GameSpy Review of Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock

The shredding has begun anew with the release of Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock this past weekend. Rather than just present one editor's view of the game, we've assembled three of our virtual virtuosos to offer their opinions on the latest in the series: Sluggo, our resident expert always looking for a challenge; Fargo, a longtime casual player who's looking to take his skills to the next level, and Sterling, who's always been proficient on Medium but has never owned one of the little plastic guitars until now. Here's how they saw things for the Xbox 360, PlayStation 3 and Wii.





Rocking Out





Sluggo: Inevitably, discussion of any Guitar Hero game comes around to the song list, and I think GH3's song lineup is pretty impressive. As before, there are eight tiers which get harder as you go along, filled with some of the most recognizable rock tunes of the past 40 years. You'll never please everyone, but in most cases, you've got the important iconic songs -- Heart's "Barracuda," Kiss' "Rock & Roll All Nite," Ozzy's "Paranoid." Instead of "Life Wasted" or "Billion Dollar Babies," we get the always-recognizable "Even Flow" and "School's Out." Even when the game goes for more obscure choices -- like the Who's "The Seeker" -- it turns out to be a lot of fun to play. So I think the GH3 setlist works on several levels.





This time around, GH3 boasts more master tracks than ever before (about half of the main set list), although some of the cover versions still vary in quality ("La Grange" is almost painful to listen to). On the plus side, there are interesting contributions from guitarists Slash and Tom Morello for boss battles (more on that shortly), Vernon Reid recorded new solos for "Cult of Personality" and the Sex Pistols reunited for a new recording of "Anarchy in the UK." Everyone's tastes will likely vary as to how excited they get by these recordings, but I find it pretty cool that the franchise -- which, it's easy to forget, only launched two years ago with zero hype -- now has this kind of pull to it.





Sterling: I think the set list is phenomenal. It's hard to argue with the likes of "Bulls on Parade," "Welcome to the Jungle" or "Helicopter." I'm more of an electronica kind of guy, but I love the great mix of classic rock, '90s alternative and metal on display here.





Fargo: I absolutely love the setlist. Sluggo doesn't really get excited by the opening tiers (which are too easy for him), but for me, rocking out to recognizable riffs list "Slow Ride," "My Name is Jonas" or "Black Magic Woman" is what Guitar Hero is all about. I don't mind if the covers aren't perfect; for a more casual music fan like myself, the fact that I had heard and sung along with over 75% of the track list makes this a real win for me.










Stepping Up





Sluggo: The other side of the coin is the relative difficulty of the songs. There's no doubt the note charts are tougher in GH3, at least on Expert -- some songs have massive stretches of 3-note chords, which were only introduced in GH2 a year ago. Raining Blood is by far the hardest song in the main setlist to 5-star, with an insane run of 4-note descending scales. And I'd love to put together a montage of "WTF!?" reactions when people inevitably fail at the meedly-meedly-meedly solo six minutes into Metallica's "One."





But the good news is that timing windows have been made more forgiving, so you don't have to be quite as accurate as before, and this goes a long way towards balancing things out. "Cult of Personality" in particular has some crazy solos that run up and down the fretboard and yet remain possible to pull off, and songs like "My Name Is Jonas" and "Knights of Cydonia" have massive stretches of hammer-ons that can be played with one hand if you're looking to show off. It's a trend I'm in favor of: if one of the game's goals is to make you feel like you're a hotshot guitarist, this is a good start.





Finally, from my own please-give-me-more-challenge viewpoint, the game's final two tiers are the most satisfying of any game in the series to date. Slipknot and Disturbed, two bands I've never listened to, kick off tier 7 with songs that are tough but fun to replay. Iron Maiden's "Number of the Beast" (a master track, thank god) will have players chasing down scores of 600,000 (and is a good candidate for the Xbox 360 game's 500k Achievement). Eric Johnson's "Cliffs of Dover" may justify the cost of the game on its own. And then there's the bonus material, filled with insanity like Dragonforce's "Through the Fire and Flames" and other songs that are way harder to 5-star than anything else in the main setlist. From a challenge standpoint, it's a big thumbs-up from me.









Fargo: All of the Guitar Hero games have suffered from a seemingly insurmountable difficulty leap between "Medium" and "Hard," but by softening up the accuracy and bumping up the Medium difficulty slightly, it feels like a smoother transition. It works for me; I've been playing mostly on Hard since our review copy came in. It's a challenge but not insurmountable.





The only thing that I really dislike is that the Star Power phrases have been made much longer. In previous games, you could always count on Star Power as a way to get through really tough passages or to complete songs that would otherwise be impossible. Here, the Star Power phrases tend to be so long, if you have enough skill to get them you can beat the song anyways. It's like some strategy has been taken away.





