You know I was all over this the day it was released a month ago and since I have a life outside of video games, it took me about three weeks to beat it at Medium difficulty. Currently I’m playing a song or two at Hard as practice, then trying to get five stars at Medium on the Career Mode for my band, Escape from Beulah.
This is the first version with Red Octane’s new developer Neversoft since MTV bought Harmonix (as we speak, there are plans for Activision and Blizzard to merge, probably to compete with EA). Although its title is a sequel, it’s an independent game rebuilt from the ground up for an Xbox sadly. I have the PS2 version which has one song per set ripped out, the surprise appearance of Bret Michaels removed and it takes an annoying amount of time to load between tracks. Neversoft also ditched two of my favorite characters, Pandora and Eddie Knox. Judy Nails does takes on some of Pandora’s attributes to make up for the loss. Casey, Axel, Lars, Xavier, Izzy and Johnny remain. Then comes the newcomer, Midori, a Japanese woman in the vein of PuffyAmiYumi or Shonen Knife wearing too many accessories.
Most of GH III plays the same way as its three predecessors in Career Mode: complete three out of four songs, do the encore and then collect money to buy new songs, gear, characters or outfits. This time the franchise owners decided to add something that ruins the game for me…Battle Mode. Taking a page from the movie Crossroads (a cheesy movie from 1986 yet it’s so awful, it might as well be attributed to the 2002 Britney Spears dud), after every couple of venues, you must take on a famous guitarist to advance, eventually ending up in Hell. Since it’s a battle, you and your opponent sabotage each other by picking up various attack notes which are then used by flipping the guitar in the same manner as activating Star Power. The attacks vary: raising the difficulty, breaking strings, flipping the orientation of the notes, etc. Personally I found this lamer and on par with the asinine slow-motion effect in NHL 2003 by EA. Whoever made the decision to implement this doesn’t know jack shit about music. When musicians compete, they try outplay each other. Sabotaging a competitor doesn’t make a guitarist great neither, just a bigger jerk. It also doesn’t matter, if you can’t defeat the “bosses” of Tom Morello (Audioslave, Rage Against the Machine) or Slash (Guns n’ Roses, Velvet Revolver), you’re stuck until you do. Once I figured out how use the numerous “attacks,” I beat Tom after three attempts but knocked out Slash by the second verse…there’s pure fantasy. Thankfully, the famous guitarists bear no grudges and join you during the encore songs “Bulls on Parade” and “Welcome to the Jungle.”
Remember the part about Hell I mentioned earlier? The finale is a duel against the band’s agent Lou who is the Devil’s best guitarist…in disguise! I could live with this cliche, just not the song of “Devil Went down to Georgia.” Again, who was the doofus to approve this? “Freebird” at the end of GH2 made sense from the game’s mindset even though I hated the song. Using a Charlie Daniels’ Country crossover to end this was outright idiocy. It would’ve been smarter to find something with just devil in the title such as Van Halen’s “Running with the Devil” or INXS’s “Devil Inside.” Even something more obscure like Face to Face’s “The Devil You Know” would fit the game’s attitude better.
Career Mode isn’t GH III’s selling point anyway, playing with friends through co-operative or competitive mode is. I have yet to try this due to everyone’s schedule plus Somara is often intimidated by the gap in our abilities. So far, Battle Mode isn’t the default setting for competitive play which was a relief. I am itching to play Co-Operative Career Mode with someone because I don’t care if I’m the lead guitarist or bass player. Another great benefit is the increased number of master tracks over covers, especially on the material from the Nineties on: jamming out to the real version of “My Name is Jonas” by Weezer or “Ruby” by the Kaiser Chiefs, awesome! Since it’s a video game trying to appeal to a wide audience, the song selections are equally broad: standards of the Sixties, Seventies and Eighties mixed in with awful Nu Metal (Disturbed sucks!) and decent Alternative, “Cherub Rock” by Smashing Pumpkins is harder than it sounds.
GH III is certainly better than the Eighties version that was whipped up in a hurry this Summer, just not by much. I understand the need to innovate otherwise this transforms into Madden with updated songs but the developers should’ve listened to music fans and musicians not to video game-a-holics; people obsessed at “winning” yet haven’t got a clue on the spirit of music. Maybe it’s better on the newer consoles thanks to the downloading options of additional songs. I doubt it though. I’m afraid this franchise is approaching a point of diminishing returns and Rock Band will overtake it because it brings in more of the elements people wanted, namely creating their own characters.