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There comes a time in most people's lives where they realize they will never become an astronaut, superstar athlete or rock star. When that time hits, it's comforting to know that while you will never be famous in front of millions of fans, you can get the same feeling from playing alone in your basement. The tool to achieve this feeling of euphoria is Guitar Hero. For those unfamiliar with the Guitar Hero franchise, it is a video game packaged with a small guitar controller in which you press down colour coded buttons tapping the strum bar in unison with notes as they appear on screen – a sort of rhythm meets hand eye coordination game. A common game category in Japan, Guitar Hero is the first title to penetrate the North American mainstream and win the hearts of hardcore and casual gamers alike and has spawned Guitar Hero 2, Guitar Hero Encore: Rock the 80's Edition, and now for the first time on all three next-gen platforms, Guitar Hero 3.
This review will be on Guitar Hero 3 for the Nintendo Wii. Although the game is available on the Wii, PS2, PS3 and Xbox 360, they differ slightly so I will be focusing on the features for the Wii specifically. To begin, the first thing a player might notice is the guitar controller, it's fresh, it feels good, it's now wireless and there seems to be a little hole in the front of the detachable faceplate. Your Wiimote plugs in and rests snuggly here, which gives your controller power, allows the Wiimote sensor to activate star power, gives you a little speaker from the Wiimote telling you when you miss a note (don’t worry, you can turn the sound off), and even give your guitar a vibration when your star power is ready. There is also a little nub at the top of the guitar to help you navigate your Wii menu so you don’t have to keep taking the Wiimote out of the guitar. As mentioned before, the faceplates are detachable, and as such, the market will soon be flooded with new faceplates to purchase and 'pimp your ride'. As a final little extra feature, the neck of the guitar is now detachable for easy transportation and storage.
The way the guitar works is simple to learn yet hard to master. Based on your song, if you’ve chosen guitar or bass, and your level of difficulty, different coloured circles move to the bottom of the screen where a line waits. As the circles reach the bottom of the screen you press down on the corresponding coloured buttons and hit the strum bar at the same time. As well, there are notes you hold longer than others and can utilize the whammy bar to modify the sound or give you more star power. Star power is a little feature exclusive to Guitar Hero in which you fill up your meter by hitting star shaped notes without making an error then flick your guitar up in the air and earn double the points for a limited time. This is great for getting a high score when playing against other players, or to give you a boost when you’re about to fail out of a song. As well, there are hammer-ons and pull-offs to achieve in this game, which in past Guitar Hero games acted as connectors between notes close together, in this title acts more like the real guitar maneuvers in which you strum once but hit multiple notes in succession from that single strum.
The graphics for GH3 have been totally revamped from the first two titles, not necessarily making them better, but character models have been redone to look more realistic and are still as rockable as in the past. The lead singer (who mysteriously disappears in two player mode) has been modified during production with face recognition so that the mouth movements mimic that of a real person singing. In this title, there are a few old faces returning, a new playable character and two players to unlock in the game store. Later on you have the opportunity to battle and unlock Slash, Tom Morello and a secret third 'boss' in career mode. On the other hand, the crowd animations are poor, as if there are only three or four people cloned over and over again. This is just as uninteresting as in the first two Guitar Hero games. The presentation of the game’s scoring mechanisms has been given a superficial face life. These changes make it easier to see hammer-ons and the way you see your star power and multipliers have also been altered. The stages / venue design is fun and wacky as usual, however in past titles the levels have changed drastically for encores; in this rendition, the changes seem a little underwhelming. In GH2, for example, the stage of Stonehenge gets engulfed in flames and invaded by aliens during the encore. In GH3, a truck with a space background turns into the same truck with a pirate ship in the background - it’s as exciting as it sounds, trust me. In the end, the graphics are about the same as that of the PS2. One last thing that troubled me, is that when you purchase the song "Go That Far" by the Bret Michaels Band in the song store, the summary info says that Bret Michaels animated himself into the game, and while the PS3 and Xbox 360 versions have him rocking the mic, on the PS2 and Wii it's still the wide-mouthed, messy-haired lead singer that appears in most other songs (save the few sung by women). The drummer also looks and moves like a robot on Prozac.
