Likewise, the tiny handful of boss encounters are equally diverting, if largely superficial indulgences. The real star of GHIII's new features though is online play. With the option to plump for either quick play or ranked matches, creating your own set of custom mode rules or simply selecting from a list of existing games set up by other players, it's ideal whether you're looking to pimp your rock prowess up the leader boards or merely fancy some head-to-head action in the absence of a local human being. It's a shame that there's no option for online co-op but, still, it's a natural evolution of Guitar Hero's compulsive competitive element and we applaud its inclusion.
source: http://xbox360.ign.com/articles/837/837047p1.html
If that last lot's you, all you really need to know is that Guitar Hero III is mostly super. Of course, if you're an old hand at this pseudo-fretting lark, the most important thing to stress is that GHIII is almost exactly the same game as its gazillion-selling predecessors - online multiplayer mode aside. This time though, original developer Harmonix has left the building, the series now in the capable hands of Neversoft. Ordinarily, a switch in development duties probably wouldn't raise much of an eyebrow. However, with Harmonix's long and illustrious music game past missing from the equation, we've all been wondering whether Neversoft's rhythm-action debut would add up.
Here's a gratuitously clad lady to kick things off.
Well, for the most part, it does. Guitar Hero is still as utterly, intoxicatingly addictive as ever and, with a suitably tweaked, wire-free peripheral upgrade, even more likely to result in upholstery upheaval as the very Power of Rock grips your soul and leaps off the sofa onto the coffee table. Truthfully, aside from a handful of new additions and subtle adjustments to Guitar Hero's core mechanics, there's little in this third instalment likely surprise your face into a facsimile of a blow-up doll.
Still, here comes arbitrary explanation paragraph number one, on the off-chance you're new to this lark: plastic guitar in hand, primed and ready to rock, you're faced with a screen full of cascading coloured circles. Each one represents a portion of your selected song and corresponds to a coloured button on your guitar. It's simply a matter of having the correct fret button held down and strumming in time as a circle reaches the bottom of the screen. Hit right and the notes will wail out, wrong and you'll sound like you're strangling a cat with piano wire.
As any GH aficionado knows, practice makes perfect and, as you work your way through the slowly unlocking song roster in Career mode, you'll find your fret fingers increasingly taxed, the game introducing more complex patterns requiring more advanced skills. In the first game, those were largely limited to hammer-ons and pull-offs for those rapid note successions, with GH2 riffing on power chords. If either of those send you into frenzied palpitations, beware: Neversoft has really gone to town with these techniques this time around.
GHIII features some of the series' most imaginative stage design.
Of course, the true beauty of GH has never been its core mechanics - which have barely evolved since their debut in Harmonix's spiritual predecessors, FreQuency and Amplitude. Where Guitar Hero succeeds is in its baiting of obsessive compulsive tendencies, with a near perfect learning curve slowly ramping up the difficulty in firm but fair increments from Easy to Expert mode. With later difficulties more realistically reflecting guitar parts on a note-by-note basis, it really is hard not to feel like a genuine rock god as your learn Guitar Hero's craft. Plastic peripheral or not, it's a formula perfected by Harmonix and one that GHIII more or less abides by.
Still, it's hard to deny there's something strangely inconsistent about Guitar Hero III. For instance, the new emphasis on power chord combos to complement traditional single-note sequences makes for some of the best tab arrangements in the series to date. When it works, there's a fine balance between complexity and realism, making for an incredibly satisfying experience that really enforces the illusion you're playing the part rather than simply hitting an abstract button at an arbitrary point in the song. When it doesn't though, what should be roof-raising tracks flat-line completely, either wilting in a trail of monotony or striking such preposterously illogical fits of finger-bending, you'll wonder what the hell just happened.
Sadly, this often misjudged difficulty progression rears its head a bit too much for our liking. Even Easy mode tends to mix its tricks up a little too excitably, likely to the detriment of its previously impressive broad appeal. What's more, some utterly baffling difficulty spikes across each skill level don't so much encourage as frustrate. At its worst, there's something weirdly inhuman about Guitar Hero III - particularly evident within the (largely uninspired) roster of bonus tracks, unlocked via earned in-game currency. Patterns can become so chaotically unintelligible it almost feels like they've been shot through an algorithm without the guiding hand of someone with, well, working hands. True, it means there's plenty of challenge for anyone's who's cut their teeth on previous games, but there's none of that satisfying fluidity to proceedings.
