The Antagonist has 9 chronicles

1. Guitar Hero 3: Legends of Rock Review
   

   Player Chronicle -- Posted on Dec 17 2007

   The newest genre to video games over the past couple years has been music and rhythm games. Probably the most beloved franchise in this genre is guitar hero. Guitar Hero 3 was release a little while ago by Neversoft. This had many fans of the series worried because the guitar hero license was always handled by Harmonix Music, but they went off to produce Rock Band. Can Neversoft pick up where Harmonix left off and continue this great series? Well yes they do, to a certain extent.
   
   
   
   Guitar Hero 3: Legends of Rock does a good job and sticking to a formula that works. Nothing much has changed between Guitar Hero 2 and 3. You still have your guitar with five fret buttons and a strum bar, and notes still wiz down the screen as you try to play in time with the guitar track of the song. What has changed is of course the song lists. And for the most pat Guitar Hero 3 has one of the strongest play lists in the entire series to date with a good mix of old and new rock. The mix consists of bands such as Santana, The Rolling Stones, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Sex Pistols, Pearl Jam, Social Distortion, the list goes on and on.
   
   
   
   When playing your choice song from the excellent list provided, you will have the opportunity to pick from four difficulty settings, easy, medium, hard and expert. As in the other guitar heroes easy and medium are a great place for beginners to start from. Medium is just a little bit tougher then other guitar heroes but still provides a good learning ground for the evolving player. It is in hard and expert that the game really starts to get ridiculous especially in expert. Hard and expert are pumped way up compared to Guitar Hero 2. Expert should only be attempted by those who have unbelievable shredding skills.
   
   
   
   The venues that you play your performances in all have a distinct look to them with good variation in-between. Unfortunately the crowds that you play in front of are not as great. The crowd usually consists of four or five people duplicated a dozen times, all doing one or two animations. It just really takes away from the experience when the camera goes out to the crowd and you see a group of twenty people doing the exact same animation side by side. Aside from that the guitar player’s animations and the lip syncing from the lead singer are just fantastic. The only draw back from the band is the drummer, whose motions seem choppy and dull.
   
   
   
   The career mode in GH3 does something that the previous guitar heroes didn’t, tell a story. This may look like a great idea on paper, but when it was instituted into the game the result is very poor. The story is told through cartoonish cut scenes where there is absolutely no voice acting besides a series of grunts made by the characters. Almost every played will be compelled to skip of the cut scenes because no matter what happens in the story, it does not affect how you play the game in anyway. The only thing that changes as you progress though the career is the venues you play in, but you’re too busy trying to hit the notes that most of the time you don’t even notice the changes to the venues. As you progress through the campaign, you will recognize why they called it Legends of Rock, because every now and then you will be challenged by a rock legend such as Slash, Tom Morello and, and, and I guess that’s actually it. For a game that is called Legends of Rock to only have two actual legends is very disappointing. If you don’t feel like doing the career by yourself you can always have a friend join you and play through the co-op career. The co-op career tells a different story, which is still weak at best, but enables you to unlock different songs then you would in the single player career. A downside to the co-op career is that you cannot do it over Xbox Live or and such service. It would have be a great addition to be able to play career with a friend over Xbox Live.
   
   
   
   Besides the career mode, Guitar Hero 3 offers up new styles of play, one of which is battle mode. Battle mode is a two person mode that essentially enables you to battle your friends with certain attack variations. To gain an attack you must hit a certain labels notes in order. Once you have acquired the attack, you activate it in a similar shaking of the guitar you would normal do to use star power. The effect of these attacks ranges from things like double the notes, upping the difficulty, or having the player tap a button repeatedly missing notes in the process. There is one problem with this mode. If one of the two players is any less skilled then the other, the battle can be over within a matter of thirty seconds, because chances are they will not be able to recover from the attacks quickly enough. Having said that though, if you do have two evenly matched opponents battle mode can be a lot of fun. Battle mode is also used in the boss battles you encounter in the career mode, which really makes you feel like you are having it out with them in a superb shredding contest.
   
   
   
   New to the series is the ability to play online with your friends. As stated earlier you can not play career mode online but you can still play the other modes such as battle and face-off mode. The game holds its frame rate very well over Xbox Live with only minor slow downs or glitches.
   
   
   
   So overall, Guitar Hero 3: Legends of Rock takes the approach of if it aint broke don’t fix it. The game play remains the same from Guitar Hero 2 to 3 which is still great game play. The career mode makes an attempt but does little to changes the standard tiered unlocking of songs and there are some other things like online play and battle mode thrown in there. In the end Guitar Hero 3: Legends of Rock is still a great game with one of the best song lists in the series, but it is starting to get to the point where it feels like we keep hitting the same nail on the head. Guitar Hero 3 is a no brainer for fans of the series and new fans, but for those of you looking for something more out of this installment, you maybe disappointed in the same formula presented to you before.
   
   
   
   OVERALL: 7.9/10
   
   
   
   Game Play: 8.0/10
   
   Graphics: 7.2/10
   
   Sound: 9.0/10
   
   Presentation: 8.5/10
   
   Value: 8.0/10

   
   

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The Antagonist has 5 comment s on this chronicle.

1. Joe
   Posted On Jan 03 2008

   I thought this game sounded lame, but you've convinced me otherwise.

2. Lt.Mcginn
   Posted On Dec 19 2007

   I absolutely had to show this review to all my friends, and all 20 of them think this is the best gh3 review they have seen on the net. Absolute props man, i wish i could recruit such writer to my team but i am sure GoG is paying you more then what i could handle. Are they? Because you have sensational reviwing skills. I am a frequen GH3 gamer and i have to say you hit the button with this review. Once again, props my friend

3. Dynafire
   Posted On Dec 18 2007

   That's a pretty good assessment of GH3. I would like to include that online battle mode needs to be fixed. It is freaking impossible to find anyone who will battle you on the same difficulty. Whenever I pick expert, they will always back down to medium or easy. (rarely they will select hard) I don't care all that much about winning, but when it's absolutely impossible, it's just no fun. I don't know why they didn't set up battle mode like Pro-faceoff, where you know the difficulty you will both be playing before you jump into the game; it just doesn't make any sense. But anyways, nice review. Hope to see you online sometime.

4. The Antagonist
   Posted On Dec 17 2007

   Thanks agian for the positive feedback Ben. It's nice to see someone actually reads my reviews, as well as having a similar opinion as me.

5. BEN
   Posted On Dec 17 2007

   Very nice review. I had alot of the same opinions as you did and as much as I enjoyed the new song list, it was basically Guitar Hero 2.5
   
   
   
   As always, great writing and keep them coming. You should hook up an account on GetYourGamez.com and review more games!