Sterling: For me, the sequences are a little too much of a trial-by-fire compared to past Guitar Hero games. From the first tier, Medium simply feels like Hard-minus-the-orange-button. That makes for better rocking-out skills, but it's not great for introducing people to the series. Neversoft's approach to the series isn't nearly as newb-friendly on Easy as Harmonix's. The casuals in my household struggled with some of the songs on Easy, which wasn't a problem in past games. It's not going to keep me from playing, but it's worth noting.





Sluggo: I can't speak for Easy or Medium difficulty, but the opening songs are certainly less of a pushover than before. Even songs like "Hit Me with Your Best Shot" have tricky solos on the harder difficulties; it'll be interesting to see how people react to that.





Meet the New Boss





Sluggo: Maybe the only downside to the main campaign for me was the finale against Lou, set against a metal version of "The Devil Went Down To Georgia." The boss battles, where you trade power-ups back and forth trying to knock your opponent into the red, probably seemed like a good idea on paper, and I thought the first two (against Tom Morello and Slash) were entertaining and did a nice job of breaking up the normal routine of clearing songs. But there's no way to look at the last fight on Expert as anything other than terribly designed.





The problems stack on top of each other: Lou always gets the first power-up, and the "randomness" of the pickups has clearly been skewed so he starts with more devastating attacks like Lefty Flip and Double Notes, instead of more desirable ones like Whammy or Broken String. As a result, you're usually so far in the red from the start that you can't recover -- and every time you fail, you have to sit through two minutes of pointless shredding before the battle section starts again. It would have been nice to have first crack at a power-up, even if it was in some crazy section, so you would feel like you had some control over the fight. As it turns out, it feels more about luck than anything -- it all boils down to hoping you get the right power-up; if you can get Whammy on the first pickup, you can defeat Lou pretty much instantly at the start of the fight (which, in hindsight, might explain why the fight's been tweaked as it has).





When you finally defeat Lou, the credits roll and you get access to Dragonforce's "Through the Fire and Flames," yet "The Devil Went Down to Georgia" never becomes available to play on its own, which is just a big ball of weirdness. Hopefully this will be remedied via downloadable content in the near future. (PS2 owners, it seems you're out of luck).










Sterling: The addition of boss battles is something that feels very Neversoft. The team has been releasing Tony Hawk games for eight years, and upping the ante in sequels has always been its forte, whether it's adding a new crazy skate mode to chain combos together, or in this case, adding traditional linear game elements to a music game. It can be hair-pullingly frustrating once you factor in the spicy difficulty, though.





For me, I dropped more f-bombs than Zack De La Rocha on the first two Rage albums during my face-off with Tom Morello. I like the twist, but it seems to inadvertently point out how cranked up the difficulty is on this game, and subsequently, how frustrating non-expert players might find it.





Looks That Kill





Sluggo: Presentation-wise, no one's going to confuse Legends of Rock with Guitar Hero II. I've predominantly played the 360 version, and the graphics have a slick new look, from the on-stage models to the humorous animated cutscenes that play between each tier, and there's a new HUD, with little touches like a new note counter in the multiplier window. Each of the characters has more customization options, so now there are about eight versions of each character to play with; people may mourn the loss of Pandora or the makeover of Judy Nails, but the new Casey Lynch more than makes up for that, and there are some new characters as well, such as J-pop lover Midori or the God of Rock. The animations are not great, but the venues look fantastic in HD; it's a massive step up if you've only played the PS2 versions to date.





Oddly, I feel strangely detached from the game at times. There are certain things missing, like the way the fretboard would give a small bump and explode when you'd activate Star Power. I also feel like the overall audio mix is a little mushy -- there are times I can barely hear the drums in some songs, which is kind of a problem when you're trying to strum 16th notes in time with the music.









Sterling: Visually, the PS3 version is fairly neck and neck with the 360 version, with the PS3 game running natively at 720p. Most of the character models look crisp, although you'll notice some ugliness out of the crowds in some stages. Also, there's occasionally a hair of framerate choke when you switch to Star Power; it doesn't cripple the experience, but it's there.





And as much as we love its guitar, the Wii game lags a little behind the others in regard to visuals and sound. It's not that you play GH for visuals by any means, but if you have an HDTV, you'll notice that it's not a pretty game while you're watching others playing it. Also, both PS3 and 360 boast 5.1 sound, but the Wii lacks this feature; you might not notice it if the Wii's your only system, but if you have other consoles, you might hear the difference.





