Guitar Hero 3 was the game that brought many cheers from fans, many hours of play from addicts, and many frustrations for once-in-a-while gamers. After the company Harmonix gave up with the Guitar Hero franchise and went on to create one of the most popular games out there, Rock Band, the company Red Octane took over. Harmonix didn't know that this was probably going to be a bad choice.
For those of you who have never played or heard of the Guitar Hero series (If you have never heard of it, you are crazy because it is almost as popular as God himself), it is a rhythm and timing based game. You start a song and colored circles start coming toward you. Your goal is to press down the buttons and strum when the notes are at a certain point on the fretboard. As you progress through the game, the songs get harder and the notes get faster. There is a shallow learning pool so that any newbie can pick up the controller and slowly advance to stardom.
With the release of Guitar Hero 1, 2, and Rock the 80's, Harmonix became the most popular thing since Halo. The game was played at parties, alone, or with a few friends. You could switch off every song, or go nuts and do 2 player mode. Guitar Hero quickly grew in popularity, and soon, people were begging to get it. With the release of Guitar Hero 3, people were going crazy. They wanted to play the newest game in the series. Red Octane later released it for the PC, giving the guitar to PC fans like myself. The only problem was the extremely high graphical needs for the game. If you didn't have a supercomputer, you couldn't run it.
When the people got home and started to play, they were hit with a very real interesting realization. Guitar Hero III was much harder than the first or second one. Guitar Hero 3 on Hard was the same as Guitar Hero II on expert. Red Octane also had the idea to include a few impossible songs into the fray, such as The Devil Went Down to Georgia and the hated Through the Fire and Flames. These songs produced one of the most heated battle between Guitar Hero experts. The race to get 100% on both was beginning, and there was no stopping the contenders.
A few things I liked about GH3
- I enjoyed the song selection, for I liked most of the songs there.
- I enjoyed the learning curve up toward hard mode. It wasn't to steep and wasn't too shallow.
- I liked the different choices of characters
A few things I disliked about GH3
- The end of Hard and the entire Expert Mode. After getting to the last level in hard, I just gave up. The songs became so hard to play and they just sucked song wise that I don't think I ever picked up the controller again. It just got too hard
- The singer. He annoyed me so much. My friend pointed out that about every 5 seconds, he would raise his arms up. Who does that?
- The fact that there is no Co-Op quick-play mode. You have to start a campaign to do co-op to unlock more songs.
- Battles. They are the most pointless thing in GH3. Really, who has the time during a real guitar battle to go over and cut the opponents string? Once cut, how come it takes 5 seconds to restring it? How are you going to have time during an intense solo to go over and make them change to a lefty guitar. Its just not theoretically possible or fair. Every other gig, you have to face a boss in a guitar battle. They range from Tom Morello to Slash from Guns and Roses. It just gets pointless after a while
Overall, I give Guitar Hero III a 7 out of 10 because of a few minor gameplay issues. It was still a good game and I enjoyed it.
