I was recently pleased to learn that Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock had finally hit the market. Unfortunately, since I gave up television in 1997, and the huge old CRT I used for my Playstation 2 got left behind when I moved cross country earlier this year, I feared I would never be able to enjoy Guitar Hero III (or any of my other Playstation 2 games). Although I'll admit that I originally bought my PS2 for the sole purpose of playing Guitar Hero, I just couldn't justify the purchase of a brand new television just to view my Playstation, especially when the retail price for Guitar Hero III ($89) is $20 higher than the price I paid for the original Guitar Hero ($69).

So I was simply ecstatic to learn that Aspyr has provided a PC version of Activision's Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock. My esctasy turned to mere excitement, however, when the price weighed in at $79--still ten dollars higher than I paid for the original Guitar Hero game, even though it's pretty much the exact same game, with different songs, and Activision has had a few years to streamline its manufacturing and distribution methods to cut costs and lower retail prices. So I have absolutely no idea why the damn game is so expensive. My best guess is that Activision either needs more competent management, or they're scalping their own customers. You decide. (Minus one star for overpricing)

For those of you who don't know, Guitar Hero is a rhythm-based game that uses a guitar-shaped controller to "play" guitar along with famous rock and roll songs (both old and new). The controller features five colored buttons that represent notes, a flipper switch that acts as a guitar pick, and a whammy bar. As colored notes flow to the music down a scrolling guitar neck on screen, your job is to press the corresponding note buttons and flipper switch (pick) on the controller at exactly the right instant. You can also earn extra points by using the whammy bar and acquiring "Star Power", which uses a tilt sensor in the controller to increase the rate at which your score grows for a brief period. If you love rock and roll, and especially if you love rock and roll guitar, I'm pretty sure that Guitar Hero fits the clinical definition of a "freakin' addictive game".

It's also surprisingly similar to a video game I wrote and published for computer bulletin boards systems in 1990, called Rock Wars. But that's a whole 'nother story....

The original Guitar Hero had such a high replayability factor that I never even bothered to purchase the 1980's Rock expansion pack or Guitar Hero II, mainly because the Guitar Hero franchise is an unusually expensive game. Until I lost my CRT monitor, I never grew tired of Guitar Hero I, so I saw no reason to expand my collection of songs with an expensive update.

However, Guitar Hero III ups the anty by including a selection of 42 truly great guitar songs, from Cream's "Sunshine Of Your Love" to Stevie Ray Vaughn's "Pride and Joy", to Black Sabbath's "Paranoid". Some of the songs are taken from masters by the original artists, while others are awe-inspiring covers that are so true to the originals that it's often difficult to tell the difference. The game also includes 28 bonus songs by independent artists, and make no mistake about it, it's just as much fun--and even more challenging--to play along with songs that you've never heard before. You'll find a full song list at the end of this review.

Aspyr deserves a lot of credit for successfully porting this console game faithfully to the PC. I can't find any difference between the PC version of GHIII and my old PS2 version of GHI. Both look fantastic and navigate the menus in the same way, using buttons on the guitar controller. However, the PC version adds the keyboard as a second, built-in controller, which may not be as much fun as a guitar controller, but it sure comes in handy when you're playing online at a coffee shop or playing Guitar Hero on an airplane.

The box contains a Gibson Xplorer guitar controller, an adjustable guitar strap, a sheet full of stickers, and the video game DVD in an ordinary DVD case. The 8.5 foot USB cable is permanently connected to the Guitar, and it features a handy breakout at the USB end so it'll easily separate if you accidentally step on the cable or stretch it too tight. This helps to protect both the cable and your USB port.

The minimum PC system requirements are not very modest: Intel Pentium D (dual-core) 2.8GHz (or AMD Athlon 64 3500+), 1GB RAM (XP) or 2GB RAM (Vista), 5.1GB hard drive space plus 1GB swap file space, DirectX 9.0c compatible sound card, 3D Hardware Accelerator video card with 128MB video RAM, and broadband internet connection for online play.

