With the 3rd installment of Guitar Hero, Red Octane continues with gameplay that gamers love or are hate by this point.
As a result, I was really taken aback by how good the game is. I actually play guitar, and this was a real treat for me. The gameplay is easy to note: 5 buttons, strumming up and down, whammy bar for added bonus. The simplicity of it is really what makes it work. You definitely have to work hard at it, but the satisfaction you get in return is HUGE. There are points where I found myself actually rocking to the songs because it was challenging, but still fun at the same time.
The soundtrack is pretty solid. Some modern, some classic, it's all good. The ability to do add-ons with downloadable content is definitely a plus, although we'll see how the pricing works out. What would be great is if there was a feature to make your own Guitar Hero tracks from songs you choose. For example, somebody wants to play more Dragonforce, so they can just make the track for the game and design the note patterns. That would be a great community-based component to the game.
The other train of though is: been there, done that. The novelty of the game is definitely starting to wear off, if not already gone. The addition of boss battles is great, where you use attacks like broken strings and lefty-switch instead of star power, but it's all basically the same as the previous games. Also, online is a really great feature, although there's been a lot of problems with that lately. Hopefully that will be fixed soon.
All in all, people from my perspective, who have never had the other games, should definitely buy this. It's a fun game to play by yourself, and only gets better when you have friends over. You can even go online to play with others, if you can get it to work. Otherwise, you could probably skip this game and wait for GH: IV or go try Rock Band. If I can get an extra $200 I'll try and review that game, but for now, I strongly recommend Guitar Hero III for anyone that has yet to have the full experience of this kinds of game.