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Guitar Hero 3:Legends of Rock
I have to admit, I am a Guitar Hero junky. I've only been playing for less than a year, but I've played through every one of them and was anxiously awaiting the third major installment of the series. Since Harmonix wasn't going to be doing this one I was unsure about whether it would be the next great leap in the genre or just more of the same.I've put a bunch of time into it since I picked it up shortly after midnight on the day of release. Follow the jump to get my full impressions of the game.
First off, the game has taken the expected leap forward visually. The character models and venues have improved significantly over the previous two. Character animations have also improved, including more animation loops for each character. As usual, though, unless you are a Guitar Hero God you will only see the very attractive venues at the very beginning and ends of the songs and almost never see the characters. Us mortals actually have to look at the notes as they march inexorably down the fretboard.
Song selection this time is meh, IMHO. They seem to have sided with the more popular songs that more people know, rather than with songs that would make a good note chart. On more than occasion, I've felt like I was just going through the motions. Playing songs just to progress through the game rather than having fun with them. There are some real gems in here, such as Eric Johnson's "Cliffs Of Dover" and "The Metal" by Tenacious D, but for the most part I found them to be fairly boring to play.
Coupled with the bland song selection, the note charts are now harder featuring more notes per song and some truly unexpected fast chord changes in parts. To balance that is the fact that the note window has been enlarged to make them a little easier, but this has had an unexpected effect on the fans of the series. Some are finding the game harder than the others while some are complaining that it's too easy now. I know of at least one player that completed GH2 on hard and is now having trouble with one of the final songs on Medium.
The new "battle system" was one feature I was looking forward to playing around with. Being able to actually effect your opponent while they played should have breathed a little life into the game. Unfortunately, it seems to have sucked some of the life from it. If they had just left it a multiplayer mode, it would have been fine, but they integrated it into the game and it just doesn't work. It's not that fun playing a battle against an AI. In truth it's not that fun playing against a human either, since you both have to play at the same difficulty or it's horribly unbalanced. 99% of the time the person playing at the lower difficulty will win, because the battle attacks don't negatively affect them as bad as someone playing at a higher difficulty with more potential missed notes.
Co-Op career is an interesting addition and one which I enjoyed playing through with my girlfriend. There are some problems with the way it's implemented, but I'll discuss them in the achievements section later in the review. The lack of an online Co-Op Career is a real problem for some people as not everybody has someone locally they can play with and there are a couple of songs you can't unlock unless you play the Co-Op career. Hopefully this is something they will fix with a patch soon.
I have seen several bugs in the game so far, which I'm blaming on Activision taking over. None of the bugs I've seen are game crippling but they are very annoying. The first one has only happened once to me in solo career. What happened was several of the notes on the fret board were flashing as the came down, exactly like the "Amp Overload" battle attack in Battle Mode. It was only 2 or 3 notes, but I lost my combo because I wasn't expect them and it threw for me a bit of a loop. The other one is a little more serious and happens a lot more often. Sometimes the guitar part doesn't play. You can hear everything else, but as you are playing notes nothing plays. This is fairly distressing if you are playing a song you aren't familiar with and need audible clues to help you along.
For the second time in a row I have to discuss achievements in a game. I don't like to do it, but it's a symptom of the big problem with this game. The achievements are poorly implemented. Some of these achievements are just ridiculous. I'm talking about ones like "buy all guitars". In GH2 this meant just buy all the guitars that you start with in the store, in GH3 it means buy all unlocked guitars as well. The problem with this is you have to be able to 5 star expert to get all the solo career guitars unlocked. This is made all the more difficult when you realize that Co-Op careers also unlock guitars so you have to have someone that can 5 star expert to play with you. Lacking an online Co-Op Career this is nearly impossible for most people.
As if impossible to get achievements weren't enough there are "peculiarities" with some of them. The Co-Op Career based achievements only unlock for the person who is hosting the game. What this means is if you both want the achievement, you have to play through it twice. So for those who are going for 5 star all difficulties in Co-Op you will have to play through a minimum of 8 times at 3+ hours per career. Remember, lack of online Co-Op career makes this that much more difficult.
I'm not done yet. The net is alive with reports from people who are claiming that they aren't receiving achievements they have earned. The most common one is Hendrix Reborn which requires you to play through career both righty and with lefty flip turned on. Of course this negative glitch is balanced by the fact that you can earn the achievement for completing Hard difficulty with the standard controller by completing it on hard with the guitar,and then later just launch the game with the controller plugged. There are similar glitches for Whammy Mania and Tone Deaf achievements.