I use a Fujitsu laptop with a 1.7GHz Intel Centrino Duo processor and 2GB RAM, running on Windows XP, and the game runs just fine except for a slight, but frustrating lag that sometimes prevents me from hitting notes at the right time even in easy mode. The Options Menu includes calibrations for video and audio, but only the video calibration has a visual testing feature. The audio calibration requires you to set the delay in milliseconds manually by trial and error.

So the game doesn't run nearly as smooth as GHI did on my Playstation 2, and sometimes the lag makes it almost impossible to hit the correct notes. Fortunately, rebooting and removing all resident utility programs usually makes the delay tolerable, and I made it through the entire game in medium mode without too much difficulty. Even so, be aware that if your system doesn't meet the minimum requirements, you might find this lag a game-killer.

Other that this system issue, I can find no fault with Asypr's PC version of the game. I haven't seen the console versions of the game yet, but so far the PC version seems true to the original down to the finest details. Indeed, since you can use the guitar controller to navigate menus, it even feels like I'm playing on a Playstation 2, rather than a PC.

Since Asypr did a wonderful job porting Guitar Hero III to the PC, everything else in this review refers to the original developer of the Guitar Hero franchise, Activision.

One of the best things about Guitar Hero is that it creates an aural and visual environment that makes you feel like you're really in a rock and roll band. The graphics are awesome, musicians' movements are life-like and fun, and both the audience and your fellow band members respond when you humiliate yourself with a bad performance. The venues are more cartoonish than realistic, but they're still magnificent, and fun. In Guitar Hero III, venues range from a backyard party to a Japanese stadium to my personal favorite venue--the most happening club in Hades. The only weak link in the animation are the anime-styled interludes that explain how your band's career is progressing. To be honest, I found these animations confusing, and they didn't make a whole hell of a lot of sense to me. Fortunately, they're brief, and you can skip them by pressing the green controller button.

The controller that ships with the PC version is a white Gibson Xplorer model, which isn't my favorite guitar shape. But I have to admit, it's growing on me, and it's comfortable to play. The controller has a couple of XBox/Playstation type controls, but I've only been able to find a purpose for the "start" button. Presumably, these controls are just a vestige from converting an XBox controller to USB for use on a PC. The included sticker sheet didn't really float my boat, so I plan to customize my Xplorer the old-fashioned way, with paints and a brush. That is, unless Activision prohibits me from doing that. The game is littered with warnings that Activision prohibits people who paid $80-$90 for this game from using the guitar controller for any other purpose. Personally, I'm offended by any company that tells me what I may or may not do with a product that I purchased from them with honestly-earned money. If I want to use the guitar controller as a sex toy, that's my business, not Activision's. (Minus one star for tyrannical corporate behavior)

There are four modes of play in Guitar Hero III: Career, Co-Op, Quick Play, and Online. Career is the normal mode where you choose and dress your guitarist, arm him or her with an axe, name your band, and attempt to rise from garage band to worldwide superstardom. Co-Op mode allows two players to play together, one on lead guitar and the other on rhythym guitar/bass guitar. The second player can use either the keyboard or add a second guitar controller. Quick Play is for people who just want to play a song, and nothing more. And Online mode allows you to battle against other Guitar Heroes all around the world.

There are also four levels of difficulty: Easy, Medium, Hard, and Expert. Easy mode uses only three of the five buttons and rarely combines more than one note into a chord. Medium mode typically uses four of the five buttons, and features more use of 2-3 button chords. Hard mode uses all five buttons, with a lot of chord-playing. And I doubt that even the robotics experts at MIT could design a machine capable of playing the Expert mode, which uses all five buttons along with very complicated chord changes. Playing in Hard mode is a humbling enough experience, but Expert mode seems just plain impossible to win. Yet a quick search on YouTube reveals a fair number of zit-faced teenagers around the world who somehow manage to nail it.

Another difference between the difficulty levels is that, as the difficulty increases, the game becomes less forgiving of errors. In other words, you can make a lot of mistakes before blowing a song in Easy Mode. But in Hard mode just a couple of mistakes in a row can end the song. Expert mode requires near-perfection.

