Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock Reviews

This game sorta has two sides to it. On the good side, there are plenty of songs that are fun to play on all difficulties. The bad side however IS the difficulty, the difficulty of the hard and expert modes on the latter songs is insane and the achievements in this one are just plain ridiculous. 20 Gamerscore for winnings 500 online ranked matches!?!?!? I think not! The hard difficulty alone will give you a run for your money as "Raining Blood" from Slayer and "Knights of Cydonia" from Muse will make it tough for good players to get the achievement for 5-starring all songs on hard difficulty.

Once your ready, go ahead and try the expert difficulty. Somewhat simple at first for good players, then the game simply eliminates the weak at around the 6th tier of songs. Even if your lucky enough to get to the 7th and 8th tier, you better be a expert player or songs like "One" from Metallica and the fore mentioned "Raining Blood" from Slayer will just be impossible to beat. Even for expert players get ready to net roughly 10 tries to beat "One" and seriously 30+ tries to beat "Raining Blood" only to have your heart broken by an impossible guitar battle at the end that took me a month to finally beat.

Personally, I loved the game because I've been in love with Guitar Hero ever since it came out and is a great game for casual players and music-game lovers. But just because you beat previous GH games on expert means NOTHING here, for those games are a walk in the park compared to GH3. Regardless, the reason you should buy or bought this game is because your love for music or your love for music-games. So get your plastic guitars out and let there be rock!

Sorry for yet ANOTHER review on Guitar Hero 3, but it's my favorite game and I wanted to write a review on something. That being said, I will try to keep it unbiased and honest and write it in terms of what I look for in a music game.

The first thing I look at in a game is how hard the achievements are. And in Guitar Hero 3, the achievements are notoriously difficult. As of this writing, over sixty thousand trueachievements users have earned achievements in this game and only 330 have completed it. The achievements take significant guitar skill, and even if you're okay in that respect, you still won't be able to attain the full thousand without talented local friends. Also, the Now That's Impressive achievement (get 750,000 points on a song) almost requires that you have Metallica's Death Magnetic DLC package. Another notable difficult achievement is Big Ol' Pile of Wins. It'll take around eight hours of grinding (double that if you do it for both players.)

Now I'll talk about gameplay. I've always been kind of competitive and a completionist, and at first, I wasn't really interested in playing this game too much as I knew it would require many many hours of practice before I was as good as I would want to be. I didn't plan on spending that amount time in this game. But eventually I found out that GH3 was addicting, time and time again I find myself thinking "just one more song... just one more song..." Eventually I found myself getting better, and the better you get at Guitar Hero, the more fun it becomes. There are some very difficult songs in this game, that's for sure. But no matter what skill you are, there are always some songs in some difficulties that will be right for you. And you'll find it fun challenging yourself on songs you've never passed before.

Relative to Rockband and other Guitar Hero games, GH3 is by far the easiest. There is a greater timing window for hitting the notes than in any other game I've played, meaning that you have more leeway for hitting your notes before it counts as a missed note. This could possibly be to balance out the dauntingly difficult expert songs, which are the only difficult aspect of the game. The note tracks are very difficult but the timing in the game is very lenient.

The campaign mode is very simplistic, requiring you to pass each song to move on to the next set of songs, with cheesy yet funny cut scenes in between (reminiscent of LEGO Indiana Jones). There are also three boss battles throughout that you must beat to progress in your career which should pose little challenge, other than possibly the final battle, which will require you to be a master of whichever difficulty you're on. Like me, you may find pleasure in increasing your cumulative career score (shown at the bottom of the song list in career.)

Graphically, the game is very nice, and a good step up from Guitar Hero 2. The note gems are shiny and colorful (who doesn't like pretty colors?) and HOPOs are more distinctly marked with a bright white halo, rather than the ambiguous HOPO representation in GH2. Very rarely will the graphics stutter when a large hoard of notes are coming up the screen and star power is activated, but I don't even remember this happening to me recently. The menus are decent looking, however some people might be turned off by the little advertisements hidden to the sides of them (such as for 7 gum). I honestly didn't notice them for months, and when I did it was more of an interesting surprise than an annoyance.

