Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock Comments by Keza MacDonald

From what I've heard until now, "One" is not a cover (as some people around here already noticed). It's clearly labeled "not cover" in Wikipedia, on YouTube videos from GH III you can see "by Metallica" (as opposed to "as made famous by", which denotes covers) and most importantly - listening to it from said videos, I'd never say it's a cover.

But now, is it possible that due to some strange creepy licensing issues Metallica's One *is* in fact a cover in the European version of GH III? :/ That would be crazy stupid... Can the reviewer say something about it?

Yes, the Medium/Hard jump is far more difficult than in GH2, and so's the Hard/Expert jump. And I'm talking about the PS2 version of GH2 there, which had broken difficulty levels.

Expert itself is largely made more difficult for the sake of being difficult and a lot of the songs don't "feel" quite right because of it. Beware the vast abundance of three-note-chords. They're not that hard to hit if you've beaten GH2 on Expert, but it just doesn't seem quite right.

And no mention of the sub-GH1 graphics on PS2, or the occasional framerate drops on both versions, or the somewhat-shoddy online implementation in the 360 version (often forcing you to go back to the dashboard and reload the game), or co-op mode requiring you to unlock the songs again on EVERY SINGLE DIFFICULTY, or... yeah, the list of complaints goes on. I'd honestly bitch about the lack of boss battle songs in multiplayer but that's been fixed for 360, it seems. The unlocking-all-songs-again-on-every-difficulty-in-co-op, and the lack of co-op quickplay have both apparently been fixed on the 360 too, but it's such a pain in the arse on PS2 that I couldn't let it slip.

It's still a fun game, but (some of the hilariously fun tracks in GH3 aside) I still hold GH2 as the triumph of the series.

EDIT: I'll clarify that I've not played it online so I perhaps shouldn't whine about crappy online implentation, but God, everyone I know who has is moaning about it. It's apparently good fun when it works and you don't come up against someone who picks a lower difficulty level than they really should (and thus inevitably wins), but it takes awhile to get a game going.

Just for the record, to hell with Rock Band. Based on what I've played so far, I doubt it'll trump this.

Uhm, One is not a cover, what the hell are you on about? Well that just tells me I can wholly ignore this review.

Sorry everyone - you're right, One's not a cover. I was fooled by the fact that it sounds weirdly bad.

I'm gonna buy both, and i doubt i'll get as far as GH2, on which i thought the difficultly level was nigh on perfect.

I had Hangar 18 and Freebird left on Expert, all the rest were complete. Hate the fact i couldn't do the last two though, and i still can't do hammer ons & pull offs at all.

I loved the fact i would just about scrape through medium at first, until the last songs, but by then could do the first hard songs. Then once i had mastered them, i could go back to medium and 5 star them apart from the end ones, by which time i could complete the middle Hard ones etc. This kept going all the way to the top of expert. I can 5* 2/3 of Hard, and the first 2 sets of expert, but above that, it's all a bit tricky :-)

What about the other comments on multiplayer, difficulty all over the place and slow downs? Have you always played with the same character or were all chars slow down free for you?

Keza: Hmm, maybe I'm deaf, but it sounds perfectly fine to me, just like on the original CD...

EDIT: Of course you could probably still argue that Metallica itself "sounds weirdly bad", but that's a completely different argument and has nothing to do with the game. ;)

EDIT2: Just for comparison:
http://pl.youtube.com/watch?v=JwW9L_qzqp8
http://pl.youtube.com/watch?v=Ptv8TFjxFjo

I'll clarify by saying it's still really good, but I have way more issues with it than were brought up. How long have you played for, Keza? I ask as most of these issues took a little while before they got really irritating - and no, I'm not maligning reviewer playtimes.

And One sounds bad because it's *not* a cover, obviously.

/gets coat

I would be interested in a Conductor Hero.

