no graph?

The blatant advertising is epic fail to me. o__O

Doing their part to end the ridiculousness of scores?

I think the advertising is one of my biggest problems with this game (other than the battle mode and the increased difficulty). Nothing says selling out quite like an unlockable Axe guitar. Fortunately, I didn't place that much hope in it and only bought it to hold me over 'til Rockband.

Don't forget, Mark was the one that wrote the article that criticized reviews, so I suspect the missing graph was on purpose.

Somehow, I feel that using a certain type of body spray might make random women jump out from behind trees and start humping me.

I don't know why!

@Moonshadow101: I thought so too, but the only thing that jumped out from trees and humped me were squirrels :(

  Anyone have the PS2 version? Is it just me or do the graphics look _horrible_? I mean, obviously, the point of the game is not the graphics, but still... The drummer's face in particular is almost laughable. The entire face looks to be one polygon with a hilarious texture to boot. Guitar Hero 2 had better graphics I'd reckon. I wonder if the "next-gen" versions were created first and then "dumbed" down for the PS2, hence the poor graphic quality.

  I also noticed that some of the Bonus songs aren't very good quality - the In Flames song sticks particularly in my mind. It sounds like they recorded it straight from a radio. Anyone else notice any of this?

Oh well...still, it's a fun game with a good tracklist.

@Furious_Liver: I didn't really notice ads for everyday products, and I didn't recognize any of the music stuff. So in this instance it didn't bother me, but I'm still glad Gamespot is pointing this out. As much as I usually disagree with Gamespot, this is the one thing I agree with them on.

Also, the fact that this game lacks Deep Purple sucks.

Has anyone noticed how horrible the animation for the drummer is? I mean, I know it's GUITAR Hero, and it shouldn't matter, but I watched some friends play the night it came out and the animation on the freakin' drummer made him look robotic as hell. It was awful! It looks like they didn't even try to make him look worth a crap.

Words cannot express how much I hate AXE and all of the marketing surrounding it. And now every 12 year old boy in every suburban home across America smells like a cheap pimp.

I don't know if the game seemed any harder than GH2 but it definitely seemed like the timing was different. Like it was off a little. And yes, the advertising was CRAP, was it EA or Activision that bought this franchise?

Just beat GH3 on expert....and one thing that no review goes into in great detail is how much the battle mode in the career mode sucks. Take a game based entirely on skill, then throw in luck and you are given more frustrations and calls of bulls*** then anything else (I am looking at you battle vs. Lou). Coupled with the over reliance on 3 key chords in set 7, the game is not as smooth as GH2. These are not the legends of rock. Slipknot is not a legendary rock band, and I contend that "Devil Went Down to Georgia" is not the peak of rock and roll.

Another thing that will bug GH players is the way the hammer's have been changed. Note sets that would always be hammers in GH1 and GH2 are now changed to including strumming in the middle of the hammer. And this may just be me being picky, but when I can hear the guitarist strumming yet I am doing hammer's for a large portion of the song, I get the impression that the game wasn't made by musicians, but rather a development team that is just trying to copy a working formula. This game convinced me to never buy another Guitar Hero game, and instead hope that Rock Band (made by musicians and made by a company who has made their entire back library of perfecting music games).

So, in closing, Activision/Nervsoft, stop hitting the suck button so much.

How the heck can you, playing the game, even SEE the advertisements? I don't know about you, but I don't get any time to leisurely scan the screen when I'm playing; I'm too busy trying to frantically hit all the notes in some of those crazy songs...

What these games really need to do is embrace the online model. They, more than any other kind of game, are ideal for it. In my ideal world there are just guitar and drum and I guess microphone peripherals for sale, and then you can choose to hop online and purchase individual tracks. Some of these tracks are made by Harmonix and MTV, and use the Rock Band engine. Some would use the Guitar Hero engine and are produced by Neversoft. To me, the consumer, it doesn't really matter. I have a list of songs, I can choose which ones appeal to me. Or I can buy song packs, complete sets.

This seems better for the consumer and honestly better for the game companies. I wonder how long until the model is embraced...

86% on Gamerankings and 92% on Metacritic, so they must have done something right. Let's see what Rock Band brings (a couple weeks?) Online mode sounds cool if you can search you play with your friends easily.

How is Jack Black not in this game?

@PaulMorel: My first thought exactly.

Got rid of the scores chart in the Frankenreviews, eh?

