For Those About to Pretend to Rock

I’ve always been an outspoken opponent of those who claim that video games cause violence in otherwise balanced people—but perhaps it’s time to reassess my position. Although I’ve never had the slightest urge to imitate even the most violent games, Guitar Hero III makes me want to chuck my TV, my PlayStation 2, and both my guitar-shaped controllers right out the window.

Guitar Hero III is very, very hard. It’s like a love letter to those who spent so much time on Guitar Hero II that they thought it was too easy—and as one of those people myself, I find it hard to believe that many will have the same complaint about the latest in the series.

The idea is the same as past Guitar Hero games: different-colored circles (representing musical notes) come toward you as a hopefully awesome song plays. The goal is to play every note by holding down the correct “fret” buttons and hitting the “strum” bar at the right time, all on a guitar controller. It sounds complicated, but the Guitar Hero series is actually one of the easiest out there to pick up and play, even if you’ve never seen a video game before.

This is particularly true of Guitar Hero III. Although many of the songs on the Expert difficulty level are hard enough to make your head explode, the Easy level is easier than ever. And, unlike Guitar Hero II, the speed at which the notes move changes gradually over the course of the four difficulties, making the game more balanced and accessible.

That’s not to say that the difficulty is the only change that Guitar Hero III has made to the formula—not by a long shot. Subtle changes include more intuitive note arrangements, a wider array of sweet guitars to buy in the game’s virtual store, and the fact that the on-screen vocalist during any given song actually lip-synchs pretty accurately along with the words.

And for those who used to struggle to deploy Star Power—a score-increasing power-up that requires the player to tilt the controller up in order to activate—it now demands only the slightest shrug of the shoulders rather than the flailing that, in the past, probably destroyed more scores than it saved.

But the most important new aspect of Guitar Hero III, and by far the most fun, is the addition of battles. No, not the regular Face-Off and Pro Face-Off Modes of past games—I’m talking about the new Battle Mode, in which each player fights to cause the other to fail out of a song.

In order to do this, instead of simply being the best “guitarist” like in the Face-Off Modes (which are still in the game), one collects attacks by hitting designated notes. After collecting an attack, a player simply tilts the guitar, just like deploying Star Power, and the attack is thrown at the other player. Some of these attacks are relatively mild, while some will make all but the very best Guitar Heroes fail out of a song almost immediately—but all of the attacks somehow affect either the notes or the fret buttons, and make the song more difficult for a brief period of time.

And Battle Mode isn’t just a multi-player option—single-player Career Mode, in which one plays through the game’s songs in order of difficulty, is punctuated by three boss battles. It’s a little unfortunate, though, that there are only three, because these battles are among the most exciting, challenging moments in the game. It would be nice if there were a battle after every set of five songs, rather than after every 15 or so.

Another small but noticeable problem is the loading times. Guitar Hero II was also victim to lengthy loading before songs, but Guitar Hero III has inexplicably added extra loading times where there weren’t any before. In addition, Guitar Hero III has done nothing to change the fact that most of the characters in the game are, for lack of a better word, hideous.

But wannabe rockers will find little else to complain about in Guitar Hero III. The songs are better, the new battles are seriously fun, and there are enough improvements to justify purchasing even the expensive game-plus-sleek-new-guitar-controller bundle. If you’re looking to truly master the game on Expert, however, it could get ugly—perhaps even as ugly as your in-game character.