The difficulty: As I said, the game is designed so that everyone has their own comfort zone. It's a hard game - which a lot of people don't like - but I don't think it's unfair. I managed my way comfortably through most of the game, then started having trouble on the last two tiers - which is about right. As for the jump between Medium and Hard, that's always been there - the addition of an extra button is, unfortunately, pretty impossible to sugar-coat, difficulty wise. It's not hard for the sake of it at any point, although rhythm-action games often are - they've chosen songs that are harder to play. The only objection I had was the ENDLESS solo that's been shoehorned into Cult of Personality, which seemed mildly unnecessary.

The slowdown: This happened to me twice, playing as the Rock God, but it never affected me - it lasted all of half a second. However it should definitely still be fixed, and doubtless will in a patch.

EDIT: Fyzzu: About two weeks, ish. Have made my way through the game three or four times on Expert, Hard and co-op career modes.

"Also, you are quite correct. There is no need for innovation when you just add polish and extra content to an already great game. "

You are the reason Electronic Arts is the biggest video game company in the world. Congratulations, you are average.

@ Notorious_LRO

So would you prefer it if every single game released was 'innovative'. Even if that meant a much higher percentage of garbage?

If you've hit on an innovation which people like then what's wrong with making more of the same as long as each version is an improvement on the last?

'One' sounds bad because the original track is so very badly mixed. If ever an album needed remastering it would be 'And Justice For All'

Keza, it does sound to me like you are too good at the game to feel the bigger pain of Hard in GHIII. Fair enough. That comment hasn't come only from one person or one message board though... As a non expert player, I expect to be fully affected by it. We'll see.

Wendelius

I just don't understand how, with Practice mode and everything, it could just suddenly get too hard. It's never at the point where you can perfect every song on Medium, but can't hit any of the notes on Hard. There's always a level at which you're comfortable, and a level that kicks your arse occasionally.

Like a real guitar, if you practise, you get better. A lot of the American reviewers just seem to be pissed off that they're not really good at it straight away, and maybe have to fail a song ten times before managing their way through it. But that's rhythm-action games for you. They're rarely kind.

If Hard's too difficult and you just want to play the songs, why not play on Medium?

"If Hard's too difficult and you just want to play the songs, why not play on Medium?"

Because there comes a time where Medium is too easy? And if you increase the gap between Medium and Hard, then there is no fun middle ground anymore.

IMO, if you want to make a game more difficult for the very good players, it seems to me that the ideal place to do so is on the Expert level or add yet another level. But not at lower difficulties.

We'll see. I might find that I'm a GHIII god on Hard, even though I somehow doubt it. :)

Wendelius

The main issue for me when I was learning Guitar Hero was the addition of the fifth button, and the realisation that I actually had to move my hand around. But to be honest I think that's an inevitable major adjustment :-) - once you get past that, it's fine.

So is there an opportunity for some sort of fifth-finger peripheral?

Here's hoping I don't face some redneck inbred five-finger banjo-playing freak in an online battle.

Has 'Duelling Banjos' been in one of these games? If not, it bloody should have.

It turns out that Guitar Hero is more fun when you're playing songs you actually know than when it's trying to introduce you to little-known Bostonian prog-rock.

Maybe you're narrow minded, I dunno. Go out and explore.
I think it's a less varied track list than GHII and that's not a plus.

I hit a wall on GH II Expert mode which wasn't the 5th button, it was just the crazy speed of some of the songs. The trouble is that for me those hard-rock songs are not very pleasant and so after retrying a song 10 times, including parts of it in practise mode, only to face the same mountain again with the next song, I shelved the game.

I definitely agree with some of the posts that at Hard level you should be able to play on all 5 keys and just enjoy the songs without the crazy button mashing it descends into on certain songs.

This game was on my xmas list but now its a maybe due to that difficulty spike.

Damn, I still haven't got my bucket achievement and this is almost out...

I guess I'm agreeing with Keza, essentially, that the difficulty spike from medium to hard is not a problem given the addition (as of GH2) of the training mode. If anything it's a *feature* because it forces you to use the (incredibly well-implemented) training mode, which is where the game reveals a lot of its surprising depth.

