Tegra's Profile

New to Guitar Hero?
For those who haven’t played before a Guitar Hero game before, the game is very simple but hugely addictive. A series of coloured notes scroll down the screen, and you must hold down the corresponding fret buttons and strum in time using a special guitar controller. The Rock Meter in the corner of the screen keeps track of your progress. As you hit notes in time, the Rock Meter builds up and the crowd rocks along with you. Miss too many and crowd will boo you off stage causing you to fail the song.

Initially you only have a limited number of songs in your setlist available to play. By completing a set of songs in career mode, you unlock a new set of five songs. Completing songs also earns you cash, which can be used to purchase new costumes, characters and bonus songs. As you progress through career mode, three bosses (Tom Morello, Slash, and the Devil himself) will challenge you to a guitar duel using the Battle Mode. The idea of Battle Mode is to collect different power-ups by playing sequences of notes during a song. The power-ups are used to make the other player miss their notes and fail.

If you are not content to rock out solo, there are a number of two player modes available including co-op where the second player plays bass/rhythm guitar, and versus modes where you can compete against each other or use the battle mode to go head to head. It is worth starting a co-op career, as different songs can be unlocked from the single player career.

The quality of the song list will make or break a Guitar Hero game, and I’m happy to say this song list is top quality. Previous games used mostly cover versions of songs, some of which were truly awful covers. GH3 contains mostly master tracks by the original artists including heavyweights such as Metallica, Rolling Stones, Guns and Roses, Pearl Jam and Metallica.

Changes from Guitar Hero 2:
GH3 has a new development team in Neversoft, who have made some changes that existing fans will notice. The on-screen display has had a revamp, with a note counter to keep track of your note streaks and a change in the star power bar. The background graphics are not quite up to the same standard as GH2, but they still give each venue a unique feel. Gameplay has been slightly changed with a larger timing window to hit your notes, and hammer-ons and pull-offs have been made easier. There are many more difficult chord changes though and the overall difficulty has been increased dramatically. This is good for experienced players but new players may get frustrated as the learning curve is much steeper.

Wireless! W00t!
A new wireless guitar was released with GH3, the Kramer Striker. Although it looks cheap and tacky, it’s a good unit and responds well, allowing you strut your stuff all around the house and to swap between players without getting tangled in cords. It is also fairly rugged and both of mine are still going strong after months of thrashing.

Value for money:
When first released in 2007, this was a must buy. If you’re planning to upgrade consoles soon though, the $160 RRP is a bit steep as it is not really compatible with the PS3 (special PS2/PS3 guitar adaptors are available but are hard to find, the game itself currently crashes on PS3). If you’re planning to stick with the PS2 for a while though, this a good investment as it can be used on all the previous Guitar Hero games as well as the Rock Band series of games, and it should also be compatible with the upcoming GH:Aerosmith and GH:World Tour games. If you're lucky enough to find a guitar and game pack on sale, grab it! Now!