Nov 05
XBox 360 Guitar Hero 3 Review
Those of you who know me on XBL, know that one game and one game only has been taking up all of my time lately.
That game, is Guitar Hero 3.
Thankfully, I manged to get away for a minute to write this review and let me tell you – That’s a tall order ’cause outside of my fingers and wrist killing me…
The game is freakin’ AWESOME!
What is this “Guitar Hero” You Speak Of?
Guitar Hero is a series of games made my Harmonix Activision that allows players to play their favourite rock songs using what is (for all intensive purposes) a “Fisher Price” guitar. There are 5 buttons on the guitar controller representing frets on a real guitar and there is a strum button that allows you to then play these frets.
My Prior Experience with the Guitar Hero Series
Many people love Harmonix’s Guitar Hero games, and I’m not any different. I’ve beaten the first and second one on Expert and then went back to the second one to 5-Star every song. Not soon after, my GH 2 disc broke because it became terrified of my Guitar Hero prowess. (Yes, that’s the only logical conclusion). After that, I went back to the first game and started the same quest. However, with the first game it’s a lot harder to 5-Star songs because due to a weird whammy bar glitch, it’s a lot harder to generate Star Power. This is all to say that GH3 will not be my first tour around the Guitar Hero block.
Before this game came out, I honestly wasn’t too excited for it. And graphically, the game looks just like its predecessors which is fine. But in regards to difficulty – the first Guitar Hero game wasn’t very difficult, and the second was only a marginal improvement imo. The third game in the series is without a doubt, the best one to date regarding the note patterns and difficulty.I think there are 8 sections of songs in Guitar Hero 3, all of them consisting of 5 songs each. Well let me be the the first one to say, up to section 5 is a breeze. Section 6 is a little tougher really focusing on hammer ons and pull offs but Section 7 is just *ugh* … It’s just really really hard.
Achievements
As I’m sure you know by now, one of the big reasons why I love XBox 360 games are the Achievements! As losery as it sounds, it’s a great way to separate the boys from the um…other boys. And I’m happy to report that there are plenty of achievements in GH3 that just aren’t easy like the following :
- Silver Streaker – Earn a 500 note streak in Career or Quick Play
- Gold Streaker – Earn a 1000 note streak in Career or Quick Play
- Guitar Hero – Earn 5 stars on all songs on the Expert difficulty
- Perfectionist – 100% a song
Even with the graphics and presentation being basically the same as the other ones, Guitar Hero 3 is an awesome experience. The note patterns are creative and challenging, and later songs are sure to give even hardened Guitar Hero vets a great challenge (to put it lightly).Now all that remains to be seen is whether or not Rock Band is going to kick Guitar Hero out of its dominating niche position!
November 5th, 2007 at 7:31 pm
I picked up GH3 for the Nintendo Wii on release night at midnight, then spent most of the next day playing. It is really good stuff!
I’ve seen the game a lot before, but never gotten to play because we always have owned Nintendo products. Right now my wife and I are mostly trying to unlock/purchase all the songs, then we’ll work on the tougher levels and such.
November 5th, 2007 at 8:37 pm
@Kyle – Glad to hear you’re part of the GH clan now. Make sure you start amping up to Expert ’cause I swear, you never know when you’ll find yourself in an occasion that GH makes an appearance. (And I’m being serious, it’s happened to me).
November 5th, 2007 at 11:25 pm
my hubby is eagerly anticipating rock band. We play guitar hero – it’s a lot of fun. He’s better than me but oh well. LOL. At least he lets me play.
November 6th, 2007 at 7:36 am
@Teeni – All it takes is practice to get better. Lots and lots of practice. If you’ve never done it, you should rock the tutorial too. It will probably help you out a bit learning those hammerons and pulloffs. *nod*
November 6th, 2007 at 1:24 pm
I’m also terrible at Guitar Hero. However, I have never owned my own copy or played it for a long period of time. It’s defnitley something I want to get into, but just haven’t.
Thank you very much for the quick review. I look forward to your Rock Band review so I know which one to buy if I do end up ever buying one of them.
November 6th, 2007 at 2:34 pm
@Keira Blog – Hm. Well this means that I’m going to have to figure out a way to get the wife to be ok with me buying Rock Band. Because it’s a lock that when she sees a guitar, drum kid and mic coming from the same box, all she’s going to think is “How much did this cost!?”
November 6th, 2007 at 3:25 pm
Yo Bush, Guitar Herol 3 is NOT made by Harmonix, and that is the whole reason why I stayed the hell away from the game. I never like it when games switch developers. Like take the Call of Duty series. Call of Duty 1, 2, and 4 are all made by the creator of the series, Infinity Ward. These games kick ass. The console versions of CoD1 (“Finest Hour”) and 2 (“Big Red One”), as well as CoD3, were made by some other damn company who don’t know how to make games for sh*t and consequently they sucked @ss. The only time a game has switched developers and gotten better was Tomb Raider. Legend was made by Crystal Dynamics because CORE f*cked up the whole series, and Eidos got tired of their bumbling. CORE created Tomb Raider, but they sure as hell don’t know how to make those games anymore. C.D. has done a fine job with Legend and Anniversary though.
If you want to continue to support Harmonix, you need to pick up Rock Band.
Am I saying GH3 is bad? Well, apparently it’s not, it seems to be just as good as the other ones. But it lacks that Harmonix “feel” that made the first two so great.
Eh it doesn’t really matter to me, my younger brother was the real GH player in this house, and he’s in Washington state attending the number 1 school for video game design and programming in the world, the Digipen Institute of Technology. My sister plays it alot too. Me, I have no time anymore, and when I do get time I need to play real video games. But glad to see it’s still taking over your life LOLZ. Somehow I knew when we parted ways after the Spring 2006 semester that I hadn’t heard the last of GH ruling over you heh.
November 6th, 2007 at 4:00 pm
@Drezkill – Dammit. I can’t believe I botched that. Now I have to go back and edit this post and the formatting is gonna be all screwed up… *UGH*
(#):) Thanks for the catch man. It’s nuts how these game companies keep coming and going on different games. So Harmonix is then doing GH 1 & 2 and RockBand with EA I think. And Activsion is doing GH3. Frankly I just don’t understand how it all works.
But I gotta disagree with you on the GH3 tip. I think it’s about the same as the ones before, (in feel) just a lot harder. *shrugs*
November 6th, 2007 at 6:21 pm
My family’s been playing GH3 for a few weeks now and love it. The songs are great and we like the coop career mode which allows me to play with my kids.
I agree that it’s a great game. We’re going to get the family Rockband for christmas and are really looking forward to playing that one, too. We played the demo set up at Best buy and had a blast. I’m looking forward to getting the entire family involved in it.. although I somehow think we’ll be more like the Partridge Family than Pearl Jam.
November 6th, 2007 at 8:11 pm
@Steve – I’m very jealous that you’ve had a chance to play Rock Band. I went to my local Best Buy like a week and a half ago looking for the display and I didn’t find it. I asked an employee and they said they didn’t have it yet. My friend goes 3 days later and plays it. ARRRRRGH!
Then today I go to the Best Buy by my office and I’m out of luck there too! ARRRRRRRRRRGH X 2!
But yeah, I can’t wait for Rock Band to start making its rounds. I just hope that it lives up to our lofty expectations.
November 12th, 2007 at 7:02 pm
[...] you know, I’ve been neck deep in Guitar Hero 3 as of late. SOMEHOW I’ve managed to make it to the last level and shocker the pain train just [...]