New Week, New Games - Guitar Hero

First off, let me apologize for not getting a new Cover Art up last night. I'm having computer problems and Photoshop is not saving or allowing me to edit images. I'm trying to find a quick fix so I can just get this weeks up real quick. Now on to business.

Back a few months ago, I was saying that I wasn't excited about Guitar Hero III. Harmonix had been sold off to MTV and Activision had put all the responsibility of making the sequel to Neversoft. Plus I had been a little disappointed by GHII because of how mainstream it had all of a sudden become and I didn't pick up Rock the 80's for fear of oversaturation. I was one of the few who took a chance with Guitar Hero by buying it day one and I got to see Guitar Hero grow into the beast it is now from ground level. The new game came out and honestly I was about to pass on it or just pick up the PS2 game only but when I found out the bundle came with a wireless guitar, that was the selling point for me.

With that said, the best thing about GHIII by far is the guitar. I completely underestimated the importance of RedOctane in the success of the franchise and their ability to make quality peripherals. The new guitar (I have the 360 version) is near flawless. It's wireless without any extra attachments or dongles and sports a nice port on the bottom for the headset. The biggest improvement has to be the strum bar. The Xploder's strum bar was trash and that's one of the reasons I didn't pick up the XB360 release of GHII. I like to really get into the game and I often make large exaggerated movements. With the old guitars, I had problems with a term I call kickback. I would make a hard finishing downstroke but old strum bar would pop back up from the force and would make a second registering therein misreading and ending a combo or breaking a hold. Now with the new guitar, those problems are alleviated. This of course makes me extremely worried about RockBand. I'm not hearing good things about the peripherals and that will only make the gameplay and the fans suffer.

Now that I've gotten the compliments out of the way, I can really sink my teeth into the game. My biggest complaint has nothing to do with the game itself, but more of with how the game looks. The characters look bad. The main male singer just creeps me out when I look at him singing. He basically doesn't have a face and is just huge chin. They put way too much detail on the inside of his mouth and teeth. The character movements are very robotic and janky. Everytime I see the drummer I think I'm watching a bad Chuck E. Cheese performance. If you've seen the GHII 360 commercial or started playing career mode in GHIII, you've seen the anime-inspired look. It fits the game wonderfully and I wish they would have completely gone to that look for this game, but I guess that's just a personal preference.

I've said it multiple times before, the most important part about a music game is the songlist. I'm about halfway through the game the first time through and I have to say, the music is a disappointment. I wasn't expecting too much from GHIII and I'm still very disappointed. In the first GH you had these songs that were made by their guitar solos. You'd play through a difficult song and then just completely get owned by the solo. It sucked because you'd have to play the whole song over again to get to that part just to die again. That culture was mainly preserved over to the second game. But now in the third, there's this feeling that the song selection a bit out of place. There's some dead space in songs where you're not doing anything because theres only a bass line. The boss battles are a new addition. I'm a big fan of Tom Morello and it's awesome to have his uniqueness added to the mix, but honestly the battles aren't exactly fun, mostly because you're battling a computer. I have yet to try it online (I don't know if it's even possible) but I could see that getting interesting. I'll have to wait and see what else is left, but so far it's anything new or exciting.

Finally, I want to comment about the popularity of Guitar Hero. It's become this big thing where the fan base is spreading out beyond video game nerds and music game fans. There are parents, kids, and girlfriends buying this game. Along with that so go the nicheness of the game. It won't be a cult hit anymore. It'll be open to commercialism, as we can see with the licensing of guitars and product names. The store in GHIII is actually called Guitar Center and sports the logo and everything. Of course there are good things that come out of this, such as songs that sound good and aren't covers. (I was disappointed however, when I looked at the RockBand song list, I found a few that are in GHIII as well. I'm not talking about Artists but actually the same songs.) I'm worried about the future of the guitar franchise because I can see it becoming this cash cow where micro-transactions and online downloads flood the market and make it not fun anymore. People like me will avoid buying them in a semi-boycott but as long as there are people buying up products, as useless as they may be, the people making money off it will keep producing. I just really hope that the series doesn't get run completely into the ground and become a shadow of their former self like another Activision/Neversoft game.

Why does only the RockBand XB360 Bundle come with a wired guitar? Thats Crap!
David

Oh, one last thing, I'm using the new Japanese female guitarist, Midori, as my character in GHIII.
As if you couldn't have guessed.