Guitar Hero III (and demo!)

[Noyb]

Hmmm... Can't believe I'm saying this but... I'm think I'm bored of GH3...

Is it just me?

It's weird, but by having such "great" and recognisable songs, I think I've gotten bored of them quicker. I don't know for sure if that's what it is, but I'm bored either way.

Strange

It's not because they're recognizable, just that all but 10 or so are repetitive as hell. Maybe the reason that they're recognizable is that they repeat the same catchy riff ad infinitum until it gets stuck in your head. Repetition is decent for hooking you on the radio, but not that fun to play for a good number of the riffs here. I really felt the repetition going down the setlists, doing the same riffs over and over and over again within a song. Then again, I still have yet to go down the list of bonus songs.

[miffy495]

I say Avalancha is the best of the bonus. A few of them aren't that great, but if you play none of the other bonus songs, make sure you get that one and Ruby played.

[ThunderPeel2001]

Well, as if it needed to be confirmed, I decided to go back to Guitar Hero II and last night and guess what? It still, completely, utterly and totally rocks... even though the songs are quite as "well known" and they're mostly not master recordings, I still found myself having a far better time than with Guitar Hero 3.

Who would have thought that a GH game could be messed up? Who would have thought that online multiplayer and original master recordings would add so little? Who would have thought that presentation mattered so much?

Not Red Octane, obviously.

Annoying things that I've not yet complained about in GH3:

- During Star Power your guitar sounds like its in a wind tunnel.

- Where the hell is the crowd?

- Too many things pop up while your playing, pulling you out of the meditative state of strumming along to the music.

- The female characters have been ruined, as such my girlfriend isn't interested in playing any more.

- You only connect to an online game one in ten goes.

- And then the person you're playing against cheats.

- Online gameplay is amazingly boring and unsatisfying (you can't as far as I can see it, even decide to play with a friend).

and the most annoying thing, which really sums up Neversofts complete lack of understanding of humour (which never bothered me that much in Tony Hawks):

- During the stupid, over the top, Neversoft logo animation, their amp is set to 12.

Yes, you read right: 12. Why not 13? Why not 14? Why not 20? Why not 1,000?

Simple, because only 11 is funny.

It doesn't get funnier with each increment, Neversoft. Notice how Spinal Tap did it perfectly, subtley, hilariously.

You saying, "Well, we'll go to 12! Ha! Ha! Ha!", is NOT funny. It's 100% unoriginal, unfunny, not clever and just amazingly lame. Just like the humour in all of Neversoft's games, actually.

[ThunderPeel2001]

WTF?!

I just played a player called "garfeh" in a non-ranked match (I think) on "Quick Match" (I think). We were both on easy, it turned out, and I kicked his butt. No big deal as the guy was obviously new to the game... but three songs into our 6 song best of, he quits and I get an achievement:

"Meet Your Maker"

What's going on?

Edit: Ah. Here's what's going on: To get the achievement you have to beat someone/co-op with someone who beat someone who beat some who beat someone who beat a maker of the game.

[miffy495]

Yay! So free achievement if I play with Thunderpeel. Only catch is I'd have to drag myself away from Rock Band to get it. That's something that might be tricky in itself.

Harmonix really is amazing. I still have love GHIII's tracklist, but the game itself is just so much better. I'd say I'm pretty confident your girlfriend will be happy with creating a player for herself though. Pretty much every gamer of the non-male persuasion who I used to play GH with has now given up on it entirely and moved over to Rock Band. The only real advantage GH has now is slightly better feeling guitar peripherals and brand recognition. That second one should change shortly though.

[ThunderPeel2001]

Yay! So free achievement if I play with Thunderpeel. Only catch is I'd have to drag myself away from Rock Band to get it. That's something that might be tricky in itself.

