Time waster until Rock Band comes out
The Good: The graphics are an improvement and there are a lot more options for character looks and guitars and things you can buy to customize your game. Of course it you're spending time looking at your character while playing you're either playing on easy or failing the song. Multiplayer on-line is a welcome addition and will add some new dimension to the game as you can play with or against your friends or with random people. This is great because I can find someone equally as good as myself and try for those hard achievements that my friends are not good enough to help me get. More original recordings is a welcomed addition from GH 2 which only had a few. The co-op career mode is also cool. The inclusion of Battle Mode is another fun new addition.
The Bad: This list is too long for me to say this is a great game. My first disappointment is the song selection. I know the game is supposed to be about guitar shredding, but I think a lot of the songs are just unappealing and brutal to have to suffer through. I find the number of horrible songs in GH 3 to be much larger in proportion to the number that were in GH 2. Some songs I have never heard in my life and after playing through them I understand why. How a decision was made to include songs that is going to appeal to such a small percentage of the community is inexplicable. Diversity is good but trying to appeal to everyone at once is a poor approach. Having the same 42 songs available regardless of difficulty level is a shame as well. There should be some sort of reward or feeling of accomplishment as you progress through the difficulty levels. As it stands now there's absolutely no reason to play any difficulty level after opening the box except for the one most challenging to you. In GH 2 you got encores on medium and harder that you did not get on easy. I like rewarding people for completing harder and harder challenges. That sort of thing is not a part of GH 3. You get to play the same 42 songs on easy that you do on expert.
*SPOILER ALERT* The final encore is ridiculously disappointing. My friend and I were looking forward to Devil Went Down to Georgia only to find out a) its not available in co-op mode and b) is only playable in single-player as a battle against Lou. This exposes two problems. The different songlists for solo and co-op career was a poor decision. It might sound like a cool idea but it isn't. Second, not being able to play one of the featured tracks is absurd. After playing through the game Saturday night only to find out we couldn't play DWDTG in co-op mode we were disappointed. Then we burned through solo mode and unlocked DWDTG only to find out the Lou battle was the only way to play it. Even more disappointing. *END SPOILER*
Some other things about the game I found lacking: The achievement list is also ridiculous. They went from one extreme to another from GH 2. The GH 2 achievements were pretty easy, but now some of them are just insane. Having to win 15 on-line matches in a row using the controller instead of the guitar? I'll be getting that one the day after never, nor do I even have the desire to try to a get something is silly as that. Also, the 0 downloadable content available at release is typical of RedOctane. I guess the fact a lot of people were disappointed in the paucity of downloadable content in GH 2 didn't register with anyone at RedOctane.
On the whole the game is an acceptable sequel to GH 2 with a number of new additions that add greater depth to the game. The number of shortcomings and disappointments, however, especially with the song selection, have relegated this game to nothing more than a 3-week diversion until Rock Bank comes out.