Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock

Author: Joe Martin
Published: 21st November 2007
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Got Funk?

Of course, clever game modes and co-op is all well and good, but if the levels are fundamentally flawed in any game then it’ll all come tumbling down like a Jenga tower. Just because the levels in Guitar Hero III are songs and not maps filled with baddies doesn’t mean that that has changed at all.

The tracklist for Guitar Hero III is pretty long, clocking up over 60 songs in all with more downloadable content available from Xbox Live, and the tracklist covers a fairly wide timeline. It isn’t the history of rock ‘n’ roll that the tracklisting for the previous games was, but it’s good enough.

One of the things which irked me somewhat though was how few of the songs I knew. I like my rock as much as the next man, but with the exception of Alice Cooper’s School's Out there wasn’t a song in the starting line-up that I recognised. That may be something to do with my age and that I never really got into KISS, but I think that in the demographic of Xbox gamers there’s going to be a fairly large chunk of people who aren’t familiar with Pat Benatar’s back catalogue.

Thankfully, as the tracklist expands and more tunes are unlocked, things start to improve. Tunes like When You Were Young by The Killers and The Metal by Tenacious D start to appear.

However, no matter how much the list expanded I still felt that the tracklist was a tiny bit watered down and unimpressive. High points like Kool Thing by Sonic Youth and The Number of the Beast by Iron Maiden were a bit too sparse for me and the number of newer bands like AFI and Weezer made me think that the list of truly good songs had been exhausted somewhat in the previous titles.

Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock Got Funk?
Click to enlarge, if you dare

What’s good about the listing though is that a fair number of bands and periods are represented, so even though not all the tracks are to my tastes there’s bound to be something for everyone. You can always check the full list just to make sure that your tastes are covered.

For the multiplayer side of things there’s the new battle mode which pits two players in a head-to-head battle that sees them trying to complete a single song whilst also performing extra riffs for extra power-ups which can be unleashed on the other player. It’s nice and fills some time, but from what we could see it wasn’t massively important and the co-op campaign was a more tempting proposition for anyone with a spare guitar.

Ah, the guitar. The guitar for each version of the game is different, with the Xbox 360 version getting a lovely Gibson Les Paul which will inevitably get smeared in greasy fingerprints and bands stickers. The guitar is, at first appearance, good enough to get the job done and the fact that it’s now wireless does help make the game feel more fun because you can stand up on the tabletop and shake your hips without worrying about tripping over the wire.

Man, I hate it when Tim does that.

Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock Got Funk?
Boss battles are a nice change, but nothing to get too excited about

The guitar however did prove to give us a few complaints, especially from the more capable players. While ham-fingered fiddlers like myself were more than willing to accept their own inability as the reason for missed notes and wrecked riffs, the better players amongst us thought that there was something up with the controller itself.

Whether or not there’s occasionally some lag on the wireless controller or not isn’t something I can reliably comment on, but it is possible. If pro gamers can cite wireless controllers as being unsuitable for tournaments because of the lag then it’s definitely possible that a wireless guitar can be off by a beat or two.

My one major beef with the controller though is to do with the motion sensing in it. It’s rudimentary at best and is only used in the game to unleash power-ups or star power – which gives players better multiplies if they hit notes without error – but it still has errors. Too often I would shake and manhandle the guitar to try and unleash my amassed starpower only to have the move not register with the game, costing my valuable points because of the distraction.

In fact, the only way I could ensure I’d be able to release my stored star power would be to shake the neck of the guitar violently at a point in the song where I wasn’t needed – which kind of defeats the point. It was impossible for me to use star power in any other way and, despite what the tutorial tells you, a simple kick of the guitar's fretboard isn’t enough.

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