Guitar Hero 3 Review
It Rocks


I’ve only ever owned the Nintendo consoles so I’ve never had the chance to experience Guitar Hero. I wasn’t even considering buying it until a mate convinced me to, and now that I have bought it I consider it one of the best purchases I have made for my Wii so far.

Guitar Hero 3 comes bundled with a “Les Paul” guitar with a RRP of $150 AU. On the guitar there are five fret buttons, a strum bar and a whammy bar. The Wii Remote fits well into the guitar making it wireless. For those who have never heard of Guitar Hero the premise is simple. To play a note you hold down one of the coloured fret buttons and push the strum bar up or down, simulating the strumming of guitar strings. As you play songs, different coloured notes or chords appear on screen in time to the music and you have to play them. You get points for the correct notes you hit and the more consecutive notes you hit the more points you will get. At the end of the song you are given your note percentage and final score. This video shows the playing of one of the songs, to give you an idea of what the game is about. Here is the URL: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tKFiQnw-qUM

This may sound simple but it is very fun and can be enormously difficult. Guitar Hero 3 features four levels of difficulty: easy, medium hard and expert. The easy difficulty is simple enough and a good chance for first timers and the younger crowd to get into the game. Medium can be challenging but once you get the songs down it becomes much simpler. Hard and expert can be downright impossible at times and even the hard core Guitar Hero players will struggle. Congratulations to the Guitar Hero team for providing a game that is easy enough to get into for the casuals and hard enough to challenge the hard core.

There are many options in Guitar Hero 3. You can choose to play “Career”, “Co-op Career”, “Quick Play”, “Multiplayer”, “Training” and over the Nintendo WFC. The career mode is the main single player mode; you unlock more songs by playing through career mode. You can choose what difficulty you play at and you get special reward songs if you can complete the career at higher difficulties. This adds to a longer replay value. The basic premise of the story is you start off as a no name band and end up as legends by playing various gigs and earning money as you go depending on the reviews of your performance. You can use this money to buy more characters, songs, out fits and guitars. The co-op career works on a similar premise except you are able to play with two people, this another very welcoming addition. Quick play allows you to play any of the songs you’ve unlocked; it records your tops scores for that song and is always challenging you to surpass your previous score. There are a number of options in multiplayer you can play songs cooperatively, duke it out in a Guitar Hero battle that involves bashing your opponent with various items or a face off which is basically both players playing a song at the same time and the winner being the person with the highest score. The training is also very well done, it teaches you the basics and lets you practice the songs without the crowd booing you off.

The online mode is also an excellent addition. The game lets you create a profile and your online statistics are tracked through www.guitarhero.com . You can register friends through the usual friend code system or play random people online. You can play all the different multiplayer options online and see the top scores for the different songs. Unfortunately like all current online games on Wii there is no voice communication, which means you can’t talk to your mates whilst online. It is still however a very solid effort for Wii’s online; there aren’t many titles for Wii that go into this depth online.



The Guitar Hero 3 bundle, sexy isn't it?

Guitar Hero 3 offers over 70 rock tracks, which is an awesome selection. There are a variety of newer songs and older songs in the collection which means you’ll have a lot of fun playing through the classics and newer rock hits. I’ve discovered a lot of new songs to add to my Ipod now that I have played Guitar Hero 3. Even if you don’t know the song in question it can be still be very fun to play.

The graphics aren’t spectacular in Guitar Hero, the backgrounds aren’t very appealing and some of the characters look over the top. This game could be run on the Play Station 2 hardware. Guitar Hero is not about graphics however, I barely have time to look at the background as I’m watching the notes coming across the screen. The audience is well done; they look good partying hard as you rock it out.

Another issue is that the Wii version of Guitar Hero only runs in Mono, Activision have made it known that this can be fixed through a downloadable update but this has not been set in stone. With my TV there is not much difference between the sounds of Mono and Stereo so this doesn’t affect me much at all. Those who have a good quality stereo system will hear the effects though and I recommend purchasing on another platform if this is your situation.

Another issue is the price, a recommended retail price of $150 Australian is a lot to shell out for one game, no matter how fun it is. If you buy another guitar for multiplayer it then costs over $200 Australian. That is over 2 games worth. A price cut would have been nice but this game is still worth it if you have the cash.

Closing Comments

Guitar Hero 3 is one of my favourite games on the Wii so far. It provides a fun, fresh addicting form of game play that can be very challenging. The wide variety of modes in both single player and multiplayer provide a solid amount of material for this game. The use of the Nintendo Wi-Fi Connection is great and adds heaps of hours to this already packed game. The Mono only sound is unfortunate and the price is also large. If you can get over these gripes however you will have a lot of fun with Guitar Hero 3 and I highly recommend it to all Wii Owners.



Presentation: 8.5/10

Graphics: 6.9/10

Sounds: 8.5/10

Gameplay: 9.5/10

Lasting Appeal: 9.5/10

Overall: 8.9/10 (Not an average)

Cool! I never really payed attention to this game but now after seeing the rating you gave I want to get it now.

great review man, im making a review right now on one of my games.......i have chosen yet:)

Yes if you have the cash I really do recommend this game Icy. I'm looking forward to reading your review when you're finished Zap.

ya... but I don't have even half enough money for the game... atleast I don't think...I have 42$

Yeah the cost is quite high, I touched on that in the review. Looks like you'll have to wait a little while then .

...or maybe just a couple days...my B-Day is in 5-6 days

hehe, i better do SOMETHING for icys b-day.. i couldnt NOT do something....lol. god........... howabout a NICE picture that saysv HAPPY B-DAY ICY on it HUH? how about THAT? lol.

eh idc...I won't be here probrably most of the day since 1 I have to go to school and 2 I'll be playing with the gifts I get.

70 tracks eh? thats preaty damn good, i cant wait to play this game! everysingle one of my friends has this damn game.........i need it

Yay I got this for my Birthday today and I give it a 9/10.

There is online,Multiplayer and Co-Op so you never have to get bored playing alone. The game isn't hard to learn. Also I have done about 25 songs on medium mode and 4 songs on Easy(im going to catch up tommarrow.

Good to hear you're enjoying it Icy!

great to hear icy, im getting this game as a christmas present