Guitar Pro-Skater 3: Legends of the Hawk
User Rating: 6 | Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock PS2
I have nothing against Neversoft or Activision or the Tone Hawk games, which I love. I'm just comparing this game to Guitar Hero 2 and, it's very disappointing to me. I love coop games. Even since Contra for the NES, I fell in love to being able to tackle something difficult with a friend by your side. I love the coop mode in Guitar Hero 2. Just play through the game one time to get the songs and then go play whichever song you want in any difficulty you want. Perfect. When I read that Guitar Hero 3 would have a new coop campaign mode, I was thrilled. After going through coop completely and passing One with my friend after trying it for about ten times on hard, the game ended. It just told me to try it on a harder difficulty setting. Well, that sucks. I not only don't get to play ALL the songs in the game, I also don't get to play that famous one (Through the Fire and Flames). No, it would be stupid to think that when friends get together to play a game coop, they would want to play all the songs together. No. Obviously, they want to play all through single player career mode one at a time. DUH. That's disappointing. While playing through the different songs, I noticed that on some songs, the frets don't make any sense. I find myself playing things I don't understand. My eyes and my ears start to argue. Also, what the hell did this people do with the hammer ons? After playing through My Name is Jonas on hard, I saw the most absurd use of hammer ons in my life. Not that I'm an expert guitar player, but you can't pull something like that in Guitar Hero 2. There is something very important in video games that's called immersion. When a game has a lot of immersion, you forget you're playing a game, and just live the experience. GH2 made me feel that; made me feel that I was actually playing a real guitar. GH3 don't. Hammer ons like that, remind me that I'm playing a game. It's not that they used a lot of hammer ons, it's that you actually hammer on 32 notes every like 20 seconds. The game is a little bit harder than it's predecessors. If there is one thing Neversoft does good, is making a game hard (try getting everything in any Tony Hawk). But the added difficulty don't come necessarily from harder songs. Some other stuff helps. There are a lot of distractions in GH3. From the meter that tells you how many notes your hitting while you're playing them to some guy that jumps on stage and then jumps back to the crowd, which would have been cool if you could actually look at him and he jumps or he wouldn't jump behind the note chart.
The graphics look a little more polished but the animation makes me want to cry. To see Johnny Napalm so calm and actually NOT moving around after seeing him for three games jump around like a maniac was saddening. I actually liked that. Now, none of the characters move. They stay in the same place. The drummer sucks. He looks so fake I want to vomit. Now you can actually play as Slash. Yeah! Oh, wait, you can't actually see him while playing and when you can, the stupid retarded-looking singer gets in the way. Also, when I used my star power, it felt so weak, as opposed to very powerful in Guitar Hero 2. The encore is presented now with a stupid animation of hands and people yelling "Yay!" Oh my god. You play in a prison and the inmates are screaming at you "yay!"... All of this, tell me that they weren't taking this game seriously.
The sounds is pretty rich. No complains there. The soundtrack is the only reason to get this game. It has a lot of music that you were supposed to have in your collection years ago anyways. Yes, that good.
Overall the game is a great experience. Playing alone or with friends you're going to have a good time with the music alone. It's just that I expected more Guitar Hero an less Tony Hawk. I hope they pay more attention to the next installment. 