Getting the Axe





Sluggo: The one thing that really hampered my enjoyment of Guitar Hero II on the Xbox 360 was the new Xplorer guitar, and GH3's new Les Paul model kicks its ass in every way imaginable. It's wireless, the shape feels more comfortable, and the fret buttons and strum bar are as smooth as butter. I've already gone back to GH2 and improved my all-time high scores on Hangar 18 and Jordan, and I'm guessing I'll have a few of these sitting around before long. Mr. Xplorer, meet Mr. Trash Can.





Fargo: The Les Paul is by far the best guitar peripheral yet. Nice solid feel, very responsive, very durable. (And I dig the interchangeable faceplates). It's worth getting the hardware all over again.





Sterling: Of the various platforms, the PS3 Les Paul feels great in your hands, though the interface with the console is quite clunky. You'll use a USB dongle to attach to the PS3, and it functions on 2.4 Ghz wireless, rather than the console's built-in Bluetooth. You won't be able to use the PlayStation button to turn on your console; instead, you'll either use a Sixaxis or physically turn it on.










On the PS3, we encountered some odd problems during a co-op Career. Just like the Sixaxis, the Les Pauls will power down after a period of disuse, but one guitar wouldn't respond to the dongle signal no matter how many times we followed the instructions and reset both dongle and guitar. We reset the console to restart everything, but that also wiped out our progress, which allegedly had been autosaving all along. Ouch. Adding insult to injury, barring a patch from Sony or Red Octane, there's currently no backwards compatibility with the prior games, which is just another pain for PS3 owners to deal with.





Of all the guitars, I'd say that the Wii peripheral is the best of the bunch. The option for vibration affects the overall experience in a positive way: you'll know when you've got Star Power, and you'll also know when you've missed some notes. There are no dongles to deal with and it's easier to turn on than the 360 guitar; you plug your Remote into the peripheral and you're good to go (you can even use the analog stick on the guitar to navigate the Wii menu). We can't say enough good things about Red Octane's implementation of the Remote into the gameplay experience.





Sluggo: I've played with the Wii guitar as well and really, really liked it. It felt just as easy to play as the 360 Les Paul version, and I loved the rumble effects for Star Power or missing a note. The graphics may not be quite as solid, but playing the Wii guitar felt top-notch. I'll add that I have both wired and wireless versions of the X360 guitars and haven't had a problem with either to date, so hopefully the reports we've seen won't be as widespread as they were for the Guitar Hero II Xplorer.













Sluggo: Maybe the single biggest addition to Guitar Hero III is the long-awaited inclusion of online play. Finally, you can face off against buddies across town or across the country and see who's got the best chops. It works, but considering it's the first online outing for the series, we weren't entirely surprised to find hiccups while trying to hook up with opponents online.





To start, you can try the Quick Match option and let the game attempt to connect you to an opponent... which usually ends in a failed connection at best, and a hanging connection that requires rebooting your console at worst. It's a better idea to use Custom Match, where you can see things like connection speed and game settings, or create your own match for random people to join. On the 360, inviting a friend to a game turned out to be surprisingly complicated; you need to completely set up a private game and then exit to the 360 dashboard to send an invite.





The Standard Pro-Face Off mode was where I spent most of my time, with mixed results. Some matches played perfectly, and were everything I've dreamed online Guitar Hero could be. But other matches would occasionally experience small hitches, to the point that the note charts would begin lagging subtly behind the music, making it near impossible to time a single note with the rhythm by the end of the song. I'd recommend sticking with Custom matches in order to get as good a connection as possible and hope for the best.





One twist added for multiplayer is the new "Battle Mode," which works like the boss battles: instead of Star Power, you collect power-ups and fling them at your opponent, trying to make them fail the song. There's some strategy involved, like using your power-ups to block your opponent from getting any, but too often battle mode ends in a stalemate, starting a sudden death mode which becomes a race to grab the first power-up and trigger it ASAP. It's a cool idea, but unexciting to play, confusing to watch, and seemingly destined to take a back seat to Pro Face-Off.





Sterling: Online multiplayer for PS3 is fairly incompetent in presentation. You won't have any incorporation of buddy lists into the game, so your best bet for playing head-to-head against friends is to have one of you host a game, then have the other look for a custom match. As of the time we're reviewing this, the PS3 Quick Match option is completely broken, and you can't find any games using this search method. Instead, you'll have to look up a custom match with the "any" options all turned on, which allows you to find whatever's out there, although most of the time, the match will be unavailable. Overall, it doesn't feel like the matchmaking and presentation had much time put into them.










That said, once you can get into a game, it's rather clean to play. We've had quitters give us de facto victories, but otherwise there haven't been many lag issues. Also, you'll be able to see how other gamers' connections are before you decide to jump into a game, so if you can connect to one, there's fun to be had.