For all you guitarists who are avoiding this for its lack of realism etc, remember that when you pick up your real guitar, you don't instantly have a well-rehearsed, well-produced band rocking out behind you. Nor can you enjoy that experience with your non-playing wife/girlfriend/drinking buddies on a moment's notice. It really is a lot of fun, especially if you turn it up loud enough. I also think there's considerable "real musical" value in it, in so far as it encourages active, participatory listening, with emphasis on rythym, song structure etc. I've developed an appreciation for many songs I thought I hated.

To the reviewer: no worries re: "6 hours a week". 6 hours a day is what launches most of the greats. :)

A second post because it's totally unrelated to my first:

Is anyone else experiencing instability (perhaps overheating) problems with the PS2 version? This is the first time I've experienced graphical glitches and system hangs (typically during the load screens) on a console. I thought this was strictly the bane of the PC gamer LOL.

(No such problems with GH2, by the way.)

I dont understand why the wii version is so expensive. Surely it should be cheaper as the wiimote is doing all the bluetoothy stuff?

Keza: You've played probably the same length I have then (if not more) so no complaints there, I guess; you'd definitely have picked up on the annoying niggles by now if you agreed with 'em :) On the other hand, I liked the additional solo to Cult of Personality, so...

I dunno. It's great fun, but I have way more complaints about it than I do GH2 (although admittedly I had a ton of faults with that, too, which I can now largely ignore.) So, yeah, don't get me wrong. I'm just bitching about things that weren't mentioned so that they *are* mentioned somewhere. My opinion of it is still pretty high.

A final issue, though - star power. The riffs seem way, way longer than any of the other games had, and this seems to lend itself more to people going for high scores than it does people struggling with the songs. In previous games they always seemed to counterbalance the difficulty somewhat so that people could just hold on and get through, but in GH3, if you can hit most of the star power riffs, you're good enough to finish the song anyway. It's not something that comes up in every song but it's really, really noticable in a few. On Expert, anyway. I didn't really play the other difficulties enough to notice. Still, fence-sitters: if you like GH1 and 2, then you'll almost certainly like this. Regardless of the faults, there's a huge deal of enjoyment in there.

EDIT: And I've always found Practice Mode pretty useless, but then again, barring Jordan and Through the Fire and Flames, I've never needed it. Raining Blood came close, though.

EDIT 2: Note of mild hypocrisy - this post was written in between the loading times between songs on GH3. Cough.

Are you playing the PS2 version? It's a bit rubbish. :P

SODDING Raining Blood can sod RIGHT OFF. I hate it. Can't do that backwards four-finger movement with any degree of speed.

Keza

No problems with the guitar double strumming or missing upstrums on fast sections? I had the PS3 version and it was terrible for this reason, esp on hard or expert. Swapped to the 360 disk only and use my explorer and all is good.

I think the note charts for hard are very different than GH2, many more chords: slipknot is giving me huge problems with its 3 note chord changes. Probably more "accurate" but less fun to play in some ways. Overall tho I prefer it to GH2 and would say it is nice to play some well known songs. Anarchy in the UK tho is a simply awful version!

Rydner: There are known problems when the guitar starts to run out of batteries, although I've not heard of anything that bad yet! I've had no problems at all with my 360 Les Paul shape.

I loves it.

Keza: I am indeed playing on PS2. It's flawed and ugly, but it's such fun anyway. I had the opportunity to play the 360 version a week ago and it was quite an improvement; I intend to upgrade to the 360 version, but not for a little while yet. And yes, Raining Blood is horrible. I've finished that song exactly once, and I've never played it again after finishing it. I'll need to go back to 5-star it shortly, but... gneh. I think it was luck got me through that section the first time. I fear another attempt.