When the game begins, you have eight guitarists to choose from--five men and three women. Each has their own style and personality. My personal favorite is Xavier, who is obviously based on Jimi Hendrix. I like Xavier because he tries to blame his guitar whenever he blows a song, just like most real-life guitarists I've played with did! I also can't help laughing at Midori, the young Japanese girl, who wears a small packpack on stage and covers her face with her hands and cries whenever she blows a song. The good news is that these personality animations are well-done and hilarious. The bad news is, they're seriously limited and repetitive, which has always been one of Guitar Hero's biggest weaknesses. The same is true with the audience, which features hundreds of great-looking fans who cheer and dance--but they're all copies of the same few people! Given the Guitar Hero franchise's success, it's really inexcusable that Activision hasn't added more unique faces and behaviors to the crowd, because this monotony really detracts from an otherwise tantalizing environment. (Minus one star for an audience comprised of clones)

Similarly, the nearly anorexic, heavily-bearded bass player in your band is a hoot to watch, but the only personnel changes your band recieves is an automatic switch between one male and one female singer, depending on which gender is singing the song. I don't understand why Activision doesn't allow you to choose from a selection of bass players, drummers and singers like you can with your guitarist. (Minus one star for inexplicably lackluster band customization options)

As your score increases and you earn points/money, you can visit the Guitar Hero store and purchase new clothes, new songs by independent artists, videos showing how the game was made, and new guitars and characters that become available as you progress through the game.

Except for the more radical guitar designs (and there are plenty of, shall we say, "unique" guitars to choose from!), the standard guitars are all Gibson models, including the Les Paul, SG, Flying-V and XPlorer models. That's a great selection of guitars, but it does reveal another of the franchise's weaknesses: the game comes across as more or less of a marketing gimmick for the highest-bidding manufacturers of guitars, amplifiers, and other music equipment. In real life I prefer Fender Stratocaster-style guitars, but Strats are nowhere to be found in Guitar Hero. Mackie, Line 6, Guitar Center and other music-related companies make unnecessary appearances as your "sponsor" throughout the game. But in real life, musicians have a choice. This commercialism seems cheesy and somewhat insulting, especially when you consider that Guitar Hero III costs $20 more than the original Guitar Hero did, for no apparent reason, while these manufacturers are almost certainly paying a pretty penny to Activision to have their names and logos included in the game at all. Even if it turns out that Fender refused to license its name to Activision, there are plenty of other manufacturers out there that could offer some alternative to Gibson. Nothing against Gibson--they make great guitars. I just don't like paying $80 for what amounts to an advertisement. (Minus one star for including advertising in an $80 video game)

In Career Mode, songs come in groups of four for each venue. When you nail all the required songs for a given venue, you are rewarded with either an encore or a guitar battle. An encore basically just adds another song to the current venue, which doesn't seem like much of a bonus at all considering that four new songs appear at a new venue at the same time. The guitar battles, however, are tons of fun.

In a guitar battle, you square off against Tom Morello (Rage Against the Machine), Slash (Guns & Roses), or Lou (the Devil, aka Satan). The goal of battle is to play the song well enough so you're not shamed off stage, while "attacking" your opponent so that he'll get shamed off stage. Attacks come in the form of overloading your opponent's amplifier, breaking their strings, increasing the difficulty level, and forcing them to wail on their whammy bar. Of course, your opponent can strike back, and Slash in particular tends to strike back with a vengeange. The whammy bar attack in the worst, because you can't play anything at all until you fix the problem. Like I said, battle mode is just tons of fun. It's a shame there's only three battles in Guitar Hero III (that I'm aware of--there is a "cheat" page in the Options menu....).

