Are you ready to RAWK? - Melcolm's 'GH III' Review

'Guitar Hero III' is turning out to be as fun as I expected it to be, IT RAWKS!!!

I have to contradict myself (from an earlier comment) because the timing is noticeably looser than 'GH II', which is better for the beginner to average player. However, the expert player might find this robs some of the fun out of the game. I say this because during some of the perplexing note patterns, I feel like all I need to do is "mash buttons" to get by. You can tell they spent a lot of time designing the note patterns, as it really feels like you’re playing guitar (yes, I play a real guitar aside from GH).

The addition of the boss battles makes the game for me, because they are VERY challenging. They key to winning in these battles is knowing when to deploy your attacks against the competitor. What I really enjoy about the boss battles is that the songs you play really showoff the style of the real counterparts (probably because they actually wrote and recorded those tracks for the game).

In previous GH games, we were treated to excellent covers of some great songs. Here in 'GH III' we are able to enjoy the original recordings of a lot of the tracks. This makes the Guitar Hero experience seem just a little more authentic (I'm playing guitar for Pearl Jam!!!).

With the 70+ songs on-disc (what a killer song selection it is), and more to come via Xbox Live download, I'm sure I'll be enjoying this game for quite a while...at least until RockBand is released. IMHO, replay value in the 'Guitar Hero' series is quite high.