Not played on PS3, but I've had some interesting strumming problems on PS2. Strumming by "flicking" the strum bar lightly results in missing the note (almost just brushing it with my thumb.) It's definitely strumming, as it plays the Note Failed sound, but it doesn't hit it, and I don't think it's double-strumming, either. I've not seen this on GH1 or 2, and it occurs with both of my guitars. I forgot to try it on 360, though, as I've pretty much adapted to never do that now (although it still screws up a friend of mine who only plays using that strumming technique.) I haven't seen it mentioned elsewhere, though, which would imply a local issue. Hm.

They haven't deliberately made it more difficult. The song choices and the actual notes aren't as well thought out as Harmonix would have done it, and as a result they're harder to play. The changes they've made to hammer-ons and pull-offs are incredibly frustrating too. There are a lot of spots that I know I would have been able to do them in GHII and I can't any more. Plus there are songs where you can do them sometimes, but the exact same notes played in other parts of the song will not have the HO/PO notes.

I'm in the minority that hates the new guitar too. Half the time I hit the buttons slightly too low, and sustained notes will suddenly turn off. The whole break-apart deal was an utterly retarded move too, I often have to connect the thing together ten times or more for the buttons to all work consistently.

I think what it boils down to is that Neversoft have really made the game for a select group of extremely hardcore GHII fans, and expected everyone to come along for the ride.

Guitar Hero III has been out in Australia since 7th of November. How come you guys haven't got it yet?!?!?!?!? I got it on release day and am up to the last boss battle in career mode. I agree with most of what has been said here about the flaws, however haven't experienced any slowdown yet whilst activating star power.... I would have to say that one aspect of the game that's easier than GH1 & 2 is that it's now more lenient with timing when holding down frets and strumming.

Does anyone know if GH2 downloadable content for xbox360 can be used with GHIII?

Can't wait to collect this - I have my preorder in, money waiting and a day booked off work ;)

To whoever asked it, yes the PS3 version has DLC.

Do note however that while the Les Paul guitar from GH3 works fine with both GH2 and Rock Band on the 360, the PS3 DOES NOT (currently) work with anything other than GH3 (i.e. it can't be used on GH1/2, nor does it (currently) work with Rock Band).

A PS2 player here who would like to share his thoughts.
In GHII I've got 5 stars on all non-bonus songs on expert, except for Misirlou, and with 4 stars on Jordan, I think of myself as an a-ok player.
I consider myself a gameplay-oriented person, who cares more about how fun the charts are, than a music-oriented, who pays more attention to how good the songs are.

I've now quickly run through the singleplayer campaign, and am currently (at this very moment) beating my head against Lou. It took a short while to get used to the new interface, (smaller notes, new HOPO-graphics), I must say it's an improvement over GHII, it feels cooler and more fast-paced. I like.

What I don't like, on the other hand, is, well, the songlist. Where GHII had shoddy covers to throw you off, GHIII throws in monotous nervebusting trash metal. What the hell were they thinking, putting in 5 Freya's in one game. It just doesn't make sense.
Muse's Knights of Cydonia sort of redeems it, being very interesting to play, but how can a game developer convince himself, that it's fun to play the same 3 chords separated by 5 tight green notes over and over again for 5 minutes?
People who listen to that sort of music listen to it, because it's repetitive and consisent in it's nature. Hell, I can listen to it - if it's played like that - without whining too much (concerts of Machine Head, Gojira, Slayer, all in my belt) - I just headbang my way out of it.
But the moment you put it in a form where it (for about 99% of the playerbase) won't be played with a 100% consistency, it sucks utterly, because it's not in it's true form. To clarify, a 70% Barracuda may still sound decent, but a 87% Raining Blood or Before I Forget is a mess.

In short, the song list didn't improve squat. It's still a few really entertaining and good songs amongst a lot of songs with low entertainment or listening value.

Battle Mode? Seriously, what a joke. It's one hundred percent based on luck. Try Lou getting a Double Note on his first battle power. It's just 3 minutes of foreplay wasted on nothing.

