Guitar Hero 3 impressions

[Kroogah]

I was dead set against this game after playing the demo at Gamestop. However, after nearly beating the game on Expert last night with the old X-Plorer controller and reading all the complaints about the Les Paul online, I'm ready to write the crappy demo experience off as controller problems, HD lag problems, or both. I failed "The Metal" 3 times on the demo and didn't even break a sweat on the actual game.

This is one impressive package. Like many other people last night, I kept saying "just one more song" until I finally hit a brick wall in the form of "Raining Blood" and "One". Hammer-ons and pull-offs are even easier, something that you'll be thankful for when you see the new notecharts. There is no "I Love Rock & Roll" there is no "Surrender". Even "Slow Ride" had some interesting chord work.

The story mode was one of the many things I was skeptical of, having experienced Neversoft's take on "story" through the Tony Hawk's Underground and American Wasteland games....but the cutscenes had me chuckling.

Boss battles....I'm reserving judgment until I reach Lou Cifer. I blew past Tom Morello and Slash in about a minute each. Got really lucky on Slash by killing his Yellow button in the middle of a YRYBYRYBYRYBYRYB line.

51 of the 71 songs are master tracks, and the covers are back to GH1 quality (except for Holiday In Cambodia, what the Hell drumkit is that?)

Favorite notecharts: Number Of The Beast, Cult Of Personality, Cherub Rock, Black Magic Woman, La Grange, Knights Of Cydonia, Tom Morello battle, My Name Is Jonas

Meh: Anarchy In The U.K., Stricken, Before I Forget, When You Were Young, Black Sunshine

[djbeatmongrel]

quick question, i was wondering if co-op ongs were unlockable online

[Kroogah]

quick question, i was wondering if co-op ongs were unlockable online

Pretty sure they are. But, failing that, there's already an unlock all songs cheat:

Unlock All Songs (Quickplay): (YO) (RB) (RO) (GB) (RY) (YO) (RY) (RB) (GY) (GY) (YB) (YB) (YO) (YO) (YB) Y R (RY) R Y O

You have to strum each note. The parentheses mean chords.

[Kitsune Sniper]

I'm waiting for some PS2 version impressions, since I'm a poor bastich and don't own any of the next gen consoles.

[Kroogah]

I'm waiting for some PS2 version impressions, since I'm a poor bastich and don't own any of the next gen consoles.

It's pretty much the same game. Except the guitar is a Kramer (still wireless), there's no DLC and it's not as purdy-lookin'. Here's some videos to compare:

PS2 version: http://youtube.com/watch?v=zOuk6hqit2s
360 version: http://youtube.com/watch?v=VvWkgY1VPZM

Well, One has fallen thanks to some well-timed Star Power. All that's left is Raining Blood. Or should I say "Mosh 1". Here's my progress on this damned song:

1st try: 34%
2nd try: 35%
3rd try: 36%
4th try: 37%

I wish I was exaggerating. Fortunately, it gets a lot easier after Mosh 1.

Yet another pdtecrj video here: http://youtube.com/watch?v=CnPsPM5Jw8A
Mosh 1 is 1:15 to 1:31

[Kitsune Sniper]

It's pretty much the same game. Except the guitar is a Kramer (still wireless), there's no DLC and it's not as purdy-lookin'. Here's some videos to compare:

PS2 version: http://youtube.com/watch?v=zOuk6hqit2s
360 version: http://youtube.com/watch?v=VvWkgY1VPZM

I don't care about the wireless guitar, or DLC.

I am bothered by the apparent lack of fire hands in GH2.

[Muscelli]

the wii version is a ton of fun so far..

[stuffedmonkey]

Man - I was going to buy this - but hearing that many of the songs I was really interested in are the stupid co-op encores really makes me re-think it. I hear you can unlock them for quick play with a cheat code, but I want to be able to play them in the normal career mode..

Is there any way around this?

[FlufflePuff]

I'm loving it so far. At least two great songs per set. Unfortunately, there are a good chunk of crappy 70's songs in there. To balance that, the unlockable songs are awesome this time around. Lots of great stuff in there. Unfortunately no Acrobrats. 8(

[spoon]

Anyone else (besides Perkar) have a bruise on their arm from using the new controller? 360 version.

I think it has to do with the non-rounded edges and the removable face plate?

Like the game so far. Not a big fan of the song list though. Maybe it gets better towards the end.

[Perkar]

halo 3 has mtn dew game fuel

game fuel for guitar hero = PBR

[Porksta]

The PS2 version also has a wired guitar.

I too played the PS2 demo, only at Wal-Mart. The HD lag was unbearable.

I do enjoy the battles, and enjoy that the lead singer somewhat moves his/her lips in a more believeable fashion. So far my favorite song to play is "Paint It, Black", but "Before I Forget is" an amazing song (I love Slipknot). I just wish they could do a good Heart cover. "Crazy On You" was a disaster, and "Barracuda" is meager at best.

[otaku]

I'm loving it so far especially morello being in it and playing as the hendrix look a like (till I got morello) just as good as the last. Loving it.