The sound of the game was also nicely done in my opinion. The sound of navigating menus seems soft and natural, as opposed to rockband, where you'll hear an almost jarring array of instrument tweaks when you're zooming through the menus. Most of the songs themselves are either the real version (aka not a cover version) or a very nicely done cover. Many seem altered slightly for the purposes of the game. For example, Rock and Roll All Nite by KISS seems to be the album version of the song until you get to the (awesome) guitar solo which seemed to have been inserted from the live version of the song.

Another large improvement from GH2 is the online multiplayer. The xbox live interface is surprisingly easy to use. You have three competitive game types available on LIVE, battle, face-off, pro face-off, as well as cooperative play if that's what you're in the mood for. And surprisingly, people still do play GH3 online, albeit only a few. Locally, the same game types are available, as well as the co-op career, which is basically the conjoined twin version of the single player career, minus the boss battles.

Bottom line: If you're an achievement completionist, don't go for this game unless you are very adept on the expert guitar, or unless you have the balls (or just uber amounds ot time) to face the challenge of making yourself better. If you're an up and coming GH master, this game will be a great stepping stone on your way to greatness. Compared to the newer Guitar Hero titles, GH3 is a worthy option. The newer titles introduced a few more guest rockstars (with a side of lawsuits), even more pristine graphics, and somewhat more strict of a timing window for hitting notes, but still very open. But if you're just looking for a fun game to play, you can get GH3 real cheap anymore; get the game and see how far it takes you.

This time, the guitar will shred you.

GHIII, well what can i say about this game.Being a big fan of the Guitar Hero and Rock Band series i have all of the games out to date for the 360, all of them done expert but this i had the most trouble with. GHIII is a b*****d to finishon hard/expert, Raining blood was what held me back and most likely all the other guiatr hero plays who arent stupidly "god like" (yes im talking to you all who can 100% fc through the fire and flames) but eventualy after having the game for about 2 years i did it, but barely.What im trying to say is this game would be good with out the supidly hard song that make's everybody want to cry in a corner when they cant get past the intro.

The game overall tho is very good, with its nicely picked and varied setlist it has abit of something to satisfy everone's needs.With the new feature boss battles to make people feel good when they beat a computer version of slash and tom marello this is no different from GHII. If you do end up compleating this game on expert then congrats as it is stupidly hard, GH:World Tour and even GH:Metallica arn't even this difficult.

Now on to the achievements, back again to diffictluty, the hardest GH out to get Gamerscore on most of them inlovle you doing something on expert. so the achievements are as hard as the game.

Anyway if your looks for a GH game this one may be abit difficlut but then if your one who like a challenge then good luck and ROCK ON!

A little tip, dont buy it with the GHIII Guitar contorlle,It can be very very unreliable and quite faluty.

Guitar Hero 3 was the first game in the series that i bought. i fell in love with it the moment i played my first failed run of Schools Out. The thing that i find the best about GH3 is that it never gets old. i have bought Aerosmith, Metallica and World Tour and after the general excitement of getting a new game has worn off, i always go back to playing GH3.

The gameplay runs smoother than newer GH titles. It seems to feel more natural to hit the notes and hammer ons and pull offs seem to be a breeze compared to World Tour. The song list is incredible with a mixture of good old classic rock and new rock. It also has many songs that you never would have heard of but you surely will fall in love with. Without GH3 i never would have discovered music from Metallica, Iron Maiden and Heart. Songs like Hit Me With Your Best Shot, Through The Fire And Flames and Slow Ride will forever be remembered as songs from GH3.

