Guitar Hero 3: Legends of Rock

I'm no Guitar Hero. I'm not even close. I have what the Robot Devil would call "stupid fingers". Fortunately, bands always need singers and usually don't even need them to be able to be in tune, so there is always a place in the music world for me.

Guitar Hero 3 is too hard for the stupid-fingered. The best I've done in Guitar Hero 2 is successfully completing one of the songs on "Hard" but I am pleased to say I mastered "Medium". Guitar Hero 3 however is a completely different kettle of fish. Embarrassing as it is to say, I actually failed one of the songs in the first tier on medium. And of course, GH3 isn't the kind of game you play on your own, so my friends who were present had cause to laugh at me. As if I wasn't hurting enough already.

Enlisting a freak friend who finished the previous game on expert, I took great pleasure in laughing derisively as he failed the first boss battle against Rage Against the Machine's Tom Morello. Of course this meant that everyone failed the battle as well. Quickly reading the "How To Play" we found out you must use the "battle" elements that carry over from Multiplayer. These include things like "broken string" where you must press one of the fret buttons madly, or "Difficulty Up" which is exactly what it sounds like. Using these, you have to make the RATM legend fail before the end of the song, you can't just have a better rock meter than him. With this knowledge my nimble fingered friend promptly whooped Tom's ass and I went back to being far and away the worst player present.

Still, because we were playing through the Career mode to unlock all the songs I attempted my fair share. The track listing is amazing, with over 70 songs available to play about 50 of them were recognisable to me. Most of the ones I don't recognised are bonus tracks; something I never particularly bothered with in the previous games but it's important to note the thrash epic "Through Fire and Flames" is actually a bonus track. Of course, you're not able to acquire it in the typical fashion but it's a worthy addition to the already robust listing, and the manner in which you unlock it is very rewarding.

The game is coming out on PS2, PS3, Xbox 360 and Wii, and there are some significant differences in each version. The PS2 version is the bare-bones edition of the game, pure GH for those who've had their guitars "when it was still underground". The PS3 and Xbox 360 versions are by design virtually identical, although the 360 version will have its ever popular achievements. The Wii version takes the PS2 version and shoves a Wiimote in the guitar. They have taken full advantage of the Wiimote, using it to rumble when you use your Star Power and using the controllers in built speaker to tell you when miss a note.

Unfortunately for the Wii version the graphics are terrible. One wouldn't expect the art style to be at its peak on Nintendo's console, but even in comparison to Guitar Hero 2 on the Xbox 360 GH3 looks abysmal. The character models are unpolished and poorly animated, the crowd is just a sea of cloned audience members all moving their hands up and down in perfect synchronicity and the occasional extra scene effects, like helicopters or gas canisters are horrible. Heck, even the anime style cut-scenes look unfinished. The scrolling neck looks slick and finished and it stands out against the rest of the game.

Another complaint about the game is the fact that some of the songs (Sabotage by the Beastie Boys is the one I'm really sore about) can only be attained through Co-operative Career mode, however the ability to use a control pad as a second player has been removed. This means if you want to get to the Beastie Boys you need to buy a second guitar. Perhaps the makers have good reasons behind this decision, but in practical terms it means many punters will have to spend more money to use all the features in the game they have bought.

Despite the drawbacks to the Wii version, Neversoft has created a very good game. Even with the better track-list I'd be hard pressed to call it better than Guitar Hero 2, but it is definitely worth your money. The increased difficulty means the game will still provide a challenge to "Experts" and it will push the chumps like me to get better.