"Make a post about Guitar Hero III so I can comment on it!" I ordered Z.
"But I haven't actually played it at all," Z pointed out. "You've played it; why don't YOU post on it?"
He was right; I had commandeered our brand-new Guitar Hero III (and brand-new wireless Guitar Hero III guitar) to work out some frustration after spending an hour failing to install Java on my computer.
The first significant difference with the new game was immediately obvious: its guitar doesn't work. Specifically, in our case, the blue key didn't do anything when pushed (it also did nothing). The good news is this is a known problem with an easy fix. The bad news is the fix involves a rubber band and looks dumb. I was in no mood for dodgy repairs, so I tethered myself to the 360 with our old guitar and prepared to rock.
I intended my rocking to be of the low-key, wussy variety, so I started my tour on the medium difficulty level. Major difference #2: Guitar Hero III is significantly harder than II. Each tier feels at least as hard as the corresponding tier+3 in GHII. Instead of Medium being Easy with more notes, it's now more like Hard without the sliding up and down. There are more notes closer together, more hammer-ons/pull-offs, and lots more jumping around on the keys (blue-green-yellow-green-blue, repeat as necessary). Good news for people who want more challenge; bad news for people who have already used up their tolerance for frustration by installing Windows Service Pack 2. *ahem*
One positive effect of the increased difficulty is that the songs have been better translated to the 5 Guitar Hero notes. In II, you didn't feel like you were actually "playing" the songs (rather than the game) until at least Hard difficulty; in III, you can get that feeling just a few tiers into Medium. The Aerosmith song was a good example of this; Weezer was another. The Weezer song in particular was extremely enjoyable; large sections are almost entirely hammer-ons or pull-offs, a feature that was limited to Hard or Expert songs in GHII.
To a certain extent, GHIII can get away with the overall increased difficulty because it's cleaned up a lot of the more annoying features of GHII/I. I very much appreciated the removal of the "screen shake" effect when you activate Star Power, and the *much* more obvious hammer-on/pull-off indicators certainly made Weezer easier. It's also easier to tell when you've hit a note correctly, because the note indicators rise up like a sink drain.
GHIII has also greatly improved on GHII's non-gameplay elements. The graphics are better, the people look more like people and less like puppets, and the singer actually lip-synchs correctly with the songs! Also, the addition of pseudo-plot has, so far (I'm only up to tier 5), been amusing. Not as amusing as the hand-made car noises in GHII, of course, but those are hard to beat.
If you have a console and no guitar, GHIII is a no-brainer. If you're just upgrading from a previous GH, though, it comes down to being willing to pay $60 for new challenges. Personally, I'm waiting to see how much GHIII gets played after November 20th.
1 comment:
Hear ye. It's also a no-brainer if you're obsessive about rhythm games *cough*. I was sufficiently distracted by the aforementioned Black Friday release that I totally forgot about GH3.
So far the songs on hard aren't any harder than in GH2. The game has a lot more polish (not that 2 was lacking in that department), and just a little bit less class -- loading screens like, "You're only as good as your last gig... which sucked," while amusing, don't nearly have the same charm as, "Don't let the drummer handle the money."
The new guitar is nice, though the fret buttons are a little stiff -- I expect they'll loosen up, though. The neck has a very slight jiggle, a consequence of the detachable design, but I haven't had any of the problems with bouncy-buttons yet.
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