With the original developer leaving to make Rock Band, Activision puts the Neversoft team (the Tony Hawk guys) on Guitar Hero III. The game is still that sort of social experience best had with others and retains the same things from previous games, infact it doesn't really offer much new itself.
Well Guitar Hero III's formula is still the same as
Guitar Hero II. It is still a "match-the-buttons" game where you need to strum the guitar to match the buttons on the screen. Occasionally "star" notes come up that can boost your star power which gives you more points and helps you prevent failing a song if your in trouble. Nothing new in the gameplay department, which is a good thing for the most part, and new additions and features that make the game better than previous versions, in some ways.
For starters, I wouldn't recommend starting your first Guitar Hero game on Guitar Hero III mainly because it is much harder than the previous games. To give you an idea, medium mode is even faster that Guitar Hero 2's medium mode and it feels like all the modes moved up (medium like GH 2's hard and hard like GH 2's expert) which is not a good thing for new comers. It makes sense for them to make it more difficult but it can also turn away some new comers. Although, the increased speed can be helpful to time certain notes, depending on the song. One song is nearly impossible on expert mode, its called "Through the Fire and the Flames" and if you think I'm joking just look at it on youtube.
Guitar Hero III offers some fresh features over its predecessors. Most importantly is the co-op career which allows you to play through the career mode with a friend now. The versus modes are back and you can "battle" a friend with powerups gained and used in the same way as star power in the single player game (things like increasing speed and difficulty). Unfortunately one of the downfalls of the new co-op career mode is that you need to beat it to unlock all the songs in the game, so if you don't know anyone else with a guitar your not gonna be able to unlock all the songs (unless you use cheat codes of course). The career mode is also improved in that there is now somewhat of a story to go along in the game. Theres cut-scenes that make it feel like theres more than just getting to the top but none of these are actually interesting. Of course if your playing Guitar Hero you probably don't care about story anyway. However, there are new boss battles where you play against a Legend of Rock (hence the name of the Game) such as Slash and the guy from Audioslave/Rage Against the Machine. You can unlock these guitarists when you beat them but you can't replay the boss battles which are actually kind of fun, but pointless. They are also played in the same way that the versus battles are.
In Guitar Hero III the menus also looked more polished and well put-together than the previous versions. The graphics are crisper but aren't really important in a game like this. The notes are also more forgiving so you have more time to hit a note which is nice, especially since its faster than Guitar Hero II.
The audio is obviously much more important than the visuals in a game like this. It is about personal preference to an extent, but there are many songs everyone can enjoy. Classics like "Welcome to the Jungle" by Guns and Roses and Metallica's "One". Theres also newer songs like "Ruby" by the Kaiser Chiefs and "Before I Forget" by Slipknot. Bands like Rage Against the Machine, Iron Maiden, Alice Cooper, and Pearl Jam all make an appearance in the game. There are much more big name bands and rock anthems in Guitar Hero III over the previous Guitar Hero games and the best part is that their all done by the original band and not a cover band like in the 3 previous games. But again, there is some personal preference to the matter and I personally like Guitar Hero II's songlist better not because the songs are necessarily better but because they are more fun to play. I'm sure theres people who would say I'm wrong but I'm not trying to dodge Guitar Hero III's songlist because it is full of a ton of great tunes that are worth playing over and over again, my favorites are "Even Flow" by Pearl Jam, "Bulls on Parade" by Rage Against the Machine, and "Cult of Personality" by Living Color.
All-in-all I wouldn't recommend getting this game for the PC, but if you have a 360 or PS3 and you loved the previous games than theres no reason not to get it. If this was for the 360 or PS3 I would certainly give it a 3 or 4 but since I got the PC version I have to give it a 2. The reasoning behind it is that this game is nearly a direct port of the 360 version and thus demands like one. It requires a pretty beefy PC to ensure that there is no lag or stutters in the game and its really not worth upgrading a PC for Guitar Hero, especially when it plays better on the console/TV anyway. My laptop has an 8600GTM and a 2.0 GHz Core 2 Duo and can run Crysis on medium settings at 1440x900. However, I can't seem to run Guitar Hero 3 very well on low settings with no crowd at 1024x768. The new 1.1 update should offer some improvement but it doesn't make it better than the console version. The lag and stuttering is so horrendous that I need to drop the score. I wouldn't discourage anyone from buying a Guitar Hero game because of its social aspect that makes it fun either playing or watching it, but don't buy it for the PC unless it is your only option and your dieing for some Guitar Hero.
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