As with a lot of gamers, I'm fed up with the whole Guitar Hero thing. After countless iterations of the same basic formula being repeated with only minor tweaks each time, the plastic controller doesn't cut it anymore. That and the fact that the skills you develop are only useful in that particular context, which in itself is pretty useless. I beat Through the Fire and Flames on expert (barely, but still), but I'm still struggling with Wish You Were Here on an actual guitar.

Since I'm clearly rambling, let's get to the point. Harmonix recently announced Rock Band 3, which is due this holiday, and I was like "Meh, seen it", but after some research I found out that they were bringing actual guitars to the table. At first I was sceptical to how they were going to implement this in a game, and that it would either be way to complicated, or way to stupid.

I was sort of right on the former, but they have made some smart decicions regarding the difficulty. I saw someone playing on easy mode or whatever, and it looked reasonably manageable. The expert mode, however, looked about as easy as... well, playing a real guitar. What's neat is that this will actually teach you how to play a real guitar, you know, instead of a plastic one.

My first concern is the pricing. I'm unsure wherther or not Harmonix has announced a price for the peripherals, but I'm guessing it's gonna be a hell of a lot more than what we're used to. But, the cost is what it is, and I would rather spend a large amount of money for a solid guitar, than some cheap knock off, which brings me to...

Quality. This could make or break the game, if they put some effort into replicating a real guitar, or better yet, allow you to plug in your own guitar (assuming you have one), then that could be truly awesome, but if not, then they better make sure that theirs works just as good. I guess only time will tell.

And that is why I think Rock Band 3 could be a revolution for the rhythm genre, and it makes me wonder how it will evolve from here. Maybe in 10 years, every gamer will be a rock star just waiting to happen, or the much more likely outcome, just another bloak with a destroyed guitar lying in the closed, because remember kids, playing guitar is fu*king hard.