On the Wii, considering the limitations of Nintendo's hardware -- which at times seems as though it's designed to keep people away from online multiplayer -- Guitar Hero III stands out as one of the best online games for the console. Sure, there are Friends Codes, but your code is prominently displayed so that you can't miss it. Honestly, the game's matchmaking doesn't fare any worse than the PS3 version's, which doesn't incorporate any PlayStation Network buddy lists, since your Friends Codes will allow you to match up with your pals online via Auto-Match. Also, feel free to send in Friends Codes; mine's 4124 3159 9264. Just don't expect a Sluggo-caliber challenge.





Otherwise, you can engage in random matches with strangers. If you've got an HDTV, I can't emphasize enough that you should calibrate before you jump online. More than the HD versions, which seem to manage the millisecond delays better, the Wii needs some tweaking, or you'll be smeared in Battle Mode online. The only catch here is that the track listings on the Wii version are all you'll ever get, unless there's a miracle involving new songs for sale in the Wii Shop Channel. As far as we can tell, only the 360 and PS3 games will have downloadable content.











Sluggo: Possibly my biggest disappointment with Guitar Hero III is in its co-op play. To date, the only Achievement I haven't gotten on the Xbox 360 version of GH2 is the Millionaire Pair, simply because none of my friends can play that well on Hard. I'd hoped GH3 would compel me to rock out the co-op campaign with expert players across the country, but a number of problems put that to bed.





The campaign starts out fine enough: the order of the songs is juggled for difficulty, and there are all-new encores that are only unlocked through co-op: songs like "Sabotage," "Reptilia" and "Suck My Kiss." The songs have fun parts to play on both instruments (sometimes it's guitar/bass, sometimes it's lead/rhythm), and you'll definitely want to unlock everything at some point.





But some weird choices appear throughout co-op play. When someone makes a mistake, the entire screen shakes, and you're never quite sure who missed the note. The after-action report no longer breaks down stats by each player -- you'll just get one row of stats for the team. And worst, there are now four difficulties to co-op that depend on the lowest setting of either player: If you get through six tiers on Hard/Hard and then one person wants to drop down to Medium, you have to restart the entire campaign from the beginning. Seriously, if we've beaten those songs on Hard, why force players to go through them on Medium or Easy?





(This turns out to be a problem with the single-player campaign as well; it used to be you got maximum cash for the store by 5-starring songs on Expert; now you'll have to go back and replay everything on the lower difficulty levels if you want to buy everything in the store.)





The final blow is that the co-op campaign isn't playable online. So once again, I'm stuck: there's this section of this game I love that I can't enjoy to the fullest until I get some friends who can at least beat Hard. And they're all playing Team Fortress 2, so I'm screwed. So in the future, it would be nice if content wasn't barricaded this way; give me options like buying songs at the store or unlocking them through special Achievements instead of having to drag a friend over to play bass on Medium.










Fargo: I love tag-teaming through the whole campaign with players of different skill levels, but what do you do if one player has to back down a level? Or wants to step up to a higher difficulty? You have to start all over? Not cool.





Sluggo: Similarly, it's worth noting that other online features, particularly leaderboards, feel like an afterthought. On the 360, pull up the Xbox Live menu and you'll get a mess of matchmaking options with "Leaderboards" thrown in the jumble. And then there's a dizzying array of leaderboards listed with no particular rhyme or reason: Career, Campaign, Co-op, single songs -- it's just a mess. Granted, we're happy the game records scores in the first place, but when you look at the new GuitarHero.com site and see how poorly everything's presented compared to a site like ScoreHero.com, you can't help but wonder how things go so wrong when you can actually have access to the game's data and still get outdone by a community site.





One final bit before wrapping this up: there are several bundles floating about, including several for the Xbox 360 and PS2 that bundle the Guitar Hero II Xplorer and SG instead of the new guitars. I can only assume that (a) quantities of the Les Pauls were limited, and (b) this seemed like a good way to get rid of older inventory, so take a close look at the box when picking up the game. The included guitar is shown prominently, so save yourself a trip back to the store if you want the newer guitars. (Sadly, it doesn't seem the Les Pauls are available separately yet if you need a second guitar for multiplayer.)





The Final Word





Sluggo: We've covered a lot of ground in this review, but I think we've all arrived at the same conclusion: in taking the reins from Harmonix, Neversoft has done an admirable job of recreating Guitar Hero's gameplay, and the new guitars, fantastic setlist and challenging note charts push the series forward, even if some players may not be quite ready to rock that hard. Features like the boss battles, online play and co-op could have made Guitar Hero III a legend itself but end up feeling unpolished. Still, there's enough meat in Guitar Hero III to keep any would-be shredder happy for a long time... or at least until Guitar Hero IV comes out.



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