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Guitar Hero. Seriously, who hasn’t played it yet? If you missed the first one, you were bound to have touched the second one, unless you have made a cave far out north your permanent residence. Great songlist, great way of making young and old ones rock out with your rooster out, great controls thanks to the X-Plorer bundled with the 360 version, and the other wired controller with the PS2 one (don’t really recall the names of these guitars, unfortunately). This is a license that has cash cow written all over it.

Inevitably, part 3 makes its way to stores. The series is in the hands of Neversoft, famous for churning out Tony Hawk Skateboard sequels. This was all due to a nasty feud between them, Harmonix, EA, and Red Octane which I will not go into great detail, simply because this is a game review, not MTV’s Behind The Scenes. Besides, my puny brain cannot remember industry details unless I have Gamasutra.com and Gamebiz next to me. So how does Neversoft handle Harmonix’s baby this time around?

Simple: with more of the same, only with online play. Not that that’s a bad thing. People were wishing that the online mode should have been bundled with the second installment, but whatever.

For some, he may be a bitch to fight the first time around.

For Guitar Hero, you have to make sure of three critical things: the song selection, the notes layout (whether they make sense to the song), and the strum and fret timing. If all three are lacking, people can tell. Thankfully, Neversoft got those concepts down to a tee. Playing Santana’s “Black Magic Woman” and Metallica’s song about a lone soldier in World War 2 on either Normal or Hard just feels rhythmically right. Neversoft definitely went for the “something for everyone” route. The note patterns are laid out in a way that it makes sense musically, and each difficulty is laid out tough, but in a fair manner.

However, newcomers will find the boss battles tough to grasp to. These battles let you duel guitars with legends like Guns N Roses’ Slash, and use Battle Powers (in place of Star Power) to screw up your opponent’s note patterns. When compared to the Tier 2/3 songs, the very first boss battle might be a roadblock to some, but this gives an incentive for them to practice a hell of a lot, which would lead them to be better at playing through a whole song in the rest of the modes. Tough love from Neversoft, I guess.

Art direction is definitely a mixed bag. What Guitar Hero 2 had was a lot of choices of your avatars as well as a simple-yet-sweet art style, with Pandora being my favorite. Now, everyone looks a little too detailed and grungy. This is more of a personal taste than anything else; I do like the fat K.I.S.S member reject, the digital representations of Slash and Tom Morello and the Japanese rocker, but everyone else is a miss for me. What most people can agree on is that the new stages are awesome. From the Shank Island Prison to the Desert Concert, the vibe players get when having their electronic counterpart play these songs is definitely positive.

For the sake of my anal retentiveness, I should also point out that Legends Of Rock is a misleading subtitle. The aforementioned Morello and Slash are indeed good guitarists, but where’s my Springsteen? Where’s Cash & B.B King? Where’s Jimmy Fucking Hendrix? I’m probably missing a few other worthy names, but still, a few songs from these guys would be nice.

Regardless, there are no two ways about it. If you’re an avid fan craving for a 70+ songs to get your plastic-SG-Gibson jamming on, get it. You’re probably dissecting the note patterns of Dragonforce’s Through The Fire & The Flames on Hard and Expert as I finish typing this particular sentence, so me telling those carpal tunnel victims to buy it is a little redundant. If you’re a newbie to games, this is a great starter course, as the Guitar Hero series is also tailor-made for the casual audience.

As we breath a sigh of relief that Harmonix’s baby is in capable hands, we wait in anticipation to Rock Band. Will it triumph? Will it falter? Readers?

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