Harmonix really is amazing. I still have love GHIII's tracklist, but the game itself is just so much better. I'd say I'm pretty confident your girlfriend will be happy with creating a player for herself though. Pretty much every gamer of the non-male persuasion who I used to play GH with has now given up on it entirely and moved over to Rock Band. The only real advantage GH has now is slightly better feeling guitar peripherals and brand recognition. That second one should change shortly though.

Looking forward to it! I hope Harmonix enjoy the same sort of enjoyment they did with Guitar Hero.

As for that achievement: If you want it you'll have to beat me first...

...which, of course, will be very easy for you

[Tommy Gun]

and the most annoying thing, which really sums up Neversofts complete lack of understanding of humour

The first thing I noticed when playing GH3 was that almost every single loading screen was completely unfunny and stupid. To the point of me getting angry at the game.

[ThunderPeel2001]

The first thing I noticed when playing GH3 was that almost every single loading screen was completely unfunny and stupid. To the point of me getting angry at the game.

Yes, they are unbelievably dire. One that springs to mind is "Never think you're the first person to wear all black on stage", or even worse, "We're an angry band, but that doesn't mean we don't like peace".

Amazingly, GH2's lines still make me smirk

[werd123]

One thing that pisses me off is the complete lack of support for PS2 in the first place, why the hell did they release the first one on the PS2 in the first place? It would be a good exclusive on the 360, even playing Guitar Hero II on PS2 seems like it's missing something, even though number II didn't have a PS3 version.

And yes your spot on with the humour of Neversoft games, especially with Tony Hawk's. 2-4 the humour would make me giggle a bit and it was harmless, then when Underground 1 and 2 and American Wasteland (Which "tried" to be punk, errrgghh), it just seemed like they were trying too hard with all the characters acting so hardass.

[ThunderPeel2001]

Dug this out again and decided to give it some time. There's at least one thing I prefer; No screen wobble when you activate Star Power... Oh how I hate thee screen wobble in GH2. It's also weird to notice that the Star Power lasts about half the time (feels even less) in GH3 which actually makes the gameplay less strategic: In GH2, while trying to get 5 stars for every song I used the score as a gauge. If I got a higher score it meant I did better in the song (makes sense, right?). In GH3 I was trying to five star Slayer's Raining Blood on Medium (the only one I can't do ) but the score was independent to how well I actually played:

I got 90,000 and a 4 Star review. I tried again and got 120,000 and a 3 Star review!? That's quite a big difference considering I played WORSE but got a better score... Like I said, there's a lot less strategy in the gameplay.

Possibly the lamest thing (and the thing I never imagined would be so lame... in fact I used to complain that Harmonix hadn't added it to GH2 for the 360) is still the utterly underwhelming online gameplay. Every ten minutes you either connect or crash. Once in a while you might get to play, and only then you're against some annoying twonk who whammys every sustained note... thus ruining the song. It's amazingly boring. You spend a lot more time waiting for a game that you do playing, and really, what does it add knowing that you're playing against someone for two or three minutes? Not much.

The achievements are plain stupid, too. Who the hell has the time to complete 15 songs on expert using only a controller?! Or completing the entire campaign in lefty and righty... Is anyone's life so empty?

Ah, well. This was meant to be a positive post about GH3... Whoops!

[err]

One aspect that bugs me with this game are the voices in the tutorial section. This is probably because I only have the german version of it (I actually think it is a multilanguage version, but I'd probably have to change the language of my Wii console and I can't be bothered to do that), but it made me already feel extremely idiotic standing there with the guitar just listening to a voice that trys too hard to be funny. And everytime I show the game to someone, he or she plays the tutorial and I have to hear that voice again. Soon it will haunt me in my dreams.

Other than that, it's my first Guitar Hero and I like it, although I will probably never ever finish the game on hard (let alone expert), the last few songs are just too hard for me (managed Cliffs of Dover, but thats about it). However, given the feedback here, I suppose the predecessors must have been much better - I should try to convince my PS2-owning sister to buy these games then! I'm trying to convince her to buy Rock Band once that comes out here already, maybe that induces the rhythm-game-love.