The excellent supply of DLC means that heavily experienced players dont have to continuously wail on Through The Fire And Flames and Raining Blood. The Boss Battle Track Pack and Dragonforce TP are great for experienced players whereas the Classic Rock TP is great for more casual players.

The only downside is the diffulcuty curve. You will run through the game smoothly for a while and then youo will hit Raining Blood and be stuck on it for a month. This is the same for all difficulties. once you finally get through it you will be faced with the unbeatable Boss Battle with Lou. On Expert difficulty it could take you up to two months to get through him and get the achievement at the end of the game. But then if you want to beat Through The Fire And Flames it could take another year like it did for me. This game demands a huge time commitment if you want to master it. Luckily it is highly addicting. TTFAF is not mandatory but you feel somehow empty without beating it.

The achievements in this game are spectacular and are bashed upon constantly. Anyone who complains about the achievements for being too hard has forgotten what achievemnts are all about. the achievements are extremely difficult but they give you something to aim for. For the sake of getting the achievement, i played through the game and completed every song on Expert. Although some of them dont reward you with enough Gamerscore as they should at least they give you something to aim for instead of handing out every achievement in 1 run through of a game.

This game is still easily the best in the guitar hero series and doesnt need the gimmick of extra instruments. All of the songs are base around playing them on guitar. the smooth gameplay makes this the perfect way to spend hundreds of hours mastering solos and forgetting your troubles. well done neversoft.

Guitar Hero 3 better, louder, and crazier! presenting a game review after being out for a while, everyone will have their opinions, specially those hardcore fans of the series. This settlement in the industry of music games was back then, and still is, one of the most outstanding tittle of its time. Why? read on, and find out!

> Career: It is no secret that the career here is the best (Up to GH3 that is) Choose a rocker > guitar > difficulty and hop right on into this set-list. Guitar Hero III features 73 songs spread across both the Solo and Co-Op Career modes. The songs get progressively difficult as you move on. You'll encounter Boss battles featuring Slash himself and Tom Morello! You are also given then choice to play an encore for some extra cash, which can be used to buy guitars, characters, and other songs. The career itself is ridiculously fun! easy to complete in 4-5 hours (expert more) and it makes you comeback because there are plenty of achievements related. Co-op Career is introduced here. You'll have also encores but no Boss battles. The set-list is slightly modified, as one player takes guitar and the other bass. FUN!

> Good / Bad / Ugly

Good: The game got better graphics now, so no more of that square looking characters as before. The notes on the fret-board look a lot better. You can now tell the difference on the hammer-ons unlike before. So they shine more. Triple notes are used more, making power chords sound lots better. The sound quality got way smoother and the options to optimize your sound as well as calibrating your system is way better. The tutorials are well explained, so even if you're new to it, you'll learn with time all it's techniques.

Bad: Patience will be tested. Some songs will appeal a large audience while other songs will be likely to be ignored a little more. The difficulty has been spiked a little too much and it might not be adjustable to everyone. The final boss battle on expert difficulty will prove challenging for almost anyone. The online game is good but not the best. disconnections will happen quite often and the leaderboards are long hacked. There is nowhere near as much DLC as any of the Rock Band games. This is bad considering both tittles are from Harmonix.

Ugly: The occasional star-power glitches while co-op online. That kills your score. There is no way to keep track of what you do online, so you'll manually have to keep count of your progress. Achievements are glitchy online but still obtainable. The worse is people quitting. It happens SO often it take a large part of the online fun, but we can't judge a game based on players right?

> Achievements (9/10): These are not meant for everyone. They are very difficult and time consuming but they are very much do-able. 500 online ranked wins will take a VERY long time but it's possible. Expert difficulty will allow you get the rest (or most) of the achievements. If you can 5 star everything on Expert, you can 1k this game. The big problem here is that nearly 30% of those Career achievements require a Local Co-op. This makes it all the even harder. Is much easier to find players online of your skill level, but finding a local player can turn this game into a no-complition. Keep this in mind and read plenty of guides before attempting these.