I've only had a few hours to play with it, and I have to say that I think the GH series is a victim of its own success. When it first came out, well known bands were wary of cooperating with Harmonix, so for the most part Harmonix had to work hard to either find interesting indie songs, less well known songs from popular artists, or record their own versions of songs (but often still not the best known hit from the band). This resulted in a great mix of interesting (and more importantly, fun to play) songs. In the process of playing the first two GH, I also became a fan of a few new bands and added various of the game's songs to my MP3 player. Guitar Hero III, on the other hand, has lots of platinum song choices from each band (often with the original recording), but the songs aren't quite as fun! It seems like neversoft/red octane picked songs this time around because they *could*, not because they added interesting aspects to the game. One example is Bulls On Parade. Great song, and arguably Rage's biggest hit. But the guitar is very simple and repetitive, boring to play. I found myself thinking the same thing about many of the other options.

I like the ad's. It makes concerts look authentic. Has anyone here been to a concert before? You guys should see that everything is sponsored. Heck, Family Values had Microsoft XBOX 360's all over the place. The ads in this games isnt that bad, and it makes the places look authentic enough.

But it doesn't have Boost Mobile® asking you "Where you at dog?" Such a shame as I would have loved to play as Master Shake© playing a Boost Mobile® phone guitar.

What I don't understand is why they amped up the difficulty on every difficulty level. You want to make things more difficult for longtime players? More power to you. But increasing the difficulty on lower levels just makes the game less accessible to new players.

I had people over the night before last, and an hour in we had gone back to Guitar Hero II. 7/9 people playing it had never played the series before, and the previous version was infinitely easier for them to become accustomed to. All of them found Guitar Hero III to be frustrating by comparison.

That's the most monumental error Neversoft made, because it is a change in gameplay that doesn't make any sense. Why would you want less people to enjoy your game when you have competition like Rock Band coming out shortly? Did they get any non-gamers to playtest it? Maybe they missed that Guitar Hero is a franchise that stretches beyond just the hardcore audience.

Man you people whine about in game advertisements. Get the F over it. It's not like it's completely out of place and ruins the experience of the game.

Kinda of like playing a fantasy game and seeing an ad for Axe or Toyota. Though I'll have to draw the line when we are forced to watch full blown commericals spots in between levels.

@awwyeadatsright:
I 100% agree with you. The stuff smells awful and by buying the product then using it says: "I'm an young unintelligent guy that falls for low level advertising. Please date me!"

@Saleen: Agreed. Completely. Unfortunately, I still haven't beaten it on Expert 'cause of the damned Slipknot and Disturbed songs. They're just not fun to play, and I certainly wouldn't call them "Legends of Rock." And playing "My Name Is Jonas" with all HOPOs feels kinda cheap. I'm pretty sure those are really meant to be strummed.

The one thing I'm surprised that isn't mentioned here is the inclusion of "boss battles", which to me is one of the lamest things they possibly could have done with the series, and presents three moments in the game that are just not fun to play through. One of the biggest appeals to Guitar Hero has been that the game makes you feel like you're really playing a guitar like a rock star. These boss battles break the illusion and remind you you're playing a game.

the drummer animation is really bad, and the singer looks really... neanderthal. i dunno if its just the ps2 ver, or if theyre all like that.

@KevinSetzer: FANTASTIC point. I'm sure that was a non-original dev decision. Trying to improve on an already near perfect formula.

Maybe soon we can look forward to Guitar Hero : American Proving Wasteland Project 9 Ground - The Sequel!

Battle mode and boss battles are gimmicks, and they completely half-assed the PS2/Wii version. The graphics are horrendous, the presentation is much more horrible, the load times are huge, and it just sucks overall. They put no effort into optimizing those versions, and simply downgraded the 360/PS3 versions until they worked.

They also tried their hand at making people with a lot of character, and make their assets even more exaggerated. They failed horribly.

Rock Band is going to kick this game's ass all over the place.

I played it and think its pretty damn good. The challenge is still there, the song selection is above average and the inclusion of "master tracks" instead of cover songs helps round out the package.

It may lack the loving touches that harmonix had, but overall its still a great game.

Rock Band will probably be better, but nobody I know wants to spend that kind of loot on a single game.

There definitely should have been the excerpt from Gamespot's review that pointed out that the lead singer of your band is, quite possibly, the UGLIEST SOB that has ever been programmed in any game ever. I mean it too. He's uglier than any zombie, any villain, any deformed lacky, any mutant etc... This game's worst failing is in the art direction. It's trying way too hard to be hardcore and completely ditched the style that made the first two games Guitar Hero.