Finally, I have to mention the new Wireless Les Paul. I absolutely love it, but many have complained that the removable neck is causing problems with buttons not responding or causing a strum without actually using the strum bar.
This game could have been so much more than it actually is. It is still a lot of fun, but if you haven't played a Guitar Hero game before I'd suggest one of the earlier versions instead.
Song selection this time is meh, IMHO. They seem to have sided with the more popular songs that more people know, rather than with songs that would make a good note chart. On more than occasion, I've felt like I was just going through the motions. Playing songs just to progress through the game rather than having fun with them. There are some real gems in here, such as Eric Johnson's "Cliffs Of Dover" and "The Metal" by Tenacious D, but for the most part I found them to be fairly boring to play.
Coupled with the bland song selection, the note charts are now harder featuring more notes per song and some truly unexpected fast chord changes in parts. To balance that is the fact that the note window has been enlarged to make them a little easier, but this has had an unexpected effect on the fans of the series. Some are finding the game harder than the others while some are complaining that it's too easy now. I know of at least one player that completed GH2 on hard and is now having trouble with one of the final songs on Medium.
The new "battle system" was one feature I was looking forward to playing around with. Being able to actually effect your opponent while they played should have breathed a little life into the game. Unfortunately, it seems to have sucked some of the life from it. If they had just left it a multiplayer mode, it would have been fine, but they integrated it into the game and it just doesn't work. It's not that fun playing a battle against an AI. In truth it's not that fun playing against a human either, since you both have to play at the same difficulty or it's horribly unbalanced. 99% of the time the person playing at the lower difficulty will win, because the battle attacks don't negatively affect them as bad as someone playing at a higher difficulty with more potential missed notes.
Co-Op career is an interesting addition and one which I enjoyed playing through with my girlfriend. There are some problems with the way it's implemented, but I'll discuss them in the achievements section later in the review. The lack of an online Co-Op Career is a real problem for some people as not everybody has someone locally they can play with and there are a couple of songs you can't unlock unless you play the Co-Op career. Hopefully this is something they will fix with a patch soon.
I have seen several bugs in the game so far, which I'm blaming on Activision taking over. None of the bugs I've seen are game crippling but they are very annoying. The first one has only happened once to me in solo career. What happened was several of the notes on the fret board were flashing as the came down, exactly like the "Amp Overload" battle attack in Battle Mode. It was only 2 or 3 notes, but I lost my combo because I wasn't expect them and it threw for me a bit of a loop. The other one is a little more serious and happens a lot more often. Sometimes the guitar part doesn't play. You can hear everything else, but as you are playing notes nothing plays. This is fairly distressing if you are playing a song you aren't familiar with and need audible clues to help you along.
For the second time in a row I have to discuss achievements in a game. I don't like to do it, but it's a symptom of the big problem with this game. The achievements are poorly implemented. Some of these achievements are just ridiculous. I'm talking about ones like "buy all guitars". In GH2 this meant just buy all the guitars that you start with in the store, in GH3 it means buy all unlocked guitars as well. The problem with this is you have to be able to 5 star expert to get all the solo career guitars unlocked. This is made all the more difficult when you realize that Co-Op careers also unlock guitars so you have to have someone that can 5 star expert to play with you. Lacking an online Co-Op Career this is nearly impossible for most people.
As if impossible to get achievements weren't enough there are "peculiarities" with some of them. The Co-Op Career based achievements only unlock for the person who is hosting the game. What this means is if you both want the achievement, you have to play through it twice. So for those who are going for 5 star all difficulties in Co-Op you will have to play through a minimum of 8 times at 3+ hours per career. Remember, lack of online Co-Op career makes this that much more difficult.
I'm not done yet. The net is alive with reports from people who are claiming that they aren't receiving achievements they have earned. The most common one is Hendrix Reborn which requires you to play through career both righty and with lefty flip turned on. Of course this negative glitch is balanced by the fact that you can earn the achievement for completing Hard difficulty with the standard controller by completing it on hard with the guitar,and then later just launch the game with the controller plugged. There are similar glitches for Whammy Mania and Tone Deaf achievements.
Finally, I have to mention the new Wireless Les Paul. I absolutely love it, but many have complained that the removable neck is causing problems with buttons not responding or causing a strum without actually using the strum bar.
This game could have been so much more than it actually is. It is still a lot of fun, but if you haven't played a Guitar Hero game before I'd suggest one of the earlier versions instead.
the whole buttons not responding or strumming without using the strum bar is a problem with the old school guitars in the PS2 version as well. I can hammer on and pull of on non ho and po notes. Kinda shitty for those retardedly stupid fast solos.