Yuribou on games!: Guitar Hero III – Whose socks does it rock and by how much?
Posted on | December 6, 2007 | 15 Comments |
| I’m not sure where this comic is from but it’s awesome…
I know its fairly off topic for my blog, but since I got it recently, I’ve been dying to get a few things off my chest about it… I’ve never really blogged much about gaming, but it is somehow related, since it was my Animesoc back in Cambridge that initially got me into the whole rhythm game malarkey in the first place.
I played the first Guitar Hero and though it was fantastic – probably had the best song list of the three games as a whole but failed in a few aspects, the least of which was that it was too easy and the slightly niggling lack of a good hammer on/pull off system. Guitar Hero 2 had a great hammer on/pull off sensitivity which made doing solos a whole lot more satisfying and pretty much made the interface system as perfect as it was going to be. Unfortunately, the song list was a little more eclectic (though it did have some awesome extras like “Bang Camaro’s “Push push Lady Lightning”). Also, since it took me till almost GH3’s release date to finally get round to completing Hangar 17 on expert, it was pleasantly challenging to say the least.
So, in anticipation of a better song list on the next game, I tied on my ROCK BANDANNA and ordered GH3…
My first whine? The unfortunate thing about the PS2 version of GH3 is that it seems to be a pretty direct port from the PS3 version, and suffers from the fact that the interface and controls seem to have been designed for PS3 processing power and PS3 peripherals and are less well supported by the PS2. So far, the game has crashed completely on me three times (an error I have never before encountered on my PS2). The graphics seem to take an age to load and the game itself takes a good 5 minutes to get from power switch to song select.
The control system seems also to have suffered. Hitting the strum bar with any kind of force now results in hitting the note you intended to hit plus an unwanted miss as the strum bar rebounds – ruining your multipliers.
On the plus side, the song list is fairly good, with classics such as the Rolling Stones’ “Paint it Black” and Muse’s “Knights of Cydonia” being the highlights. However, they seem to have picked some strange choices for the better known bands. For instance, it would definitely have been nice to see “Tribute” rather than “The Metal” for Tenacious D’s contribution – but never mind. I also loved the little touches that made the game a little different from the predecessors. First, the little FMVs between stages (which are different between coop mode and single player) lend a sense of story to the whole shebang; secondly, the fact that coop mode features different (exclusive) songs and lastly, the part that I felt missing from GH2 career mode – GUITAR BATTLES!
But unfortunately, for me, the good points keep being overshadowed by those niggling bad ones which keep cropping up and accumulating:
- The fact that star power now doesn’t make your character do anything, (except stand there and look like citrus fruit). I loved the awesome moves that characters did in previous games; now it feels like the crowd are giving extra cheers cause someone pressed the reverb pedal. You get the feeling that the game developers were thinking “Ahh, they don’t watch the character animations while they’re playing anyway – we can cut that bit out and save some time for a pre-Christmas release…)
- The final battle is hard. And I mean DEPRESSINGLY OVERPOWERED, RAPED SUDDENLY IN THE ANUS, DIAMOND PLATED TITANIUM HARD. This is made more annoying since the preceding songs are really not very challenging in the least (with the possible exception of “Raining Blood”) and the problems I have with the PS2 controller. Talk about sharp learning curves…
- No Freezepop track on the Bonus list!
- The Killers with their STUPID RETARD JESUS SONG on the main song list
- WHERE IS PANDORA????
All in all, GH3 is a very playable game and you can see that the developers did go through some effort to put out a few new things in order to compete with the upcoming (or if you are American, already released) Rock Band. However, the PS2 version at least suffers from a little more of the “rush syndrome” than you would expect of a seasoned company such as Activision. If you were in my situation, my advice would be to skip this game and stick with GH2. If you have a PS3, then I would hope that at least some of the little niggles would be ironed out and there would be less to complain about, but otherwise, just get Rock Band.
Where are you Pandora – my estranged love??
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15 Responses to “Yuribou on games!: Guitar Hero III – Whose socks does it rock and by how much?”
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December 7th, 2007 @ 12:07 am
To answer the not-quite-stated question: http://www.xkcd.com/70/
XKCD rocks, from start to finish.
December 7th, 2007 @ 12:20 am
Wait wait wait — NO PANDORA?
She was the reason I fell in love with Guitar Hero!
(GH3 != bought)
December 7th, 2007 @ 1:08 am
I have GH3, but it’s really mostly played by my stepmother in our house xD Great game though *thumbs up*
December 7th, 2007 @ 11:49 pm
Quite a few of the unlockable bands from GH1&2 contain Harmonix staffers, including Freezepop, so they all went over to Rock Band.