So that's it. Great game. Really good music, improved graphics, better sound and good modes to keep it interesting for a while. Tho at some points you might be frustrated with the game's difficulty, the saying is well applied here: Practice makes it perfect.

What tempted me to write this review was a discussion with a fellow TA-member. Not about Guitar Hero, but about metal. One question came up: Isn't Metal in general about just having a f* great time? Essentially, this question - it's rhetorical - is the one justification for Guitar Hero to exist. Because even without resembling playing the guitar in any way (trust me, I do play guitar) it can be a lot of fun.

Gameplay
It's Guitar Hero. You get a controller that is vaguely shaped like a guitar, but smaller and incredibly light (just hold a real guitar over your head and then a GH-controller, you'll know the difference) and when coloured disc-shaped things come at you on screen, you press the corresponding button on the neck and "strum". Simple concept, but well executed. The boss-battles make no sense whatsoever from a realism point of view, but I guess had they gone for realism, the fun would have to leave immediately.

Graphics
Caricature. That's the only thing to say about that. It's not realistic, but not supposed to be. The style is consistent across the stages (you can take this literally, you play on a stage, after all) and easy on the eye. The two famous guitarists they put in are recognizable and Casey Lynch is surprisingly attractive.
Only downside: The animation. Not the movement of the characters, that is fine, but the arms and hands of guitarist and bassist alike. It just doesn't seem lifelike. Luckily the drummer is mostly hidden behind his drumset, for his animation is the worst of the bunch.

G.... g... Verdammt. Sound.
Guitar Hero stands and falls with it's music. This particular iteration comes with well known songs such as The Number of the Beast by Iron F. Maiden or School's Out by Alice Cooper - though this is a cover version. They even got the one good song Slipknot ever made (Is that sarcastic? I'm not sure.) and, which is a big deal for me personally, Stricken by Disturbed. Great song, great solo. From my point of view, GHIII has no really bad songs. Except for Pride and Joy, I hate that. They even put in two German songs, although only as bonus songs one can buy from the store. Hier kommt Alex by Die Toten Hosen is awesome and it's about Alex DeLarge, whose name you might recognize from A Clockwork Orange.

Difficulty
Easy is easy. Medium is not so easy. Hard is... well... Lou is currently kicking my butt and it took me no less than two years (mostly spent in the PC-version) to get Raining Blood, The Number of the Beast and One finished on Hard. That should say enough about the difficulty, heh? But no, there's still the motherload, the one song you probably only know of because it is so difficult in this game: DragonForce's Through The Fire and Flames. On Expert, it is nigh impossible. Beating it actually earns you "The Impossible Achievement". No joke. You can look it up.

Conclusion
It is worth playing, but damn if it is not hard as hell.

Edit 8/19/11:
After two years and 362 days I finally managed to beat it on Hard. This should say enough about difficulty.
Also, I'm disappointed by nobody getting the misnamed achievement. It's "Inhuman", not "Impossible", guys. Shout out to the album the song is from.

Right....first lets get one thing straight. GH3 is and will always be the best guitar hero game they make. Sure since world tour there has been the inclusion of other band instruments, but at the end of the day bass uses the same guitar, nobody I know ever really does the vocals, so the drums are all that really improve anything. The setlist on GH3 is far superior to world tour or any previous titles as a whole because of the variety of music and the quality of the actual songs. No other game's songs seem to keep you interested as you go through the career(from my experiences at least). The HUD is at it's best on this title, with no messy rock meter skewed off to the side.
And as for the achievements yes some are hard (like very hard) but without hard achievements you have nothing to work towards. Also 15G for finishing TFAF(the hardest ever GH song) on expert may make wonder "why bother?" but it's more about the prestige than the amount, which is the case with most of the achievements on this game.
So overall this game is perfect for any GH or RB fan who don't already own it, lots of playability, and nowadays you can pick it up for a small fee (£15-£20 maybe less). A well worthy purchase.
Cheers.

