GAME REVIEW - Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock, Wii

We’ve all dreamed up at one stage or another tearing up a stadium of rabid rock fans while playing the guitar with a raging ferocity to Boston’s More Than A Feeling but for many us that dream could never become a reality due to most people hating that song and the other half of us being too lazy to learn the guitar!

Well heaven shined down upon us one day and gave us the fantastic Guitar Hero, which along with its sequel - the shockingly-named Guitar Hero 2 - we were allowed, in front of a drooling audience (the household dog), to shred up the guitar to a whole host of songs, making us feel as every bit awesome as we’re sure we looked.  

It’s no surprise then that Guitar Hero III has been released this year, after the huge success of its predecessors. Reviewing the Wii version has been no easy task. The game arguably has the best track-listing to date, it should please those tattoo-ridden, pierced-nosed trolls enough to come out of their bat-lairs and pick up the guitar, but also the game appeals to the average music fan with some all-time classics and some newer more pop-type hits.  

This game flirts with the idea of having iconic rock stars appearing and playing against you in guitar battles to the death, except it doesn’t quite happen like that. There is only one guitarist that really could be classed anything of a ‘legend’ and apart from him there’s only one other so-called rock legend anyway. It just appears as a waste of a good premise and it’s a shame they couldn’t have taken more time to actually acquire more support from other artists to really make the game stand out.

The visuals in the game haven’t changed much at all and the Wii version shares the same basic look of the PS2 version. Backgrounds and venues being played in look okay but no effort has been and the weird looking muppet faced characters are back. The audio output also has to be mentioned, as the Wii version inexplicably only plays out in mono which is a shocking mistake for a game that’s central premise revolves around rocking out as loud as you can.

As anyone who has played the first two games will be familiar with, the guitar and the fretboard has gone through a couple of changes on the Wii version. Now we place the Wiimote inside the guitar, this gives the guitar a rumble function as well as also quite nicely giving you the horrible noise of missing a note through the remote's speaker. Other new features are online play and cooperative mode, unfortunately for the Wii version though there is no downloadable content which is a disappointment.  

Some of the earlier songs are a joy to master and play through, highlights include; Guns and Roses - Welcome to the Jungle, The Killers - When You Were Young, The Rolling Stones – Paint It Black and Black Sabbath – Paranoid to name a few. You’ll be tearing through these songs until your fingers are numb and you powerslide your carpet until it’s burnt away to near nothingness.

Enjoyment takes slightly downhill route as the game progresses through to the later songs, this is where the more hardened rock fans will delight in the finger blistering tracks from the likes of Slipknot, Metallica and Iron Maiden. These last songs are a selected taste both musically and in relation to gameplay. The songs start becoming so hard that only the diehard Guitar Hero fans will enjoy mastering them, and we found ourselves on the painful end of some finger cramping and blistering after trying to reach the end of some of these songs. This is where the game disappears from the mainstream demographic and starts pandering to the fanboys, who can’t wait to expert songs such as Through The Fires and Flames.

This is made clear when attempting to challenge people over the internet. Playing complete strangers usually ends up with people selecting all the higher tier songs that we neither like, nor are any good at and resulting in us looking like berks when only lasting a few seconds. The second instalment we breezed through in a day or so, but this entry in the franchise has really upped the difficulty to the point that it no longer becomes fun towards the end.

All things considered though, the number of songs that we do like and enjoy playing is significantly more than the previous two entries (not counting the Rock the 80’s expansion pack), and it’s great to master them and show off, which is one of the main attractions of the game. There’s something about this addition though that just doesn’t seem as fun as previous entries, and it has something to do with the game not knowing what direction to go in. Is it a cheesy, invite your mates round and have a laugh game? Or is it something to spend hours practising and mastering? The game just feels confused.  

If you’re a fan of the series though it is worth the purchase, but if you’re a newbie to the franchise we’d recommend starting out with one of the earlier entries. Not only will it be a more consistently enjoyable experience, you’ll also complete the game with a higher sense of self-esteem, which is always an added bonus.

[story by David Scarborough]