[Oobgarm]

The achievements for this game are ridiculous.

http://www.xbox360achievements.org/a...php?gameID=393

"Win 15 consecutive Ranked songs online using a standard controller"
"Play through a career on the Hard or Expert difficulty using a standard controller"
"Beat any song on the expert difficulty with the games sound options turned down to zero"
"Use the Whammy Bar on every held note on Number of the Beast"
"Complete Career Lefty and Righty"
"Beat one of the creators of Guitar Hero 3 at their own game"

Good Lord.

[Kroogah]

The achievements for this game are ridiculous.

I'm hoping beating a developer is like Tony Hawk's Project 8 where you just have to play against someone who has the achievement and it doesn't matter if you win or lose. (even though the achievement says "beat") That was an easy 50 for me. :D And my X-Plorer's whammy bar is busted, so I almost got the Number Of The Beast whammy achievement today (I missed 1 hold note completely)

I found 3 secret ones so far.

Fail a song over 90% (I failed "Before I Forget" at 99% first try, after wasting my star power)
Turn down a boss battle
Fail a single song ten times

The last one brings me to my next rant. I'm ready to call shenanigans on Raining Blood. I failed in the same spot ten, yes, TEN TIMES. And then I tried it on Hard and FAILED. FAILED A SONG ON HARD. IN THE SAME SPOT. I thought....do I really want to tear my hair out over this song, only to finally pass it and then (from what I've been reading) lose the boss battle with Lou Cifer 50 times? Some people on Gamefaqs have already broken their Les Paul controllers over Lou Cifer. Fortunately, I just string profanities together and hit the button on the front of the 360.

So I entered the unlock all songs code because I really wanted to give "Through The Fire And The Flames" a shot. Want to know my record?

2%.

TWO PERCENT. Out of five or six tries. One of those tries was 0%. Holy Jesus that intro is....remember that part in Miserlou with all the double-note hammer-ons? Just make them single notes and make it twice as fast. There you go. I actually managed to beat the song on Hard, though, which is why I'm calling shenanigans on Raining Blood.

[Frankie_Says_Relax]

While I'm not all the way through the entire songlist, and I haven't gone online - I think that GH III is very solid entry in the series considering Neversoft had never previously done a rhythm game, much less a Guitar Hero game.

If nothing else the offline mode appears to be worth the price of admission, and if I didn't know a new dev team was on the job, I'd think that Harmonix was still doing a bang up job.

The new guitar (for 360 anyway) is IMO vastly improved over the wired 360 Xplorer and 1st gen PS2 SG (never owned the red GH II SG, so I'm not sure if the responsiveness was any better/worse).

The neck is about an inch longer (which, honestly makes a difference to me)

The fret buttons are more solid, much less springy/spongy feeling than the Xplorer, and far more responsive to hammer on and pull offs

And the wireless play is, well, there's always something psychological about being "tethered" to a console when playing with a game peripheral like Guitar Hero's that I don't like. Now I can really move around and not worry that I'm going to send my console flying.

[norkusa]

Is anyone having serious lag issues with GHIII, even after using the lag calibration settings? My brother says he can't even pass Medium songs because it's so bad. He put in GHII to see if it was a problem with his tv or guitar and he didn't have any problems playing that. Says there's something really messed up with GHIII for some reason.

He just checked the official GH forums and there's a few other people that had the same problem:

http://www.guitarhero.com/forums/8/forum_topics/1506

[Frankie_Says_Relax]

Is anyone having serious lag issues with GHIII, even after using the lag calibration settings? My brother says he can't even pass Medium songs because it's so bad. He put in GHII to see if it was a problem with his tv or guitar and he didn't have any problems playing that. Says there's something really messed up with GHIII for some reason.

He just checked the official GH forums and there's a few other people that had the same problem:

http://www.guitarhero.com/forums/8/forum_topics/1506

That sucks!

I'm gaming on 360 using component outputs on a Panasonic LCD TV, and I found there to be no discernable lag. No calibration needed.

[Kitsune Sniper]

I tried out this game at two places today.

The first one was at Toys'R'Us. I played Rock You Like A Hurricane (Hard) but the lag threw me off a bit. I tried it in Medium, got used to the lag, and liked the notechart. But the guitar... ew. It was bolted to the floor! I'm 5'11" tall, and usually have the guitar at waist level. Here it was at crotch level. Oh and the strum and tilt functions wouldn't work. Blargh.

The second one was at Gamestop. They had the full version there, and some kid was hogging the machine until I asked him to let me try some Poison song (Talk Dirty To Me or something) since he couldn't get past 40%. The lag was pretty bad there too, but I got used to it quickly and beat the song on my first try, IN HARD. And I'm not that good at GH! The clerk was just all "WTF" as I said thanks (I bought something for a friend there) and left.

It feels okay, at least. I want to buy GH3, but I'll wait a week, at least until I have enough cash to buy it without regrets.

Edit:
Oh yeah, the 360 guitar really sucks ass. It was the new model. I didn't like it at all. Gimme my classic GH2 PS2 guitar, thank you.

[kaedesdisciple]

With all the complaints I'm seeing about the new guitar, I think I'm just going to lay low on this one until I can pick up just the game only a bit cheaper and stick with my X-Plorer.