Let's face it... gamers like Chuck have had it hard in recent years. As game peripherals have gotten more and more complicated, the cheapskate gamer is left behind, wondering just what's so great about plastic guitars and popular music. But the tide has turned, friends, as everyone has grown bored of the early generation of music games... and now is out opportunity to strike! Just about every gamer has a friend with an extra guitar they'll dump for next-to-nothing, and the older games are now in Two Buck Chuck's price range. For the first time in my gaming life, I can shred with the best in Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock!

For the ten of you who have never played Guitar Hero or Rock Band, these music titles allow a gamer to rock out with some of the most popular music of the past half-century. There are several difficulty settings that enable all five of the plastic guitar's colored finger tabs, so even beginning gamers can jump right in, while experts will enjoy the lightning-fast pace of the highest difficulty setting. After gaining popularity on the Playstation 2, Guitar Hero III was the second release for next-generation game systems, and the first to really go all-out with graphics, boss characters, and master recordings by the true artists. However, this title came before the sea change that turned guitar games into full band games, so Guitar Hero III doesn't support drums, keyboards, or microphones, and only two players can enjoy the game at one time. It's a sort of single-purpose music game, but a very good one.

The Guitar Hero series maintains a "quest" style with specific progression, unlike the Rock Band titles. Gamers have to beat a handful of songs to unlock an encore song, and eventually they face boss characters in head-to-head guitar battles. Guitar Hero III brings icons Slash (Guns 'n Roses) and Tom Morello (Rage Against the Machine), with solos designed by the guitar greats themselves. Additionally, there are many great master tracks to play, including bands like Muse, Sonic Youth, Pearl Jam, Queens of the Stone Age, Metallica, Beastie Boys, and The Sex Pistols. In fact, I'd match the Guitar Hero III track list with just about any out there, and for two bucks, you get a huge number of great songs - 73 in all, plus DLC that Chuck is too cheap to buy.

Guitar Hero III is a lot of fun... a whole lot. It's not the party game Rock Band is, but it's a fantastic experience for one gamer who likes rock 'n roll music. As far as Two Buck Chuck goes, this game is the best two bucks anybody can spend, provided you can harass a plastic guitar out of a friend. If you can scrape up two plastic guitars, you can play co-op with a buddy (one on lead guitar, the other on bass or rhythm guitar) or go head-to-head in battle mode... not as fun as shredding together, but if you have the endurance to wear them down in Metallica's "One", go for it.

Chuck really enjoyed Guitar Hero III. In my opinion, the only downside for 360 gamers is that the game's achievements are geared towards the best players out there - if you get more than 300 GS out of this game, you're pretty good at playing plastic guitar. Nonetheless, find Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock on Half.com for the 360 and Ps2 for less than two bucks plus shipping... the Ps3 version is a few dollars more. And a note on plastic guitars, some newer models (or Rock Band models) are incompatible with the older Guitar Hero games, so make sure you beg/borrow/steal either the white corded Guitar Hero II model or the black Gibson Guitar Hero III model, to be safe... or check Joystiq's excellent Instrument Compatibility Matrix. For anyone interested in the game's complete track listing, google it! Till next time, game cheap!

Check out our other reviews at www.gamedebateclub.com!

Guitar Hero 3 Is a mixed title. On one hand it has great songs that are very fun to play on most of the difficulty levels, On the other hand Hard and expert are out of reach of many players and there have been many calls that this game is just "too damn hard"

Despite the achivements being challenging to say the least you can have lots of fun on this game. Make sure you like the track listing though otherwise you could have a hardtime enjoying it.

If you have a freind who is also good at guitar hero the CO-OP career can be very fun and get you alot of the points :)

However i would recomend buying either RB2 or GH:WT now if you have the money because i think they are just plain better.