There is a flip side to this increased difficulty though and that comes in the form of co-op mode. Here, Neversoft has addressed one of the more glaring issues of Guitar Hero 2. This time around, bass and rhythm guitar parts have been beefed up substantially in terms of complexity, meaning that you're in for a far more engaging experience whichever side you plump for. No longer does relinquishing lead feel like a reluctant submission to three minutes of tedious plunking. There's actually something to sink your teeth into on the higher difficulty settings and the experience is all the better for it. Still not perfect, true, but it's a start.
As ever though, there's plenty to shout about in terms of Guitar Hero III's multiplayer. Whether you're working together or fighting to the death, it's a raucous, ridiculous and utterly riotous way to spend some quality time with your mates. However, Neversoft has made a couple of unnecessary adjustments that really do feel like a serious lapse of judgement. Mainly, this has to do with the decision to introduce a Co-op Career mode seperate from standard multiplayer.
Visually, it's all a bit too try-hard for our liking. Nice hair though.
This time, co-op progression is independent of the songs you've unlocked during solo Career play. This means that, even if you've slogged your way through on your own, you'll have to start over if you want to cherry pick tracks with a friend in tow. It doesn't help either that co-op progression is entirely bound to the lowest difficulty setting your team plays on. That means experienced players are shunted right back to the opening play list if you've got a bunch of friends at varying skill levels.
Meanwhile, Face-off, Pro Face-off and Battle all, bizarrely, base available tracks on those unlocked in solo Career mode. In other words, to make the most of all Guitar Hero III's features you're going to have to play through the entire solo and co-op Career set list at least once. For all the entertainment value inherent in multiplayer, it's a shame Neversoft demands you put so much hard graft in first. Thankfully, a recently released patch for Xbox 360 introduces co-op quick play, meaning you've free reign of all difficulty settings on unlocked songs. It eases the relentless faff somewhat but multiplayer structure is still a seriously strange call on Neversoft's part.
Of course, all this would be moot anyway if Guitar Hero III blew it at the most critical hurdle. When we reviewed Guitar Hero 2, we were a little hard on its track-listing - mainly for its focus on the more obscure end of the rock spectrum. Guitar Hero III, for better or worse, takes a cue from its originator, offering a far more populist song roster. It's certainly more accessible, with artists from The Strokes to The Stone Roses sitting alongside Muse and Metallica. Plus, it's diverse enough to ensure there's practically something for everyone, even if their musical tastes are about as deep as emo poetry.
Animation can be pretty stiff too. Behold the (obviously static) drummer.
On the downside, weird concessions seem to have been made in a bid to bump up the recognisable artist roster. Some songs just seem downright inappropriate in a game context; we're all for famous names but some of the high-profile bands here come attached to songs of such monumental tedium, from a strumming perspective, we kind of wish they hadn't bothered in the first place. Finally for quibbles, we're not completely convinced by the move to original master recordings. It's great in principle, but when you've got your console rigged up to a jackhammer sound system and the prehistoric paper-thin recording quality of, say, Alice Cooper's School's Out is dwarfed by the heavy-handed sound effects, it kind of ruins the effect.
As for other additions, Guitar Hero III's power-up-based multiplayer Battle mode offers some mild amusement, even if it's a little uninspiring right now. Likewise, the tiny handful of boss encounters are equally diverting, if largely superficial indulgences. The real star of GHIII's new features though is online play. With the option to plump for either quick play or ranked matches, creating your own set of custom mode rules or simply selecting from a list of existing games set up by other players, it's ideal whether you're looking to pimp your rock prowess up the leader boards or merely fancy some head-to-head action in the absence of a local human being. It's a shame that there's no option for online co-op but, still, it's a natural evolution of Guitar Hero's compulsive competitive element and we applaud its inclusion.
source: http://xbox360.ign.com/articles/837/837047p1.html
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