Guitar Hero III Comments by Keza MacDonald

It's sounding completely awesome. Wireless guitar FTUW!

Sounds good.

I'm very glad I skipped GH2 as it means this will feel a lot fresher.

bring it on, seriously i cannot wait to rock out in my front room with this...i may even leave the curtains open so people can see me crowd surfing with me parents

Though I like SingStar very much, these games do little for me. It seems to me hours spent on Guitar Hero would be better spent on learning to play a real guitar...

Why is this not a review? What will you write in there?

This didn't impress me at all at leipzig. It felt so amateurish and rock band completely trumped it imo

arse. another game to get before christmas.

Quickie... can the co-op songs listed (i.e. Sabotage) be played in Single player?

Sounds silly but this is important!

mmmm, not sure wherever to just import Rock Band to be honest.

Online Guitar Hero is a MUST BUY though! So....

Is there any news on how different the Wii version is to 360/PS3? i.e. is it pants, but cheaper thanks to the integrated wiimote?

Can you download songs on the Wii version?

Wireless Controller and presumably d/l tracks for the 360 right?
/buy

@ Les: "It seems to me hours spent on Guitar Hero would be better spent on learning to play a real guitar"

This argument keeps cropping up, and for the life of me i cannot understand the logic behind it. You could say the same thing about pretty much any video game. Why play Pro Evo when you be practicing real football? Why play Virtua Fighter when you could be at the dojo learning how to actually fight? Why play Space Giraffe when you could... i dunno, drop acid and stare at the pattern on your curtains?

You'd have to practice the real thing for a very long time before you could play most of the tracks in the game. The beauty of Guitar Hero is that it's possible to play along to big famous songs almost instantly. The longevity comes from getting better at doing so, until you actually begin to understand the way the music is constructed.

/stares at curtains

Oooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooh.

This'll be my first GH game. Just wish they'd announce a release date!

Hier Kommt Alex AND In Flames' Take This Life?

Reflect the Storm plz kthxbai

I love you, Keza. ♥

You are aware that the game is coming out for the PC as well (from Aspyr)?

Oh Jesus wept!. For the love of GOD will people stop commenting about how real guitars are better EVERY TIME guitar hero hoves into view.

Real guitars are better for some things, like PLAYING THE GUITAR. Guitar hero is better for other things, such as playing a video game that allows you to have fun.

Seriously, you could easily substitute such comments with something like "mmble... something about guitars... YAAAAAWWWNNNN" to save us all the bother of typing yawn ourselves.

Winnar.

Screw Rock Band and it's 2008 delay. GHIII is ON!

"I'm very glad I skipped GH2 as it means this will feel a lot fresher."

Ooooh! I wouldn't be glad if I'd skipped GH2. You missed some of the best tracks in GH history. Sweet Child Of Mine? Jessica? FREEBIRD?

The first impressions sound very good. I have already played GH3 but only with the GH2 guitars and the score screen after a coop game had space for three score sheets - I still wonder why. Maybe coop boss battles?

ManicMiner: The best thing about the difficulty is that all of the proper hardcore tracks, like Through the Fire and Flames, are bonuses - feathers for the caps of hardcore players, like GH2's Jordan. Expert will still offer us all a challenge, but the massive difficulty spike between GH1 and 2 is more to do with the fact that they changed the whole workings of the game - improving the hammer-ons and pul-offs made impossible passages in GH1 a lot easier, so there had to be a corresponding difficulty adjustment.

There has been no indication of any differences at all between the versions, so I'm nabbing the Wii one as soon as it's out in the States, and the 360 on as soon as it's out over here. Fair comparison, nay?

Also, I would say that the guarantee that Neversoft hasn't fucked it up is that it plays as well as ever, and looks and feels much better.

I've been looking forward to this one much more than RB.

I had GHII for the 360 for a few days before I sent it back (a combination of dodgy whammy bar, completing the game and the fact that I already have it on the PS2) and I've been waiting for this or RB to come out to get a new guitar.

Honestly, I'd prefer the RB guitar, just for better comaptability with the extra buttons

There has been no indication of any differences at all between the versions

So have they confirmed downloadable songs on the Wii, then? Last I heard, that was still up in the air.

My birthday is coming up and I was considering getting GH2 for the 360. Now, this may sound like a silly question, but would you wait for GH3, or would you get GH2 so that when GH3 came out you could get that and have two guitars for multiplayer fun?

Also, you reckon there's any chance of a GH2 price-drop now?

@ PlugMonkey

Every time I do "Jessica", I get the urge to play Forza Motorsport. I have no idea why...

“Real guitars are better for some things, like PLAYING THE GUITAR. Guitar hero is better for other things, such as playing a video game that allows you to have fun.”

So practicing pressing buttons to the music and getting points for that is fun, while if you actually invested that time into learning to play a real guitar, you would be able to play the songs for yourself but you don’t get points for it and therefore is not fun… I just don’t get it I guess…

Rock and roll!

So practicing pressing buttons to the music and getting points for that is fun

Uh, yes. Do you not play games? Quite a lot of them involve pressing buttons at the right time to get points.

Keza - have you played it then?

I'd assume it was the Keza that wrote the article. :)

"Uh, yes. Do you not play games? Quite a lot of them involve pressing buttons at the right time to get points."

Yes, but in most cases the difference between the real thing and the gaming substitute is a lot bigger.

But of course there's a difference between playing guitar hero on baby settings or going for the perfect score on the hardest setting. People doing the latter could spend their time more wisely.