The star rating... It's probably just the amount of notes hit, while the score also takes the "when" you get them into account, as it resets the multiplier (i.e. if you make all mistakes at once, you only have one section where you messed up your combo, while many mistakes all over the place will change that).

[Tommy Gun]

And everytime I show the game to someone, he or she plays the tutorial and I have to hear that voice again. Soon it will haunt me in my dreams.

Why let them play the tutorial? I've introduced GH to everyone I know (even my mom, uncle, etc.), and I just explain it to them quickly. I will admit I got *really* sick of hearing "I love Rock and Roll" for a while, though.

[ThunderPeel2001]

Hey Tommy, what's your XBL Gamertag?

[Tommy Gun]

My gold account just expired, so I can't play online anymore. But it's "Tommy Gun CRG"

[ThunderPeel2001]

That's cool, it still good to see a yardstick of how well I'm progressing in GH (and soon Rock Band) compared to the insane skills of you and Miffy.

[Tommy Gun]

Heh, well for drums, okay. But:

1) We don't have any GH on 360.

2) I rarely play guitar in Rock Band, and when I did we had the calibration way off, so my scores are *terrible* and should not be used for anything. I'm so sick of the songs at this point, that if I play anything it would be solo drums, or BWT since we haven't beaten everything yet.

[miffy495]

Hmmm... I'll have to add you and compare drum scores as I advance. I'm gradually getting better, although there's a definite wall that I've hit a little past the halfway point of Hard.

[ThunderPeel2001]

Ah, well. When I get Rock Band I can compare. Actually, that's one thing that's missing from GH: Easy comparison of friend's scores. When not have an "info" tab on the song names so you can see extra information like friend's scores?

GH3 doesn't even bother ranking your friends scores in order!

[miffy495]

Guitar should work fine as long as they're the same system. Compatibility is only ever a concern when trying to get a controller from Guitar Hero to work with Rock Band or vice versa. Guitar Hero to Guitar Hero is never any problem.

[ThunderPeel2001]

Yay! I just completed GH2 on Hard last night... My god, my wrists were aching! I barely scraped through, but it's still fun. Now onto Expert

Has anyone else found that Psychobilly Freakout is the hardest song in the entire game? It's ONLY song I can't five star on medium and it was the most difficult on Hard, too.

I just can't handle the bits that go

----0----0----0----0----0----0----

-0----0----0----0----0----0----

Maybe I should start strumming both ways?

[miffy495]

Only song I can't get more than 3 stars on. Not counting Psychobilly, I only have three songs that are still at four stars, everything else is 5. Psychobilly just murders me though.

[Tommy Gun]

I just can't handle the bits that go

----0----0----0----0----0----0----

-0----0----0----0----0----0----

Maybe I should start strumming both ways?

That's a trill. They're not as hard as you think, if you know how to do them. Are they hammer-ons (white notes)? If so, hold down the "lower" fret (let's say the two notes are blue/orange, so hold blue). Strum the first note only, then tap orange, let go of the orange to hit the blue (but never let go of blue), tap orange, etc. So really you just have to tap orange on beat, you don't even have to strum. Does that make sense? If you miss a note in the middle, you'll have to strum once to restart the HOPO "chain."

[Wrestlevania]

I'm certainly not the most dextrous of gamers and have found I need to perfect hammer-ons and pull-offs to get anywhere on 'Hard'.

I'm still just playing Guitar Hero II and Rocks the 80s infrequently on the office PS2 though.

[ThunderPeel2001]

Sadly none of the notes are hammer-ons/pull-offs. It would be much easier if they were!

Someone should write a Psychobilly FAQ. Arg.

[Tommy Gun]

Sadly none of the notes are hammer-ons/pull-offs. It would be much easier if they were!

Damn. Well you can still do the "hold blue" technique, you'll just have to strum. There's a bonus song in GH3 with non-HOPO trills, and it really pissed me off.