Thrashdragon
31st Oct 2007, 12:25 PM
Guitar Hero III: The Good, The Bad, And The Ugly
The Good:
The Les Paul, when it works (more on that later) is nice. Wireless is awesome...standing on top of the back of the couch and wailing out a killer solo is fun until you lose your balance. Hehe. Oops...sorry honey. :oops:
The songlist is pretty damn good. There's some annoying stuff here and there, but for the most part GHIII has the best songlist (for my tastes, at least) of any game so far. While there were some songs I didn't particularly care for, there were none that I flat out hated.
The forgiving HOPO window, combined with the difficulty of some of the songs, lets you pull off some really amazing stuff.
Battle Mode is amusing and surprisingly actually fun, although I would recommend only playing it against a friend. I can see people getting really pissed in this mode. I played online against a friend last night and we were having a blast laughing and cursing each other.
The Campaign now has a few cutscenes to explain the venue changes, and they are pretty amusing.
There is a bigger than expected selection of new outfits and styles for the characters, always a plus.
The new venues look good, and a couple of the encore animations are great.
The Bad:
You cannot downstrum (index finger and thumb held as if you're holding a pick, then striking down on the strum bar with the nail of your index finger) with either the XPlorer or the Les Paul. It registers as a double strum. After three games in the series, now is not the time to change how the guitar works.
The chord progressions don't come together as smoothly as they did in the previous games. A few of the songs contain sections that appear designed for difficulty instead of fun.
When you play Battle Mode against The Devil in Hell, it's like hitting a wall. The difficulty of The Devil Went Down to Georgia is exponentially harder than anything you've played to that point, and The Devil is...well he's The Devil. Nasty. I only managed to beat him on my first try because I had just been playing for five hours straight and was in some sort of hazy, pain-filled, drunken, guitar god zone. A lot of people are stuck at this point, it needs to be just a shade or two easier.
The Ugly:
By now everyone's heard the myriad of complaints about the Les Paul. The problem lies with the detachable neck...a feature that no one asked for in the first place. It takes very little to cause the neck to not stick flush into the body, at which point some of the frets stop working. My blue fret did not work at first, I fixed it by using canned air to thoroughly clean out the neck and the body, and removing a small sticker at the top of the body. Once I got it working, it worked flawlessly for the rest of the night, and I could beat it up and sling it around with no problem.
The advertising...ugh. Music company sponsorships are a big part of any successful band and is expected and adds to the game, but...Axe Bodyspray has two guitars in the store, and the dancing girls are theirs too. Yes, there are dancing girls.
One of the new characters is a J-Pop girl. Huh?
Activision has been bundling old guitars (360 XPlorer and PS2 SG) in packages and selling them to unsuspecting customers. Granted, it's on the box, but a lot of people got screwed when they showed up on release day and these were the only ones available (it appears that 90% of Walmart's stock of the game is the old controller packages). Shady, Activision, very shady thing to do with a new and hotly anticipated game.
Final Impressions:
Overall, I was pleasantly surprised to find that while this is a pretty different game from the others in the series, it was still a lot of fun. If your gaming time and your budget allows for two music games this fall, it's definitely worth picking up. If not, skip Guitar Hero III and get Rock Band.
The Good:
The Les Paul, when it works (more on that later) is nice. Wireless is awesome...standing on top of the back of the couch and wailing out a killer solo is fun until you lose your balance. Hehe. Oops...sorry honey. :oops:
The songlist is pretty damn good. There's some annoying stuff here and there, but for the most part GHIII has the best songlist (for my tastes, at least) of any game so far. While there were some songs I didn't particularly care for, there were none that I flat out hated.
The forgiving HOPO window, combined with the difficulty of some of the songs, lets you pull off some really amazing stuff.
Battle Mode is amusing and surprisingly actually fun, although I would recommend only playing it against a friend. I can see people getting really pissed in this mode. I played online against a friend last night and we were having a blast laughing and cursing each other.
The Campaign now has a few cutscenes to explain the venue changes, and they are pretty amusing.
There is a bigger than expected selection of new outfits and styles for the characters, always a plus.
The new venues look good, and a couple of the encore animations are great.
The Bad:
You cannot downstrum (index finger and thumb held as if you're holding a pick, then striking down on the strum bar with the nail of your index finger) with either the XPlorer or the Les Paul. It registers as a double strum. After three games in the series, now is not the time to change how the guitar works.
The chord progressions don't come together as smoothly as they did in the previous games. A few of the songs contain sections that appear designed for difficulty instead of fun.
When you play Battle Mode against The Devil in Hell, it's like hitting a wall. The difficulty of The Devil Went Down to Georgia is exponentially harder than anything you've played to that point, and The Devil is...well he's The Devil. Nasty. I only managed to beat him on my first try because I had just been playing for five hours straight and was in some sort of hazy, pain-filled, drunken, guitar god zone. A lot of people are stuck at this point, it needs to be just a shade or two easier.
The Ugly:
By now everyone's heard the myriad of complaints about the Les Paul. The problem lies with the detachable neck...a feature that no one asked for in the first place. It takes very little to cause the neck to not stick flush into the body, at which point some of the frets stop working. My blue fret did not work at first, I fixed it by using canned air to thoroughly clean out the neck and the body, and removing a small sticker at the top of the body. Once I got it working, it worked flawlessly for the rest of the night, and I could beat it up and sling it around with no problem.
The advertising...ugh. Music company sponsorships are a big part of any successful band and is expected and adds to the game, but...Axe Bodyspray has two guitars in the store, and the dancing girls are theirs too. Yes, there are dancing girls.
One of the new characters is a J-Pop girl. Huh?
Activision has been bundling old guitars (360 XPlorer and PS2 SG) in packages and selling them to unsuspecting customers. Granted, it's on the box, but a lot of people got screwed when they showed up on release day and these were the only ones available (it appears that 90% of Walmart's stock of the game is the old controller packages). Shady, Activision, very shady thing to do with a new and hotly anticipated game.
Final Impressions:
Overall, I was pleasantly surprised to find that while this is a pretty different game from the others in the series, it was still a lot of fun. If your gaming time and your budget allows for two music games this fall, it's definitely worth picking up. If not, skip Guitar Hero III and get Rock Band.