The Co-op career is sort of cool, but it is also made of much fail. It's really cool with another story to back it up, and some songs made specifically for it. A very nice idea. But WHY oh WHY must everything be locked up and made unavailable until I find someone else to play on expert to help me get it?! Hath ye Vision of Acti no mercy?

So to compare GHIII with GHII. Dragonforce, Rolling Stones and Muse is definetely thumbs up. I also liked the idea of putting in When You Were Young, because it's a step towards a whole different ballgame than GHII's "Look how nerdy my music collection is". I also liked Tom Morello and Slash (I mean, watching Slash shredding in a mocap is just classic). I liked the additions to the store, new guitars, finishes, clothing and stuff for your character, it's a bit MMORPG-ish. I like that. I also like the new menus, with band names and years.

What I don't like, is the massive locked function mongery. it was OKAY in GHII to have a few guitars locked until you'd played for too much time, but it just isn't reasonable to force people into co-ops and frustrating luckbased battlemodes to get a shot at playing anything, namely the dragonforce song which was no 1 reason I bought the game. Yes, I know I can just beat it on medium, but then I'll have to go through the entire career AGAIN, at snail pace. I have even less patience for that than to wait for the green note of freedom to appear in the lou battle. That would also mean that when I do beat Lou, there's no real reward for it. Yay.

We'll I can't possibly disagree with this review any more. Neversoft have broken my favourite game.

But where to start with where it went wrong? Half the tracks are durge and just aren't fun to play, I mean who wants to play the Dead Kennedys? The note tracks are the most unnatural ever and at points feel totally random. I managed to make it through GH2 on expert after some perseverance but I doubt I'll complete this and I don't think I want to either. There's nothing fun about a game vomiting random notes at you.

I play bass for real and one of the things that made guitar hero great was that despite the limitations of the controller it gives you the same feel you get from playing the real thing. GH3 fails miserably in that part (including the bass lines).

I've been playing the game on the old xplorer controller and I don't know if it's just me, but the tilt for star power seems to go off ALL THE TIME with makes a complete mockery of the albeit useless battle mode.

Online play crashed and failed to connect regularly and was somewhat soulless. Finally the graphics, Neversoft seem to find it impossible not to make all their characters look ugly, the even did it to poor old Tom Morello.

After an hours play you'll be reaching for your old GH2 disc and playing Sweet Child 'o Mine or Freebird and enjoying yourself again.

And whats with the bom cicka wah wah dollies looking all out place as a rock gig?!?

I was all meh, till I found it included Holiday in Cambodia by the Dead Kennedys

Brilliant.

Track list is average with a few hidden gems, but overall average.

Rock Band every song seems to be better.

"I was all meh, till I found it included Holiday in Cambodia by the Dead Kennedys

Brilliant."

That's weird, I find this to be one of the lamest entries in GH3, perhaps tied with the Sex Pistols tune(is it Anarchy in the UK?) They're both fantastic songs, of course, they're just not very good GH content. There is a difference.

I've never played GH or GHII. Have always wanted to, but was just put off the whole 'guitar' aspect of it. Finally plumped up the cash for GH3 on my 360 and have had an absolute blast! The track listing is a bit random, but it doesn't matter - the tracks shouldn't be picked to suit *your* music tastes (how the hell could Neversoft EVER have done that?!) - they should just be fun to play.

The one thing that really gets me is how into the game you can get. Playing bass in co-op on Knights of Cydonia for example is just excellent fun! To the point where you're really enjoying just playing the song, and not worrying so much about the fact you're playing a game. And when you do manage to pull off a really good streak, the feeling is incredible. It's like "my god, I can't believe my fingers just did that!".

Yes it gets hard, REALLY hard, but I think there is enough fun to be had in playing within your own comfort zone. I really did find it's a game you can pick up and treat in one of two ways - 1) To beat it, as a game in its own right, or 2) To enjoy the music, and sort of treat as an interactive jukebox.

Excellent fun, and this is from a total NON-GH fan.