Guitar Hero III has its quirks, but also its perks. In the end, it's as addictive as previous Guitar Hero entries.

User Rating: 8.5 | Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock X360
When I started playing Guitar Hero II, I almost fell in love with it. It was very difficult to get all the achievements (I still have six songs left to 5* on Expert), and was very satisfying in the end. When I heard about the criticism and praise surrounding Guitar Hero III, I ultimately had to get it. Guitar Hero III has its quirks, but it ultimately fails to disappoint. If you enjoyed previous Guitar Hero entries, you'll still get a kick out of this one.

I assume you know how to play Guitar Hero, so I'll skip that part and move onto my impressions of this game. Let's start with the positives. The tracklist is excellent, arguably the best of the four Guitar Hero games available now. Unlike previous Guitar Hero entries which were chuck full of covers, this one has more master tracks than it does covers. And the covers themselves aren't that bad, either, especially Barracuda. There aren't any notably bad songs in this game, unlike Guitar Hero II which had the universally panned songs "Red Lottery" and "Yes We Can". This game has some seriously good songs, like "When We Were Young", "Bulls on Parade", "My Name is Jonas", "One", "Cult of Personality", "Closer", "Even Flow", "F.C.P.R.E.M.I.X."; the list goes on and on.

Online multiplayer is also pretty cool. You can play older modes like face-off and pro face-off, you can play a song cooperatively, and you can play the new Battle Mode, which, if you know the notechart to the song, isn't half bad. The attacks actually add a layer of strategy to the gameplay i.e. when you get an attack, factors like what part of the song you're on, what lies ahead, and what attack you have make strategy a key element in Battle mode. The only bad thing about multiplayer is that you can't play Co-op campaign with someone online.

Now the negatives. The three-note chords in previous Guitar Hero games were rare and usually didn't affect the quality of the notechart. In Guitar Hero III, at least on Expert, the three-note chords appear in almost every song, and in some of the songs, especially in Before I Forget by Slipknot, they almost kill the notechart.

Additionally, some of the notecharts have hammer-ons and pull-offs which shouldn't be, and normal notes which should be HOs/POs. In the Belly of a Shark's notechart immediately comes to mind.

The game is also a bit easy. Some say it's extremely difficult. However, the new engine makes it easier to hit notes, especially HOs/POs, which made Expert for me very easy. Yes, there are some seriously insane songs on there like "Raining Blood", "The Way It Ends", and the legendary "Through the Fire and Flames", but for the most part, the game's actually pretty easy. I only have two songs left to 5* on Expert (Raining Blood and One), and I've had the game for only a week.

Finally, the money system is not good. I thought 5*ing an Expert song would give me the money I would normally earn from Medium and Hard as well. But this game doesn't do that; it forces you to replay the campaign more than once to get everything (unless you like cheating), and even once you've 5*'d everything on every difficulty in solo career, you have to do Co-op career as well. Sure, there's more to buy, but the money system makes it pointlessly harder to buy everything.

However, despite these faults, Guitar Hero III is not a bad game at all. The achievements are far more interesting in this game than the previous one, which make the game fun to play over and over again. There are some things which are a mixed bag, like the art style. The new bassist and singer models are great, but they removed some of my favorite characters like Clive Winston, Pandora, and Eddie Knox. I also don't like Judy Nails' new look, and Midori is cute, but doesn't really fit in with the Guitar Hero theme. One of the new outfits that I DO like is that of Lars Umlaut, the ugly guy with the KISS getup. His new outfit is much cooler than his previous ones. Additionally, the new interface and the new notes look cleaner than in the previous games.

Boss battles are also a mixed bag. On one hand, you've got Slash and Tom Morello to play against, and they're fun to beat, but Lou isn't that fun. More specifically, he's almost impossible to beat unless you know an easy way to get past him on Expert.

Overall, though, the core gameplay is still intact, and the game is as addictive as it was back in 2005, and that one reason is why it's a worthy buy. Sure, it has its quirks, but Guitar Hero III still retains the core gameplay of previous entries and adds some nice new things like online multiplayer. In short, if you liked other Guitar Hero games, or rhythm games in general, buy it. It's good.