ESRB RATING: T
DEVELOPER: Neversoft
PUBLISHER: Activision
REVIEWER: A.D. Olson
DATE: 2007-11-03
GAMEPLAY REVIEW
Guitar Hero has been around for a couple years now, and it's become a hugely successful series, for a game that costs almost twice as much as any other, due to a pack-in peripheral. You undoubtedly have heard of it or seen it before, even if it was just to laugh at some goofy-looking pizza slice playing it in a YouTube video. You play a plastic guitar with five fret buttons along to a set of popular songs. It's more fun than a barrel of monkeys (or the plastic red ones that I had when I was a kid).
The third installment in the series has finally made it's way to a Nintendo platform, but not without it's problems. It seems that Activision has had some pretty bad luck this time around, however, I doubt that the issues will stop the game from selling like hotcakes, and I think the sales will quickly top what the previous two had sold in their lifetimes.
The box comes with a Les Paul-shaped guitar controller made specifically for the game. It has a slot for the Wii remote to fit into, and it fits snugly and perfectly. There is a short cable that plugs into the expansion port on the bottom of the remote. There is a small compartment for the Wii remote strap, if you haven't removed it from your controllers yet. A bit of padding on the back of the snap-in cover ensures a tight fit. The Wii remote doesn't jiggle a milimeter, and aside from looking kinda weird, you'd never know it was there. Well, that's not true - Neversoft has made good use of the Wii remote's built-in features. The Wii version of this game is the only one to feature rumble when you get or use Star Power, thanks to the Wii remote. On top of that, the built-in speaker is used to play missed note sounds and squelches. The guitar has a nice weight to it, and the detachable neck allows you to store or transport it easily and quickly.
The single-player campaign has 42 songs, not counting unlockables and bonus content. There are also three boss guitar battles, the first being against Tom Morello (or Rage Against The Machine fame), Slash, and Lou. There could have been more battles, even one per set would have been fine, but they are definitely tougher than the rest of the set list. For that reason, I am grateful that Neversoft saw fit to allow us to "Wuss Out" or skip over these battles, not preventing progress through the campaign.
There are four difficulty modes: Easy, Medium, Hard, and Expert. Easy mode should probably be called Boring mode, and Medium should be called Difficult Due To Improper Timing. Hard is just about right, at least for anyone with mediocre guitar skills. Expert mode is aptly named, but I do hope to make that jump sometime in the future.
The Co-op campaign is similar to the single-player campaign, but the set lists are a little different. There are also online modes on the Wii, contrary to what some reports mislead you to believe. You can be matched up against strangers or you can play against or with your friends using Nintendo Wi-Fi Connection Friend Codes. Co-op or face off modes are fun, and so is having a battle. If you're looking for someone to battle, let me know. I could use a few Wii Guitar Hero 3 friends.
Crave Factor: 10
GRAPHICS & ANIMATION
The graphics are of no consequence. The band animation looks decent to me, but the models look downright scary. On top of that, you really don't have much time to focus on the background action, since you're bombarded with an assortment of five different colored ovals. And the ovals look great to me. But they do move a little fast...
Crave Factor: 8
MUSIC & SOUND
It's hard to judge how great the game should sound when you only have one discrete channel to judge by, but I'm going to assume it'd be great, had someone not screwed up royally.
Either Activision or Neversoft, whoever is to blame, doesn't have quality control teams, or they just figured that Wii owners were so technically unsure of themselves that they would never notice, I'm not sure which. Either way, there can be no excuse for any game - ANY game - to ship with mono sound and no stereo or Dolby ProLogic II support. No excuse. Especially when it's a game entirely based on music.
Activision claims that they are looking into the issue, and anything less than a free disc replacement is just not satisfactory to me. To my knowledge, the Wii doesn't allow patches for games to be distributed over the Internet, but even if it did, people without Internet access would be S.O.L., and stuck with a mono music game.
The Wii remote speaker playing squelches and missed notes is neat, in practice. In theory, should you mess up when playing a real guitar, you're not likely to hear the sound sourced right at your fingers, but rather in your amp, so this implementation is more of a gimmick than anything. It's still kinda neat, especially if you play two players locally, then you can hear where the messed up notes are coming from in real 3D positioning.
The song choices are great, and none feel out of place to me. Each one is fun in it's own way, and there are tons that are master tracks from the original artists, which is nice too. Metallica, Rolling Stones, Aerosmith, Sex Pistols, Rage Against The Machine, ZZ Top, Slayer... Lots of great bands, and lots of great tracks. Too bad that I can only hear these tracks in my center channel.
Crave Factor: 3
CONTROLS
Neversoft put an analog stick onto the Wii guitar controller so that you can launch the game without a separate Wii remote. Any reports to the contrary are incorrect. This was a nice touch, and something that I was worried about before they had revealed this feature. It'd be a pain if I couldn't just leave my Wii remote inside of my gutiar, semi-permanently.
All of the menus are easily browsed using the strum bar and fret buttons. The game itself is played with the fret buttons and strum bar. It's not the same as playing a real guitar, but it's similar enough that if you have any guitar experience, you're going to feel immediately comfortable and can probably jump directly into Hard mode.
There is a whammy bar that you can use similar to on a real guitar. Really, as a guitarist myself, I was surprised how fun it was to play on a plastic toy guitar, and how much timinig and accuracy mattered. If anything, I think playing this game on this black and white mini-guitar will help me with my playing.
There aren't any real specific Wii-only controls, and the experience is going to be roughly equivalent on any platform. I can't think of anything that could improve the controls in the game itself. As it is designed, the controller is perfect. Just don't try to play on a Wii remote only, as pressing buttons strewn about the thing is just not even close to playing with the guitar-shaped controller.
Crave Factor: 10
EXTRA VALUE-ADDED FEATURES
The online multiplayer adds lots and lots of replayability to a game that is already stealing way too much of my time. It's just fun, and when you put in some head-to-head action, it's lasting power increases that much more.
To bridge the gap between all of the platforms, and join people together into one big community, Activision has cobbled together a community website which you can register for and link to your in-game account. Your scores are supposed to be updated, and you collect Groupies. You can join a tour group, and climb up the charts as you accumulate more and more Groupies. You can search through leaderboards on the site or even from inside the game, which is a nice touch. Hopefully Activision can work out the kinks with the site, as it seems to have me stuck at 47% complete of Hard mode, when I'm much further along than that.
You get to choose from a variety of characters, outfits, and guitars, with lots of unlockables here as well. This isn't the definition of customization, but everybody should be able to put together a combo that they will be happy with.
There are lots of unlockable songs, including a few that are just really, really fun to play. There are some videos that you can also unlock, if you want some behind-the-scenes footage. No downloadable content means that Wii users are stuck with the game's built-in songs. It would have been nice if Neversoft had tossed in a few extra bonus Wii-only songs just for good measure, to make up for this, but even so, the lack of DLC is not a reason to avoid this game.
Crave Factor: 8
CONCLUSION
Yes, it is priced at about $89.99, but trust me when I say this - there aren't many games that are worth the full sticker price, but this is one of them, despite being priced at almost double of other games.
Before playing Guitar Hero 3, I hadn't ever tried a Guitar Hero game. I was one of the few disbelievers, and I thought that the entire concept was kinda stupid. I pretend to play guitar, but I found out that pretending to play a fake guitar is even more fun than in real life.
I'm sure that you're going to get tons of fun out of this, and possibly some sore fingers. Hopefully Guitar Hero 4 ships with at least Stereo sound, as this is the year 2007, with 2008 just around the corner, and mono is so 1931.
Overall Crave Factor: 9 out of 10
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