Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock

The Good
Guitar Hero has certainly felt like a big turning point in my life. This game changed my interest in music, and now I’m into Heavy Metal and Rock from any decade. It got me into the Sex Pistols, Queens of the Stone Age, and Pink Floyd. The neat feature of this game is the variety of music it features for you to perform, from the 70s (“Schools Out” by Alice Cooper), 80’s (“One” by Metallica), 90’s (“Bulls on Parade” by Rage against the Machine) and the 2000s (“Anarchy in the U.K.” by Sex Pistols). One good thing about this feature was that it got my parents into this game because they like a lot of the songs featured in the game. The music kind of brings back memories of the old decades even if you were not even born back then. In fact when you select a song from the list most of the songs at the top are from older decades, and most of the songs from the bottom are from more recent decades that neat too. This way the player can learn a bit of an evolution of rock and rock.

One other interesting thing this game has is the way the songs are sung and how the sound effects are used in the game. They sound pretty close to the original version and the instrument sound match what the sounds would be in real life to. Also when playing the guitar it is pretty neat when you hit a note a guitar sound is made and if you miss a note the sound disappears until you hit the next note.

There is also one neat feature about the graphics and one that is bad. The good is that in the 3D environments the performers, the people in the crowd, where the concert is taking place etc, look pretty well drawn and realistic. The actions of the performers look very well developed to. For example when you perform the song the performers in the game do neat actions like jump around, and point their guitar in all directions showing how excited they are to be performing. Also when you perform well you can hear good reactions from the audience, and the performers act positive after the song. If you perform bad you hearing bad reactions from the audience, and if you fail the performers act negative and might throw their instrument on the ground with anger.

The game developers were also did a good thing with the certain variety of ways to play the game. The four modes easy, medium, hard, and expert are put together really well. Easy has three buttons to hit and is done at a beginner’s pace. Medium has four buttons to hit and is done at a little faster pace. Hard has all five buttons, and is even faster. Expert (Which in my opinion is where anyone who has really played a guitar before should start this game at. Not easy.) also uses all five buttons and is done at the fastest pace of all the levels. Besides the choice of level I also like how you can do Quick Play mode with all the songs you perform in the game and all four levels so you can see what it is like to play that level in the real game. The bonus songs you can play when you purchase them are also a neat addition to this game. I’m also thankful for the fact that this game has a tutorial mode, (If you’re having trouble with the game even in quick play.) this way you can play the song at a certain speed and see where the keys will always be in that difficulty. Speaking of which I like how in each difficulty their may be different buttons to hit in a certain part of the song, so this way in one difficulty you may start the song by hitting just the red button, and in another you may have to start by hitting the red and yellow buttons. Career mode features good challenges to make guitar hero less like a hit the key and get a scholarship game. For example if at one point in the game you get less than 65% key hit you fail like you would on a test and that was common for me when getting used to the game even on easy. Also the three guitar battles you have to battle in have a neat feature with battle power where you and the boss try to make each other have trouble playing to show who the best is. Last, but not least this game has a good store where you can buy songs, new characters, new guitars, and more. No matter which band leader bought the songs in career mode anyone can use them in Quick Play.

The Bad
As I stated before this game does have a good thing about its graphics and a bad thing. The bad thing about the graphics are even if the 3D art looks neat, the hand drawn 2D art look as terrible as the artwork in many of today’s new cartoons on Nickelodeon and Cartoon Network. I mean the colors look bland and the people look like mere stickers in the backgrounds. This really could’ve used improvement. In fact why can’t the hand-drawn cut scenes be 3D to? I also notice this sometimes after you perform well, the instrument one of the performers was playing may float away from them (I’ve seen happen very few times though.).

The Bottom Line
I think this game will be a great way for rock fan who are only familiar to today's rock to get more into older forms of rock, and it will be a great way for them to get into playing an instrument, like it has for me.

Like an educational game it may also get the player to just eagerly try a harder level and improve their performance.

All hail the Guitar Hero!