December 7th, 2007 @ 11:52 pm
Time to get a 360?
December 8th, 2007 @ 12:05 am
If only they would have put a sleep song on it like “jerusalem”.
O well there is always finding out a way to get xbox 360 to play burned tracks in gh.
December 8th, 2007 @ 2:13 am
I’ve bought it to 360, and sure it is a fun game. Not anything I would play seriously though, just fun sometimes to listen to some good music while playing that nice wireless guitar.
And just for the record, the 360 version got zero of the problems you mention.
December 9th, 2007 @ 2:50 pm
I believe that the characters do something extra when you use star power, at least in the xb360 version, I don’t know how often they do because I don’t use star power that often unless I need it (Raining Blood) but I am pretty sure that it is in there and that it is character specific now making all the characters do something unique.
December 9th, 2007 @ 7:16 pm
Oh man, I’m with kikimaru… no pandora? I ain’t buying this shit if my blue haired goth goddess isn’t gonna rock my tunes. Fuck that shit.
December 11th, 2007 @ 9:59 am
I think that you’ve pretty much nailed it much better than even the character in GH3 who is imposing as Judy ever could. Lady Lightning as performed by Bang Camaro is in itself a bolt of lightning out of the blue. Had someone told me that what I was hearing was Angus Young and AC/DC with Brian Johnson taking the night off, I would have been sure that they were right.
I’m still pretty pissed about what they did to Pandy in GH2 as they must have thought it would be really cool to take this pretty smoking mass of polygons and turn her into some kind of freak. Maybe they just went ahead and put her out of her misery.
Kudos on beating Davey Megadeth in GH2. That’s precisely where I am stuck and it stinks to get so close to making it through that song only to once again fail it.
December 11th, 2007 @ 11:59 am
I’ve played a bit of Guitar Hero III on the PS2. I agree that it does seem to suffer from being a rush job – I’m wondering if the XBox 360 version is any better, but I somehow doubt we’ll be buying it to check (we only have PS2 guitar controllers).
My initial impressions were, in the following order:
(1) what the hell did they do to Judy Nails’ face?
(2) I think they forgot to animate the drummer. (No kidding – he has about two animations, poor guy.)
(3) …dear lord the initial tracks are tedious.
I’ve heard good stuff about the songs later in the lineup, so I may try to slog through it, but for some reason the initial lineup of tracks didn’t grab me as it did for the previous games.
Maybe it’s our sound setup meaning that I can barely hear the guitar line I’m playing over the backing track and the guitar clicking. Or maybe – and I hope this isn’t the case – the tracks (on Hard, at least) really aren’t all that interesting.
December 12th, 2007 @ 4:04 pm
lulz. I thought the final battle in GHIII was fairly easy, but I am an obsessive GH player and have like 46 of the 50 achievements from GHII and you are probably not.
I don’t know what they did to Pandora. Midori makes me want to rip my hair out. And put it on her, so it won’t like a never-washed frizzled poof.
GHIII and GHII are made by two different companies, which definitely explains a lot. Harmonix, which made GHII, is a company focused on the music aspect; they were bought by MTV and recently came out with Rock Band, which you may have heard of. =P Activision bought RedOctane(which made the peripherals for GHII) and gave GHIII to one of their own divisions called Neversoft, which had made some random games before but I don’t remember what. Anyway, then they came out with GHIII, and it was all different and not what I was expecting, but I got used to it after awhile. Tralala.
December 13th, 2007 @ 6:10 am
Midori + Knights of Cydonia= URGH. There was no way on earth that I could take the song seriously [and I love that song, that song is EPIC] after seing Midori ‘rock out’.
*sad face*
December 13th, 2007 @ 6:11 am
Also, I have to add- is anyone loving that Pontiac Garage stage location? Yeah, yeah, me too- I just love over-the-top product placement that doesn’t even TRY to be conspicuous XD
December 14th, 2007 @ 3:43 am
Chlipop: YES. Mostly I love the fact that they placed their total-too-poppy-and-unclassic-for-Guitar-Hero songs in that section (When You Were Young by the Killers and Miss Murder by AFI) and the giant flames. Although speaking of product placement, I was sad that there were boss battles with Tom Morello and Slash. I mean, cool, but seriously? It just doesn’t feel right to be “battling” rock legends on a video game. (Also if they were gonna do it, they should’ve done it with Eddy from Iron Maiden in there. Yes.)