The obsession started almost a year ago at my best friend’s sister’s house on New Year’s Eve. What began as a way to spend time with friends, shortly became a full-fledged addiction, one that was passed on to even more friends. I’m speaking, of course, about Guitar Hero, and I know I’m not alone.
The addiction lives on with the game’s third full installment, “Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock.” The new game has features the previous two did not, including multiplayer career mode and guitar battle, which can be played against a teammate or animated versions of rock guitarists like Slash and Tom Morello. The game even has many master tracks, as opposed to the cover songs on the previous games.
My first complaint is one I noticed right away that I knew would annoy me throughout the entire play. The loading period between songs seems to go on forever and is much longer than in the other games. I kept worrying that something was wrong with my game, when really it was just taking its sweet time to load the next song.
The game’s graphics confused me.?The guitar, fret and note graphics all seemed tighter and more vibrant. But as far as the characters go, they seem to have downgraded. Those on Guitar Heroes I and II are way more lifelike than the new ones.
Plus, the singer is downright frightening, with a disturbing frown and a very intense jaw.
In both career modes there are short cartoon scenes that follow the band through their journey from venue to venue.
Hopefully the creators didn’t spend too much time working on those, though, because I know I skipped through them the first time around. But for as skip-worthy as they were, they were at least a little entertaining, for at least one time.
But what matters most is the songs and their playability. The songs as a whole are much better. Most of them are good songs that people actually know, instead of the more obscure songs of the previous games. Among them are The Killers’ “When You Were Young,” The Sex Pistols’ “Anarchy in the U.K.” and The Smashing Pumpkins’ “Cherub Rock.”
All of the songs are a lot more fun to play than those in the previous games and the difficulties seem more consistent as well. There are no super-easy medium level songs and no way-too-intense hard level songs.
Songs do get progressively harder as the player goes further into career mode, but they seem to be more gradual and introduced. An obvious exception to this is in the guitar battles. In these, the players will duel the likes of Slash and Tom Morello and “star power” is replaced with “battle power,” disadvantages to throw at the opponent. To win, one must not only play more correct notes, but also force the other person to fail.
As hard as I tried, I could not beat Morello even though I played the notes almost perfectly. When I was about to give up and search for a cheat code, the game finally realized I was a lost cause and let me skip it. When I lost my first battle against Slash, I thought, “Well, of course they’re going to win, they’re freaking Tom Morello and Slash!” Convinced it was an impossible task, I prepared myself to have to fail numerous times before I could give up, only to beat Slash after the first few tries. So, I discovered, it is not impossible to beat rock legends, just really, really hard.
It’s difficult to pick favorites among the new song list because they really are so much better than the others (except for Disturbed’s “Stricken,” which is just awful). When I learned that The Strokes’ song “Reptilia” was going to be featured on the new game, I automatically knew that one would become my favorite song. It’s crazy and there’s no way it could not be an intense song to play, and I was right. My other favorite songs to play are “My Name is Jonas” by Weezer, “Monsters” by Matchbook Romance and “Helicopter” by Bloc Party. Bonus songs include ones by Senses Fail and Rise Against and The Keiser Chiefs.
“Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock” is available for Xbox 360, Playstations 2 and 3, the Nintendo Wii and on PC.