Since this is a music game, obviously the most important aspect should be the audio. While I feel most of the best Guitar Hero songs were used in GH1 & 2, there is still a nice selection of songs to play. From classics like "Paint it Black" and "Talk Dirty to Me", to new mainstream rock like "3's and 7's" and "The Metal", there are sure to be at least a few songs everyone will enjoy. Unfortunately, with such variation, only a few songs will be truly enjoyable to each fan. Some songs just don’t feel right and there are a few that are just not rockin’ enough. There are a lot of songs, and even more that you can unlock by buying them in-game with money earned in the game by doing well in songs. There are over seventy new songs and 70% of them are master tracks instead of covers as in past titles. There is a lot to play through and plenty to keep you busy and entertained. And just to show how big Guitar Hero has gotten in North America, both the Sex Pistols and Living Colour re-recorded their hits specifically for this title. There are also a couple of exclusive songs, that is, original pieces of work created by Tom Morello and Slash solely for this game. The main drawback to Guitar Hero 3 for the Nintendo Wii, and this is a huge drawback, is that the audio is only available in MONO. A single channel of audio for a game based around music doesn’t make much sense to me, although rumors are circulating that in early 2008 new copies of GH3 will have this problem fixed.
Guitar Hero 3: Legends of rock offers a lot to keep both the hardcore and the casual gamers busy and happy for a long time. There are many modes of play gamers can take part in, and for the first time, they can take their rock online to compete with the world. The career mode takes you, the rocker, back to the garage band life, looking for that feeling you once had before becoming the Guitar Hero legend in past titles. Here you play across 42 songs and fight bosses along the way in guitar battles against Slash, Tom Morello and more. In this game mode, which is the centre of GH3, you earn money to buy extras like a plethora of guitars, skins for those guitars, new characters, new costumes, new songs, and even a couple of videos to watch at your leisure.
New to GH3 is the Co-Op career mode where you and a friend play the career together. Some new songs are available only through co-op mode in place of boss battles and a totally shuffled play list to keep things fresh for the people that played through single player before co-op mode. As well, in this mode, players choose between guitar or bass (sometimes bass is replaced by rhythm guitar). While this feature is a great asset to the game, some songs feel as though their secondary stringed segments were slapped together at the last moment and leave a lot to be desired. Once you begin unlocking songs through career mode or co-op mode, you may play them on any difficulty right away in quickplay mode. Unfortunately, co-op quickplay mode is missing in the Wii version of this game. For those looking to up their game or beat that tricky solo, GH3 comes with a training mode in which you can specify which part of the song you want to play, and the speed at which you want to play it (even at the slowest speed the Dragonforce song is still too fast). Options include left-handed guitar choice, save files, a cheat entry screen, and adjustments for both the whammy bar and HDTV lag. The fun continues with multiplayer and online modes. Two players can go head to head in Face-off where two people playing together in single song harmony, Pro-face-off mode has two players playing the exact same notes in a single song and the new battle mode, instead of star power you can pick up 'weapons' to attack your opponent with, from lefty flips (invert the fret board), to string cutting (in which one of your strings becomes inactive until you press it enough times to ‘fix’ it). The online mode offers these types of gameplay as well as a stat tracking leader board option. Again unfortunately, there is no option to play bass or rhythm guitar in face-off or battle modes. Also there is no online co-op career mode, this would have been an amazing edition to the game. Another stick in the wheel of the Wii version is that while PS3 and 360 have many extra features, they also have downloadable content (new songs), while the Wii and PS2 lack this support for now (there are rumors circulating that downloadable content will be available for the Wii some time in 2008).
Guitar Hero 3: Legends of Rock has changed hands from developer Harmonix (who worked on Guitar Hero and Guitar Hero 2) to Neversoft, Budcat, and Vicarious Visions (for the Wii). Although the premise of the game and all of the important aspects are in place, it doesn’t feel the same as the past two did. It's hard to explain, but it's the small things that make me uneasy with this installment. My biggest criticism of this title is the commercialism in the game. It takes a long time to start the game up, going from company screen to company screen before the start menu appears. A number of guitars to be bought in the store are Axe branded as well as Axe brand girls dancing on stage for a few songs (that I didn’t feel required dancers more than other songs). Also there is a huge Pontiac logo on the back of the truck stage for the world to see. Does Pontiac even make semi trucks?
Most of the negative things I've said about Guitar Hero 3: Legends of Rock are just nuisances I found in this sequel. The game itself is actually quite fun and a great title to pick up for any fan of music or rhythm games. With very little age restriction, this could be one of those titles the whole family could enjoy together. If only they left some aspects alone when upgrading this title for the next gen consoles.
Graphics: 3.5 / 5.0
Gameplay 4.0 / 5.0
Sound 3.0 / 5.0
Replay value 4.5 / 5.0
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