Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock (Xbox 360) review "This article was limited to 300 words by the school newspaper. "

This article was limited to 300 words by the school newspaper.

Though it follows the series' legacy, Guitar Hero 3 doesn't deliver quite as well as its predecessors.

People familiar with any of the previous games in the series know what hammer-ons and pull-offs are, so I'll spare those who don't know by not getting in to detail and simply say this: Neversoft, new to the franchise, has rendered them nearly useless in an attempt to make the game "more realistic." You now have to strum considerable more notes to hit them all, which makes it a pain in expert.

Being a veteran of the expert difficulty, I was surprised when I got caught up on the breakdown of Slipknot's "Before I Forget." This brings my argument to two points.

One: The game doesn't exactly ease you into harder play--I made my way through the first six tiers with one or two failed songs, but got the "fail one song ten times" achievement when I reached tier seven. The jump from medium to hard isn't exactly great, either. Easy is the new medium, medium is the new hard minus an orange button, etc. If I was to recommend a person new to the series, I'd say start with GH2 first- it does a lot better job at helping the player.

My second point is concerning the song list: who told Red Octane to put in so much of this new music? Sure, Social Distortion's not bad. I like Weezer a lot! I'm not even mad about Metallica (hell, they're great), but "Miss Murder" by AFI? "Before I Forget" by Slipknot? The songs in GH3 are significantly worse than the previous games. Having said all that, this is still a good game. Compared to GH1 and GH2 not so much, but it's still better than, say, Jackass: The Game or Crash of the Titans. It's still the same basic mechanics we've all come to know and love.

This game is rated on a scale of 1-10 where a 5 is average.

Community review by JEFFARGH (December 09, 2007) A bio for this contributor is currently unavailable, but check back soon to see if that changes. If you are the author of this review, you can update your bio from the Settings page.