Like those DDR freaks. Why don't they just go to a club and dance properly?

Les - "But of course there's a difference between playing guitar hero on baby settings or going for the perfect score on the hardest setting. People doing the latter could spend their time more wisely."

Here's the thing, it's not your place to tell people where to spend their energies.

I happen to be a pretty damn proficient guitar player having played for over 15 years. That takes NOTHING away from the huge amount of fun I have playing guitar hero, in fact I get a great amount of satisfaction from comparing real guitar playing against GH renditions of tracks.

ManicMiner: Honest to God, if it's not the same code then it's even more impressive. I'd always assumed that Neversoft had been given GH2 to work with, and to be honest I find it very hard to believe that they weren't - it wouldn't make any sense from a business perspective, for one thing. It's absolutely perfect, gameplay wise.

I'm interested in whether Les has actually played Guitar Hero. The main advantage is the backing track, and feel of playing for a crowd. It's different to sitting on your own, practising an instrument.

The difference between the real thing and GH is much bigger than you seem to believe... have you actually played much Guitar Hero? It's strange to see a guitarist who apparently thinks that playing their favourite instrument is quite similar to pressing five buttons in response to coloured dots appearing on a screen...

And maybe people going after high scores on expert could be spending their time more productively, but then so could people chasing epic armour sets in WoW, or perfecting their twitch-aiming skills in CS, or well... playing videogames at all, for that matter. Gaming is a hobby, it's supposed to be fun.

Please welcome on stage .....German Rock band........ENGLISH STILTON!!!!!!!!!!!!!! :@ :O :D }:)

*for any Vic Reeves fans
LOL.

Sweet. have to get this. Beasties Sabotage on track list= getting.
:)

Give me Guitar Hero "Blue Oyster Cult Edition" or I'm not interested.

chischis - I'd buy that for a dollar! (well, 40 quid)

Playing GH on EXPERT and playing real guitar is in some cases a scarily close experience (although obviously not the same). Lower difficulty levels have you playing a phrase per button press, but in expert you tend to have chords where chords should be, hammer/pull sections where they should be, and pretty much every note equalling a button press. Some real guitar players actually use a pick on the GH picker bar, and I frequently find myself trying to apply vibrato to GH licks!

It wouldn't be much of a techological stretch to supply a synth-pickup for a real guitar with the game and have it analyse actual notes. Not sure how they would do star powar though...

I'm gettin on a bit and games havent hooked me in the way they used to. Bioshock for example a fine game but once completed i cant bring myself to play for the other endings. Guitar hero on the other hand has got me hook line and sinker. I bought GH2 earlire in the year after reading EG top ten games of 2006 in January. I then bought GH1 and i even bought rock the 80s which had a dire selection of songs. I can only manage 3 stars on the expert levels but for me it was a huge sense of satisfaction being able to finish the games on the highest levels.

Few games have been so addictive and fun recently, and its a real crowd pleaser too. I honestly cannot wait for GH3 to come out. RB is also a must buy in the new year purely as its another guitar hero type fix and the drumming aspect looks excellent.

All these "Expert" beating guitar heroes I can't even complete "Hard". No wonder I was the bassist in my real life band.

But Activision owns the brand, and the publisher. Surely that means it owns the code!

If that's the case, we've all been overestimating how difficult Guitar Hero is to get right...

As an aside to the real guitar vs game debate: GH2 inspired me to go out and buy a REAL acoustic which I'm now progressing quite well with.

GH2 was the sole factor that got me thinking about learning guitar after a brief fad aged 12. I'm now 27. That i think you'll also hear the devs echo is one of their major wishes with the game. I'm also sure that time spent on GH helped improve my dexterity over what it would have been had i just picked up a guitar.

Plus learning "Kumbayah" or going over and over learning the start to a song like 'Behind Blue Eyes' / 'Eternal Flame' let alone an entire song some times comes second to the appeal of picking up GH and rocking out competently to 'Killing in the Name' 'The Trooper' or 'Thunderhorse'

The activities are not mutually exclusive. Both are fun. That is the point

Forget Halo, forget Assassins Creed, THIS is already GOTY for me (although FF : Tactics or PES may push it :D)

Just thought you guys should know, Anarchy In The UK IS confirmed for GHIII as was suggested from the leaked setlist reported earlier in the week. But it's not an original recording...

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...
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It's a re-master from the Pistol's themselves! They couldn't find the master track, so the Pistols (supposed fans of GH themselves) re-recorded it for the game, just like Living Colour has done for Cult Of Personality. The confirmation, and a video interview with the band is here:

http://videogames.yahoo.com/xbox360/guit...

"It "owns the code" but I doubt they can de-compile it to get back to the pure C++ "

Its VERY VERY VERY VERY VERY rare for publishers NOT to have written in the contract for a game that they get the FULL source code/tools/source graphics/etc complete with building instructions at the end of a game.

If they dont have the original source code/art/tools/etc then i'll eat my hat.

Doesnt mean they didnt rewrite it though. Just saying it's unlikely

Who did the Guitar Heroe 80's game that came out earlier this year? Was that Neversoft?

No, that was Harmonix.

"Though I like SingStar very much, these games do little for me. It seems to me hours spent on Guitar Hero would be better spent on learning to play a real guitar..."

Not really - this is a game and plays like it.

It's like saying "drive a car in a circuit instead of wasting your time playing Forza."

EDIT: Oh, well. I see now I 'm late to the debate. Let me add... YAAAAAWWWWWNNNNN :)