Shredding With A Plastic Guitar

If you know me, you probably also know that I'm really into the Guitar
Hero series of game. Guitar Hero 1 was the game that really pushed me
over into the world of console gaming. So, it was with great
anticipation that I waited for Sunday to arrive. The release of Guitar
Hero 3.

I picked up the Playstation 2 version instead of the Wii version that I
could have bought since I plan on eventually purchasing a XBox 360 at
which point I'll re-buy the game for that platform (for the XBox Live
integration.) This means that I'd rather not have to re-buy my guitars
and such for the Wii even though it is technically the better platform
to play.

In any case, I'm really enjoying the game. I finished off hard mode
last night and I'm just going back through and working on learning some
of the songs I didn't do so great on my first time through. The song
list this time around is exceedingly good. My personal favorite at this
point is Muse's Knights of Cydonia, which isn't entirely unexpected
considering I was looking forward to that song since it was announced a
looong time ago. Other highlights include Metallica – One, Iron Maiden
- Number Of The Beast, The Who – The Seeker (a cover, but still fun to
play), Guns n' Roses – Welcome To The Jungle…and probably more that
I'm forgetting right now.

I should say that I think this is the best entry in the series yet
before I get to my annoyances so you don't think I'm being all down on
the game. But, as good as I think it is, there are some annoyances.
First up, boss battles. This time around, they added a battle mode
which is a competitive type of play focusing on trying to get your
opponent to lose. As you play, you collect various power up weapons
that you can use on your opponent. This multi-player mode made it's way
into the single player career in the form of battles with professional
guitar players Tom Morello and Slash.

My main complaint with this mode is…I just want to play the songs!
Battle Mode is mostly about luck. All of the power ups are random, so
you can get hit with some really bad stuff right off the bat or you
could skate by almost totally clean depending on what your opponent
ends up with. There's too much luck involved for my taste. The last song in the game isn't a song, but another boss battle and this one is dependent even more on luck than the previous two. It's just…not fun.

My second complaint: Lack of a quick play co-op mode. My preferred way of playing the game is in co-op with my friends. But they took that mode out (they're patching it in on the 360, but that doesn't help the PS2 gamers…) and replaced it with a co-op career mode that does basically the same thing. It's still fairly annoying though.

Third minor complaint: All of the videos in the game are recorded in wide screen. If you're playing on a standard def TV without using wide screen mode, instead of letter boxing the videos, they squish them up so everybody looks tall and skinny. Luckily my TV has a 16:9 mode that fixes it while the videos are playing, but it's fairly annoying to me. Not a game breaker.

All in all though, a worthy entry in the Guitar Hero series.

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