The Online Mode appears to offer battle mode also. However, even though I see a long list of Top Scores online, the game has never found anyone for me to match with, so I still don't know how online play works. I don't know if there's a bug in the system, or if I'm just logging on when no one else on planet earth is logged on.... What I can say is that the "News" section online is blank, and the "Song Download" section has no songs to download. So it seems that someone (Activision?) has completely dropped the ball on preparing their online site before releasing the game. Hopefull this will change soon, because there's a lot of potential for great fun online, especially if the online battle mode resembles battle mode in the game. Since I've switched from Playstation 2 to PC with Guitar Hero III, I can only hope that the "song Downloads" will include the best songs from previous versions of Guitar Hero. It's nice to see independent artists get exposure in Guitar Hero, but let's face it, for eighty bucks I'd rather be playing Led Zeppelin, Who, and Rush songs. (Minus one star for an online site that has zero useable features)

Likewise, when I first began the game I "accidentally" stumbled upon bass guitar versions of songs, which was cool as hell. Bass Guitar is an awesome instrument in its own right. However, I haven't been able to find the bass guitar versions since then. I believe I found them in practice mode, perhaps only for certain songs. It would be wonderful if the bass guitar versions were as easy to access as the lead guitar versions, because bass guitar is a really fun instrument to play. Bass guitar is readily-available in Co-Op mode, but I would like to have it readily-available when I'm playing alone.

The practice mode itself becomes an option after you blow a song. Practice mode allows you to practice a song at regular or slower speeds, and you can practice just one part of the song (e.g., intro, chorus, solo), if you want to. This is a great feature, especially if you consistently make it to the end of a song only to blow it each time on the outro solo.

This paragraph contains a SPOILER, so skip to the next paragraph if you don't want the game SPOILED!!! *** BEGIN SPOILER *** The game ends in a large venue in Hell, which is gorgeously rendered as the place where Christian Rock artists do NOT go when they die. I especially love the cute dancing girl with horns! At the end of the game, your last task it to do battle with Lou (Satan), who is large enough to use a redwood tree as a toothpick, and plays a guitar made out of a skeleton. The battle song is, appropriately enough, "The Devil Went Down To Georgia". However, it's a hard-rockin', double-bass drumming version of the song, not the familiar fiddle-war that the Charlie Daniels Band made famous. The song is great fun, and an appropriate ending to the game. When you beat Lou, you are given the credit screen along with a bonus song that is not scored, so you can't "blow" it. And it's a good thing, because that song is unbelievably fast, in the great tradition of Yngwie Malmsteen. If you make it that far, the only advice I can offer is to do a lot of sliding between notes, and pray for the best. It's a long song, so you'll want to soak your hands in warm water to reduce the swelling when you're done. *** END SPOILER ***

I was particularly surprised and pleased to find a couple of songs that I never expected to see in Guitar Hero--the original versions, no less. These include "Number of the Beast" by Iron Maiden, and "Raining Blood" by Slayer. "Raining Blood" is a strange choice for a standalone song, given the way that it serves to end Slayer's "Reign in Blood" CD. But I couldn't be happier that it was included in Guitar Hero III, because it's one of the most extraordinary thrash metal songs ever recorded. Juxtaposed with these hard-rockin' classics is a song by Tenacious D, the beautiful "Cliffs of Dover" by Eric Johnson, and "Kool Thing" by Sonic Youth, which features perhaps the most shredding, out-of-tune guitar work I've ever heard (not to mention the smooth and smokey vocal stylings of the lovely Kim Gordon). Even though I miss many of the songs from Guitar Hero I (and II, for that matter), the song list in Guitar Hero III is top-notch from beginning to end--with one monumentally disappointing exception....

My only complaint about the song list is the inclusion of a Metallica song, especially a song from the CD "And Justice For All...", which bitches about corrupt powers that use the American justice system to dominate and tyrannize The People. The drummer for Metallica, Lars Ulrich, discredited Metallica forever when he testified before Congress, complaining about Napster and file-sharing. In other words, he used the corrupt powers of the U.S. justice system to help dominate and tyrannize The People, by shutting down the one product that finally made music accessible to poor people, and which rendered the evil music industry forevermore unecessary and obsolete. Including a Metallica song in Guitar Hero III is tantamount to giving credibility to a band that lost all credibility through it's own blatant hypocrisy, and I would urge Activision to replace "One" with a song that has more artistic merit, like the theme from Gilligan's Island. Including a Metallica song in a video game that costs $80-$90 ($20 more than the original version cost) is a real bitch-slap to the face to Activision's customers. Metallica represents the spirit of corporate America, which is anti-human. Real rock and roll represents the heart and soul of human beings. I can't stress strongly enough how terribly offended I was to find a Metallica song in an otherwise legitimate video game. (Minus one star for including an arrogant, hypocritical rock and roll traiter in the song list)

