We're pretty underwhelmed to be honest, there just seems to be something missing from the game - something that made Guitar Hero 2 so essential. With 2, I wanted to play it all the time, I forsaked all other games for around a month so that I could get my rock on. But with 3, I've found it a bit of a chore.
There are a few differences that shouldn't affect our enjoyment of the game, but end up really pissing me off. Firstly there's the artwork. They've replaced the glorious illustrated menus and icons that were everywhere in 2, from real world illustrators like Gunsho and DWITT, with shitty low res pictures that look like I'm viewing them through a pair of vaselined stockings. Even when I'm not. This degradation in the quality of the aesthetic design spreads through to the stage design - for instance, what the fuck is the music video set all about? I don't watch too much MTV, but I'm pretty sure they don't feature promos A) from cover bands, or B) filmed on the back of a heavily branded lorry, in a warehouse. The progression in GH2 was perfect, larger and larger venues, it really made sense.
One of the glorious menu screens from GH2, none such luxuries in GH3
The little clips between the stages really shits me off, I can only imagine that someone at Neversoft or wherever quite likes Metalocalypse and Gorillaz, and wanted to do something between the two, but instead managed simply to produce a shit wrapped in puke. At least they're short, and in theory you'd only have to see them once.
What happened to the great little Star Power routines that the various characters performed when you rock your axe upwards? Admittedly I can't remember any of them now, and while playing the game they are reduced to a small twinge in the corner of my vision that I daren't look at incase I start to go gammy on the fret buttons. But I knew they were there, out on the periphery. As far as I can tell, in GH3, the best that can be displayed is colourful shaped, bats or hearts emanating from the character. Piss poor.
These things really shouldn't change how much I enjoy the game, It still boils down to pressing buttons as colourful discs stream towards me; this all remains the same. I am however, a deeply shallow person, and visual stimulus is pretty much all I can judge things by.
There are some obviously great additions to the series, the multitude of online options add alot to the game, but I get the feeling I'm going to have to improve greatly just to stand a chance of getting to the end of a song against some of the bastards I've come up against so far. Perhaps some sort of cretin room, just for people who are pretty guff at the game, people who refuse to believe that it's possible to play the game on the extreme setting with a standard issue human hand.
I'd also like to see an option for playing multiplayer at home with only one controller, like some sort of take turns thing where the objective could be one-upmanship. I'm not buying another controller to satisfy the guitar lust of my friends, and playing with a standard controller is a bit like cooking dinner with a nuclear weapon - it'll do the job nicely, but much of the finesse will be lost.
Most of the reviews I've read for the game really praise the extensive song list. I can't see what all the fuss is about, 80% of the songs on here are really shitty shit shit. I know it's all about metal, but really, they're flogging a dead horse's dead father with the third title in the series. If we look at the tracks in the first stage of the three vesrions, GH1 had The Ramones, Deep Purple, Joan Jett, White Zombie and Bad Religion. I had heard of all of these songs. GH2 had Nirvana, Motley Crue, Kiss and Rancid, I had heard these songs before, but not all the others on the list though. In GH3, I had only heard the Kiss song before. This is probably a huge omission on my part, I clearly haven't listened to enough shit music in my lifetime, I must get onto that.
Yeah yeah, they've got bands like the Killers and Kaiser Chiefs and Muse, but nobody actually likes them do they? Sure they sell out festivals or something, but they're not actually 'good' are they? There are some great songs on here, School's Out, Welcome to the Jungle, Sabotage, Paint It Black, Kool Thing, But they are really in a minority this time out.
I really hope that for the next installment, they start to think a little outside the cock-rock and nu-metal genres for the playlist. I know it's supposed to all be about axe wielding guitar legends, but if they're going to really crack the masses with this, they'll have to start spanning the genres, Bowie, Velvet underground, Roxy Music, The Fall, Pixies, Pavement, Led Zepplin, Joy Division, they'd all be great for more material, maybe some Britpop if they're feeling a little adventurous, how about some slower stuff? Neil Young? Bob Dylan? I guess It's all down to taste, but I'm sure good taste eventually out classes bad taste. I can only take so much irony.
It is a great game and I do enjoy playing it, just not as much as I enjoyed playing 2, or as much as I think I'd enjoy it if they put some better songs in it, and got those cool kids back to do the drawings.
If you want to buy it, which you probably do, make sure you buy it from HMV, at the moment it's £15 cheaper than at Game or Gamestation. But buying it at Game gets you one of these guitar bags, so you can take to the streets with your wireless Les Paul. If that's the kind of thing you'd like to do.
