Get ready to let out your inner rock star!
There are also plenty of master tracks featured in the game which is a huge bonus to a fan of any song in the soundtrack. The Sex pistols and Living Color even re-recorded a song each which is exclusive to this game. They both sound sharp but I think the original recording of 'Anarchy in the UK' is better.
You'll get to play the songs with a guitar shaped controller with five buttons on the guitar's neck. It basically boils down to you holding down a colored button and hitting the strum bar at the right time. For example, if a yellow note is coming at you then all you do is hold the yellow button down and click the strum bar at the right time.
There is more to it than that because you'll encounter chords, pull-offs and hammer-ons in your quest to become a rock icon. So let's say a green note, red note and a yellow note are coming at you but they are very close to one another. You do not have to strum all three of those notes-all you do is play the green note normally and then just press the red and yellow buttons without strumming. It'll take some time to get comfortable but thankfully the tutorial does a good job at explaining the basics.
Guitar Hero 3 is much harder than the last two games in the series. (especially on hard and expert) If there's one reason not to play this game then it's the difficulty, for sure. I was an experienced Guitar Hero 2 player and I find it pretty much impossible to beat this game on hard. The first few groups of songs ease you nicely into the game and the last group is basically suicide on expert unless you've got six fingers on each of your hands.
You won't spend much time looking at anything other than your incoming notes but it doesn't change the fact that Guitar Hero 3 is a mixed bag in terms of graphics. From an artistic standpoint I think it looks excellent. All of the venues are creative and usually have lots going on in the environment. Guitar Hero 3's venues are easily a hundred times better than Guitar Hero 1 or 2's, in my opinion. I'm not going to go into any detail because it's worth experiencing for yourself.
From a technical point of view I have mixed reactions. It's true that Tom Morello and Slash's moves were motion captured during the development process but Slash's animations are very boring. Apart from that, the singer in your band is so incredibly ugly that it's likely to distract you. He has a chin so massive that it would make Jay Leno jealous. There are also some frame-rate issues during gameplay which is unfortunate. If you know anything about rhythm games then you'll know that timing is everything. Any sort of slight interruption in this genre is unacceptable. It won't mess you up too bad but it's worth mentioning.
When you're not playing Guitar Hero 3 alone then you can check out it's multiplayer options. You can play co-op as well as online. Co-op has one of you playing bass/rhythm guitar and the other guy playing lead guitar. It's a lot more fun that I would have thought, and it's easily one of Guitar Hero 3's biggest strengths, in my opinion. If that's not your thing then you can hop online with someone who could be halfway across the world. I noticed no lag at all which is a huge relief.
You can have a competition of who can get the higher score in a song or battle each other. Battle is a new addition in Guitar Hero 3 and it's thoroughly uninteresting. Instead of star power there will be power ups that you gain by hitting a pre-set series of notes. You unleash your power up on your opponent by tilting the guitar upwards. Power ups are designed to mess up your opponent as much as possible but it just isn't satisfying. You can break their strings, make them play lefty, make their amp overload and more.
This game is basically a love letter to every Guitar Hero fan out there. If you're a fan of the series then this is a must own. If you've never played a Guitar Hero game before then I don't recommend that you buy it due to the harsh difficulty. I think you're better off playing it at a friend's house first if you're new to the series. Thanks for reading.