Guitar Hero III also features 28 songs by independent artists, for a total of 70 songs. Here's a list of the 42 well-known songs, in the order they're presented during the game:

1. Slow Ride (Foghat) [original]
2. Talk Dirty to Me (Poison) [original]
3. Hit Me With Your Best Shot (Pat Benetar) [cover]
4. Story of My Life (Social Distortion) [?]
5. Rock and Roll All Nite (Kiss) [?]
6. Mississippi Queen (Mountain) [original]
7. School's Out (Alice Cooper) [?]
8. Sunshine of Your Love (Cream) [original]
9. Barracuda (Heart) [?]
10. Guitar Battle With Tom Morello
11. Bulls On Parade (Rage Against The Machine) [original]
12. When You Were Young (Killers) [?]
13. Miss Murder (AFI) [?]
14. The Seeker (The Who) [cover]
15. Lay Down (Priestess) [?]
16. Paint It Black (Rolling Stones) [?]
17. Paranoid (Black Sabbath) [cover]
18. Anarchy in the U.K. (Sex Pistols) [new version by the Sex Pistols]
19. Kool Thing (Sonic Youth) [original]
20. My Name is Jonas (Weezer) [?]
21. Even Flow (Pearl Jam) [original]
22. Holiday in Cambodia (Dead Kennedys) [cover]
23. Rock You Like a Hurricane (Scorpions) [?]
24. Same Old Song and Dance (Aerosmith) [original]
25. La Grange (ZZ Top) [cover]
26. Guitar Battle with Slash
27. Welcome to the Jungle (Guns & Roses) [original]
28. Black Magic Woman (Santana) [?]
29. Cherub Rock (Smashing Pumpkins) [?]
30. Black Sunshine (White Zombie) [?]
31. The Metal (Tenacious D) [original]
32. Pride and Joy (Stevie Ray Vaughn) [?]
33. Before I Forget (Slipknot) [?]
34. Striken (Disturbed) [?]
35. 3's and 7's (Queens of the Stone Age) [?]
36. Knights of Cydonia (Muse) [?]
37. Cult of Personality (Living Colour) [?]
38. Raining Blood (Slayer) [original]
39. Cliffs of Dover (Eric Johnson) [original]
40. The Number of the Beast (Iron Maiden) [?]
41. One (Metallica) [?--I refuse to listen to this one. Boycott Metallica]
42. The Devil Went Down to Georgia (Charlie Daniels Band) [hard-rock cover]

Summary

Guitar Hero III for the PC rocks in terms of how well Asypr ported it from consoles to the PC. Lag might be a game-killer on some systems that don't meet the minimum requirements. The game itself is basically not much different than previous versions, apart from the song list, but it's still a hell of a lot of fun. Online play either has a bug that does not allow me to find other players, songs, and news online, or else Activision has all but abandoned the online site just as the product shipped to retailers. But did I mention that this game is a hell of a lot of fun to play?

Overall, Guitar Hero III loses stars almost entirely because of shameful and offensive corporate behavior by Activision.

POTENTIAL SCORE - 10
  minus 1 for overpricing
  minus 1 for tyrannical corporate behavior (attempting to dictate the use of a purchased product, after the sale)
  minus 1 for an audience comprised of clones
  minus 1 for inexplicably lackluster band customization options
  minus 1 for an online site that has zero useable features
  minus 1 for including advertising in an $80 video game
  minus 1 for including an arrogant, hypocritical rock and roll traiter in the song list

FINAL SCORE: 3/10

But did I mention that this game is a hell of a lot of fun to play?

Clean up your act, Activision.