Secondly, I want to know how much Microsoft ponies up every time a game comes out to make it so I only hear about the 360 version of everything. For god's sake, the only reason the PS3 review came out on the same day is because they just copy pasted it from the 360. I don't think a Wii review was out till the day after.

I enjoy the boss battles, and don't care about the advertising.

If you get past those, and look at the actual gameplay that is similar to before, it is improved in the two most important parts: songs and notecharts. All the master tracks are great, and not few expert charts feel uninspired.

I still don't get it :s

IMHO...It's in the background and only noticeable by people who obsess over it. But then again, If we don't complain now.. It will just get worse. Should we start some kind of petition or something.

@PaulMorel: i like simple to understand pictures too :D

@PeonCulture: It really wouldn't make sense I think to amp up the difficulty on the higher levels and not the lower levels. Then you would have people complaining about having too big a jump in difficulty. I see what your saying but doing that would be the real error.

@Isaac VanDuyn: Bite your tongue... there's no way you can trust them to be responsible enough to only offer the songs online at a reasonable price. It would cost far more to get all of the songs you get on the GH3 disc. Going by their current downloadable song pricing model ($6.25 for 3 songs), $62.50 only buys you 30 songs. You get 71 songs for $50 or $60 on the disc.

I'll be honest, this review is meaningless to me without scores.

Your lack of a pretty graph absolutely confuses me. I am at a lost of words and emotions. You have put me into a lethargic state.

@usfslacker: Agreed... whenever there's a multi-platform game it seems like the 360 version is the most prominently featured no matter where you look excluding Nintendo and Sony specific sites and magazines.

Guitar Hero 3 has no charm left in it since Harmonix gave up the IP. The PS2 version is easily the worst looking PS2 game I've played in years, A majority of the songs are fun to listen to, but mainly boring to play (Sabotage for example, they have you hitting guitar notes for turntable scratches? This isn't IIDX), and they have artificially inflated the difficulty of certain songs just so they'll be ridiculous to play.

The in-game advertising really pissed me off. Clearly visible Red Bull cans and all the other previously mentioned advertisements they put in this game really turn me off.

I might be slightly biased, since while I used to like the Guitar Hero series, I burnt out on GH2 and haven't really been a fan of the series since, but at least Guitar Hero 2 was an amazing game that did most everything right. This game, along with the upcoming release of Rock Band, is the nail in the coffin for the Guitar Hero series.

@Atamisk726: That's easy enough to fix. You add a difficulty level for those that want even more of a challenge than previous versions.

I'll add my voice in as a a complainer about the note set-ups. Making things difficult for difficulties sake is just plain stupid. When I should be using HOPO and it's a strum the part of me that understands how sound works is going "huh?" When HO and PO are spaced really far apart but it's only supposed to be a 1/4 or 1/8 note I'm going "huh?"

Somehow the buttons don't correspond to what I'm hearing from the speakers. It's like telling Mario to jump but instead he runs. I don't feel like I'm "rocking" out but instead I need to press buttons as shown on screen in order to power the guitar.

I noticed brand names for guitars and Guitar Center, but unless you're busy watching someone else play the game, I wouldn't say ads are obtrusive. I never even noticed them till reading this.

Loved GH2 and I love GH3 but my only problem is the new wireless guitar. The neck is loose and sometimes my green fret won't work...anyone else?

I'm going to put my voice out there with the masses. The battle mode is lame and I wish they would have left it out.

I have a fundamental problem with boss fights and face-offs since music by nature is collaborative not competitive. That alone throws me entirely out of the experience. Previous versions at least you were competing to see who could play a song better, but being able to actively hose the other person with broken strings and the like is just... ugh.

So far I'm enjoying the game - the variety of unlockables, regardless of their ad-whorishness, gives me the ability to use the rest of the cash my band earns throughout its storied career. The one thing that bothers me, though, is that the game severely lacks polish. Take a look at the tutorials -they're adequately presented, but the transitions are absolute garbage. When you complete a lesson, the fret board just stops and the screen says "Lesson completed" - what happened to the fretboard gracefully accelerating off-screen? And popping up a failure message after the tutorial is failed - while amusing to those of us watching - is excessively frustrating and prohibitive to those who are trying to figure out how to work the multi-colored monstrosity they hold in their hands. Next, take a gander at the game's forums to experience the massive problems they (red octane, I guess) are having with the new guitars - hypersensitive star power sensors (mine goes off if I merely twitch the guitar), shoddy connections between the detachable neck and the body, excessive bounciness in the strum bar... the list goes on.

Overall it's like this one was phoned-in. At this point, yes, guitar hero is essentially a turn-key game, but that doesn't