Rock out with your co.....ntroller out!
The graphics, while still not groundbreaking, are a giant leap ahead of Guitar Hero II. The physics engine, now powered by Havok, is great. Now the characters hair, or clothing additions like chains sway in the wind, responding to the rocker's movements. The light shows and smoke effects are more epic and awe inspiring than before, too bad you'll be paying too much attention to the notes to truly appreciate it most of the time. All of the characters, guitars, concert venues, and even the crowds, have received a fresh coat of paint and look a bit better. What truly makes everything look better is the increased lighting/particle effects and highly increased amounts of detail put into everything. Its essentially as great looking as it would ever need to be.
The soundtrack has in some ways gotten better, and in others ways gotten worse. What I mean by this is that the song list has become much more main stream. While this can be good in the case of the welcome additions of Guns and Roses, ZZ Top, Tenacious D, Santana, Cream, and Muse, it is rather disappointing in terms of lesser known groups. In fact the only lesser known song I truly enjoyed this time around is Through The Fire and Flames by Dragonforce. I really wish they had another Dethklok song this time around as well, Murmaider would have been an awesome addition. So while the song list is less creative this time around, its still great, and better than Rock Band's in my opinion, although some DLC could easily change this.
The game-play remains essentially the same with some minor tweaks. The first one that comes to mind is battle mode, in which star power is switched out for power ups that make your opponent fail, this is fun and different at first, but it gets old fast. You use this feature in every boss fight and in multi-player if you want. It makes multi-player more competitive, but I prefer to try and make the song sound good rather than make someone else suck at it, but I guess its a nice feature to have. There's unlock-able guitars, songs, and characters again. I didn't find many unlock-able songs that I wanted, but I got them all anyway. The guitars you can unlock are much more imaginative and unique this time around, but the Axe deodorant guitars are just shameful. There's some new unlock-able characters like Slash, and some original characters were taken out, but my personal favorite Grim Ripper is still here in all his glory. The difficulty has stayed the same, but the song choice is much for difficult, anyone who has attempted Raining Blood or Through The Fire and Flames on Hard or Expert can confirm this. I really like the drums idea that Rock Band has brought to the table, and wish Guitar Hero had done the same. Basically, the game-play is rock solid, I just wish the developers did more with it.
It really is a great game and if you're a Guitar Hero or music fan then you'll probably love this. Despite my small issues with the game I still had a lot of enjoyment with it, and still do from time to time.