by: John Olin

November 18, 2007

A surprising amount of songs are master tracks this year, such as the aforementioned songs from Pearl Jam and Metallica, along with “When You Were Young” by the Killers, “Paint it Black” by Rolling Stones, “Same Old Song and Dance” by Aerosmith, “Before I Forget” by Slipknot, “Striken” by Disturbed, “Cult of Personality” by Living Colour, “The Number of the Beast” by Iron Maiden, and more. The entire tracklist overall is the best out of any Guitar Hero game yet, with very few misses.

The career actually has a story also, told through little animated shorts, that might remind you of a mixture of “Gorillaz” art style, and the sensibilities of Adult Swim’s “Metalocalpyse”, and “This is Spinal Tap”. It is an amusing addition, and since Neversoft takes heavy emphasis on story in the Tony Hawk titles, you can bet that the next Guitar Hero games will expand on this as well. The only bad part about the shorts, is they don’t mesh well together with the rest of the game’s visuals, and in fact the visuals while are great are not completely consistent at all. The visuals overall however are very sharp, well animated, and have plenty going on in the background for all the onlookers in the room to stare at.

The Career also allows you to create a band that can be tracked from the official site, which is also a neat addition. Speaking of which, the biggest addition this year is the inclusion of online play, and depending on your connection it can be the biggest downfall. I have a fantastic connection myself, and it can be damn near impossible to find a game of any type unless I create my own game, and this isn’t an isolated issue either, many others seem to have this issue, and it seems to keep going ignored with no patch in sight. Still, when you can get it to work you can play the Co-op mode online, although the preferred method will still be offline at a friend’s house. The game also allows access to some more different songs and a slightly different career in co-op but strangely enough, after you do the songs in co-op they aren’t available to you by your lonesome. Online you can go up against someone as normal, or play with the aforementioned new battle additions, and all are pretty decent, but the fact that finding matches can be as tricky as playing a game of BINGO and some lag issues leaves some more to be desired about it. There is currently some downloadable content from Foo Fighters and Velvet Revolver for the outrageous prices of 500 MS points, but if you are a big fan you can also buy the GHIII soundtrack which lets you receive three songs exclusively for Xbox 360.

The game will set you back ninety bucks if you are buying it with a guitar, but the guitar you are getting is by far the best that can be offered right now, and for the foreseeable future even after “Rockband” is released. While the guitar that came packed with the game last year was wired, and “Rockband’s guitar is nothing more than a child’s toy that hooks up to an Xbox, the guitar that is included with GHIII feels like a legitimate face-rearranging tool of rocking destruction. Not only is it a high quality guitar with a fantastic whammy, weight, and so on to it, but also it is the first wireless accessory ever not made by Microsoft. It speaks volumes that Activision and Red Octane took the trouble to pay the license fees to secure this, especially since most other companies wouldn’t even bother with it.

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Guitar Hero III played it safe this year, and it doesn’t steer to far away from the original formula, which isn’t a bad thing especially coupled with the best track list the series has seen yet. While a lot of the new improvements there are great and you can feel that they will be expanded on, it still might leave some to be desired by veterans that are looking for more than just more challenge. The online play is great when it works, and the brand-new wireless guitar is nearly flawless, making this title fun with friends in the same room, or via Xbox Live.

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