Guitar Hero 3 is a fun and worthwhile game. While it's certainly not original and the track list does feature some stinkers, but there is a lot of rocking fun to be had. Neversoft did their best work in adding the details that give GH 3 a lot of personality and replay value. Click 'read more' for the full review.

My first play through Guitar Hero 3 was completing the co-op career with my wife. She started on easy and I started on medium, and the game defaults to the lowest difficulty for its unlockables, so I essentially first saw it with its coop track list on the easy difficulty. To be honest, at first I was underwhelmed. It just wasn’t as fresh as Guitar Hero 2 had felt to me (of course, GH 2 was my first of the GH installments). I also thought the track list was good, but not great, and some of the encores were very strangely placed. Why did I have to complete Welcome to the Jungle by Guns and Roses and One by Metallica to play an encore by a band I’d never heard of?

Last night I finished playing through the solo career on medium, and I am now much more impressed. First, the full track list available through medium and higher difficulties is much better. The last couple sets in particular are great featuring Disturbed, Slipknot, White Zombie, Metallica, Slayer, Iron Maiden, and Charlie Daniels.

However, what I really like are the details.

After beating the game the credits roll and instead of watching passively you get to play the bonus track you just unlocked: Through the Fire and Flames by Dragonforce. I managed pretty well on medium, but the track is insanely difficult. Just for kicks I loaded it up on expert. My first time I failed at 0%. I’m not joking. My next try was 1%. I decided to move on to other things after that. I see why there’s an achievement for completing it at this difficulty and why it’s called “The Inhuman Achievement.”

The boss battles are pretty fun. This was my first exposure to guitar attacks (the battle equivalent of star power) and I like using strategy (like screwing over my opponent as he’s about to earn a guitar attack to use on me) and multiple attacks to fail my opponent. I can’t wait to take part in some online battles.

The short and dialogue-less cutscenes are mildly entertaining. It’s rather neat to see a short description of why you’re playing at a particular venue.

One of the things I like the most is the store.

Not only is there a huge number of guitars and finishes available in the store now, but they also have detailed descriptions that give the history or significance of the item.

Just like in GH 2, you can purchase short videos from the store. I purchased two videos detailing the involvement of Slash and Tom Morello in the making of GH 3. I really enjoyed both of them. Seeing how they used motion capture to record movements of the guitarists was very interesting. It was also interesting to see Slash and Tom Morello talking about GH 3 and guitar/video game playing like normal human beings. Fair or not, I’ve always thought of Tom Morello as some raving political lunatic, but he actually seems very normal in the video.

One thing I really enjoyed was creating a faux Jimi Hendrix character with Xavier Stone. Obviously, he is already made to look like Hendrix. I went to the store and bought his outfit that looks very similar to outfits Hendrix used to wear, such as this one

Next, I bought a Flying V from the store, which along with the Fender Stratocaster is a guitar that Hendrix was well-known for playing. Last, I went to buy a finish for the Flying V and found the option to buy one of Hendrix’s hand-painted Flying V designs, similar or identical to the one pictured here:

It’s really cool how much detail you can put into designing a character. As usual, I also bought a Les Paul Custom and the Zakk Wylde “bullseye” finish. Coincidentally, Izzy Sparks (who is much more, ahem, feminine now than in GH 2) also has a black/white striped outfit that looks cool with Zakk’s Les Paul. Unlockable characters like Slash also come with their own guitars.

Right now I’m trying to use the VIP code you get from the GH 3 menu to link to my stats on guitarhero.com. Last night the website didn’t recognize my code. We’ll see if it acts any better today.

I do not think Neversoft did an outstanding job with the achievements. Completing tasks at higher difficulties does not unlock achievements for the same task at lower difficulties. Why do I need to beat the career and five-star every song on easy when I’ve already done it on medium? This achievement system fosters long sessions of grinding through unchallenging gameplay…at least for fanatical completionists. Fortunately, the achievements on GH 3 are so numerous and so “all over the place” that I know I’ll never get 1000/1000 points, so I probably won’t go back and get them. Furthermore, some of them are just so plain difficult that most people will never get them. And there’s so many! And they get you so few points (generally 5-15) for each one! I am just not a fan of the achievements, but I’ll live. Personally, I think a “good” player should be able to earn 1000 points in any game with a lot of blood, sweat, and tears. However, in the Guitar Hero series only the top 0.5% of players will be able to do this. In this game you had better be inhuman, literally, if you plan to get all of the achievements.

The new wireless guitar is nice, but it takes some getting used to. Large "back" and "start" buttons are definitely a welcomed new feature. The whammy bar is much stiffer and the guitar is heavier, lending to it feeling less like a toy. The fret buttons feel significantly different. They are slightly stiffer than the GH 2 Xplorer model (slightly more resistance to being pressed) and don't stick up off the neck quite as far. Overall, the changes feel positive, but I cursed it for several songs before I re-learned the nuances that allow me to complete difficult sections.

Hammer-on and pull-off notes are much more visible now (they glow), and I think they may be more consistent as well. On some sections you absolutely must use these techniques, but they're more enjoyable now and you have confidence the game will respond accurately to your frettings.

Overall, I’m much happier with GH 3 than when I began, and I’m looking forward to getting deeper into the hard career and then the expert career. Unfortunately, it appears they slightly stepped the difficulty up another notch over GH 2, so much like GH 2 I may be doomed to leave a couple songs on expert unfinished (damn Hangar 18!).