"GUITAR HERO III: Legends of Rock"

• Released: Oct. 28, 2007 (console)
• Genre: Rhythm/Music
• Platforms: Xbox 360, Wii, PC, PS2, PS3, Mac
• Publisher: RedOctane
• Developer: Neversoft
• ESRB: T (Teen)
• Sites: Official Site, Community Site, Wikipedia Entry
  

EVER SINCE THE original “Guitar Hero” rocked the Playstation 2, fans have been raving about the addictive fun of the “Guitar Hero” franchise.

But many have approached the latest installment of the series, “Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock,” with a sense of apprehension due to the original developer, Harmonix, abandoning the franchise and giving the reins to Tony Hawk developer Neversoft.

Let me ease everyone’s fears and say that Neversoft has done a great job of keeping the core gameplay that makes “Guitar Hero” so fun, and the third installment lives up every bit to the legacy left by its predecessors.

“Guitar Hero” would not be “Guitar Hero” without guitars (and heroes). The gameplay has changed very little over time because, quite frankly, there is no better way to change it.

To play the game, you have to buy a guitar-shaped controller, which has five colored buttons in place of frets, a strummer, and a whammy bar. You select a song and play the game.

The game itself is pretty intuitive — you just hold down the frets corresponding to a colored circle on the screen and hit the strummer to play the notes and create rock. If you mess up by hitting a wrong button or missing one, the game responds with a clanking sound interrupting the music.

Though the concept is simple, the execution is not. “Guitar Hero” has always offered four difficulty levels, aptly named easy, medium, hard, and expert. While easy has some pretty basic rhythms to play, the greater difficulty levels can have some pretty complex patterns for you to play out.

One of the main features of “Guitar Hero” is the career mode. You make your own band and play through eight groups of songs, with each group having a name reflecting the success of your band, such as “Starting Out Small” and “European Invasion.”

One new thing that “Guitar Hero III” adds is an animated cut-scene at the end of each stage of the career mode that puts everything in the context of a story instead of you just playing through the songs. I like stories, no matter how bad they are, so I think these animations are a great idea. You can also unlock bonus songs when you finish career mode if you are looking for even more of a challenge.

The music in “Guitar Hero III” is arguably the best soundtrack released in any “Guitar Hero” game. But good songs may not always be a good thing. The game is much more difficult than any of its predecessors mainly because many of the songs have a fast tempo and many notes to play.

While you must play some extremely hard songs to finish career mode, such as “Raining Blood” by Slayer, many of the game’s true challenges are from bonus songs like Dragonforce’s “Through the Fire and Flames,” which is just plain ridiculous.

While the developers stick with the core formula of “Guitar Hero,” they still tried to add new features to the game, but they really just make it harder and more frustrating rather than fun.

One of the new things is the multiplayer “battle mode,” which is like the regular versus mode except there are various “power-ups” you can get to mess your opponent up by doing things like breaking one of his or her strings. While this is a neat concept and full of potential, the battle mode is simply too difficult. Matches are usually decided by who gets a power-up first because it’s too hard to recover after you’ve had a few of them dumped on you.

The battle mode concept also appears in career mode in the form of “Boss Battles,” which is also a “Guitar Hero III” exclusive. Boss Battles pit you against real rock stars as you try to mess each other up. To win, you need to use the power-ups to make the boss fail the song while simultaneously not failing yourself.

Once again, this is a neat concept, but I would have liked to see more of these Boss Battles, since there are only three of them out of the eight groups of songs.

But the new additions aren’t all bad. For the first time, “Guitar Hero” supports online play. This is really exciting because you don’t have to go over to a friend’s house with your guitar to do co-op mode or a few versus battles. You can simply hook up to the Internet and face thousands of people who are also ready to rock.

All in all, “Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock” provides another fantastic addition to the “Guitar Hero” universe. While some new stuff that Neversoft adds may not be that great, it still contains the same addictive fun that the original “Guitar Hero” brought.

“Guitar Hero III” also makes the perfect gift for the holidays. While the $100 price tag for the game and guitar may be daunting, you will get your money’s worth when you keep wanting to play one more song.

MORE PHOTOS: "GUITAR HERO III"

What you get with the Wii boxset. Gargoyle photo by Danny Ge (click to enlarge)

The controller. Gargoyle photo by Danny Ge (click to enlarge)

Sophomore Tej Chajed tries his hand at "Guitar Hero III." Gargoyle photo by Danny Ge (click to enlarge)