noangels's Full Review: Guitar Hero III for Nintendo Wii
For my fiance's birthday, I like to buy him fun stuff; especially video games I think he'll love, but that he hasn't mentioned wanting. In past years, I bought him Resident Evil 4 and Half Life 2. He loved both. When I found out that Guitar Hero III was out on the Nintendo Wii, I absolutely had to buy it. We own an XBOX 360, Playstation 2, and the Wii, and it seems we use the latter system the most.
Gameplay and the Guitar
We're having a blast playing Guitar Hero III. This is the first time that both of us have played any incarnation of Guitar Hero. We have witnessed friends playing I and II, but weren't interested enough to shell out the money for the game and guitar. We’re hooked now. Testament to that would be my fiance, who is a loyal classic-Nintendo fan, actually put the new Super Mario Galaxy game down to play this.
Game play involves mimicking the playing of a guitar using the Gibson Les Paul modeled guitar controller to play the notes to popular rock songs. Your Wii Remote slides into the guitar and connects via a small cable inside the guitar. Colored buttons on the neck of the guitar correspond to the colored notes on the screen. You hold down the note, and strum on the bar with your other hand. Under the bar is the whammy bar, which has a few applications throughout your game play. Please be forewarned that the guitar will drain your Wii batteries. We were very happy we had purchased rechargeable AA set/charger. We must have gone through at least 10 full charges in the last week.
Career mode allows you to name your band and play through all of the songs on any difficulty. The harder the difficulty, the more buttons are used, the more notes are played at the same time, and the faster the notes are played. The songs are grouped by difficulty and you must play through a certain number in each group to progress through your career. After you complete each grouping, you’ll usually play an encore or a battle. Battles are against famous guest stars. You’ll battle Slash and afterwards, join him in song to celebrate your victory.
To advance from song to song, you rack up points by playing notes correctly and for collecting bonuses from your multiplier and using your star power. Star power adds a really gnarly (yes, I just said gnarly) sound-effect to the guitar and gives you double your multiplier for your points. It is activated by tilting your guitar or pressing the - button. Every time you improve, you’ll earn money for your performance to be spent in the store. The higher the points, the better and scoring high (getting five stars on each song, for example) will unlock certain items in the store. The "bat guitar" has been my favorite.
The idea behind this game is simple. If you play well, you’ll hear your favorite songs and feel even more excited about them than you were before. It’s fun to feel like you’re playing your favorite songs, with the original vocals and instrumentation. If you need some practice, you’ll hear screeching sounds coming out of your Wii remote as the rest of the bands play on. Playing poorly is simply hysterical. It sounds as if you are snipping the guitar strings with garden shears. Listening to my fiance’s little sisters playing for the first time had us laughing to the point of tears. Even funnier was watching our best man try to activate the star power, and not being able to effectively tilt the guitar. I promise it wasn’t difficult. He’s just wholly uncoordinated. I will say that bad playing does make you appreciate your favorite music more. You notice the background instrumentation that may go unnoticed during that big solo, if you had actually played it well.
The music is awesome. You’ll have songs stuck in your head for days. I can’t get Kiss’ “Rock and Roll All Nite” and Pat Bentar’s “Hit Me With Your Best Shot” out of my head. Some songs are originals, others are covers, and some have been re-recorded specifically for the game. Some other songs that are being sung /hummed in both my shower and my head; AFI’s “Miss Murder,” Heart’s “Barricuda,” Santana’s “Black Magic Woman,” Disturbed’s “Striken,” Scorpions’ “Rock You Like a Hurricane,” and Eric Johnson’s “Cliffs of Dover.”
Co-op mode allows two people to play together; one as the guitarist and the other as the bassist. It can be played with a Wii remote, though it is a pain. I have not been able to try it with the second guitar, since it has not been released separate from the game on this console. Battle mode is another option, which can be played online or with another playing in your home. You play guitar solos and pick up attacks to use to inhibit the other player’s ability to perform. The online capabilities of this game are a lot of fun. You can set up stranger matches with parameters that you set. I played a song against a stranger on the easiest difficulty and I got whooped. I highly recommend waiting until you have a decent amount of experience with the game if you hope to be competitive.
Graphics and Sound
The Wii doesn’t boast the best graphics out of the platforms this game was released on, but I think this game still looks great. It has a very realistic feel to it. The animations are realistic, but repetitive. Your chosen character will rock out, but will do so the same way over and over. A few laughs were had about how the guitarist’s motions are very similar whether you’re playing a fast guitar solo, a slow intro, or a break. The environments are interesting. You’ll play at different venues, ranging from backyards to on-stage hell-replicas, with pyrotechnics, dancers, drunken partiers, and moving statues behind you. Once you unlock a venue, you can choose it at anytime during your game play in career mode (on the same difficulty).
I have read reports about a mono sound problem that is occurring with this game. There are no reports on a fix. I didn’t have a problem with the sound. This game is fun and immersive, and if the sound left something to be desired, I didn’t even notice it. I love the exclusive Wii feature of the “screw up” sounds coming out of the remote in the guitar. It adds a bit of realism to the game that makes the Wii version shine above the rest. A hint, make sure you equalize your Wii remote volume to your speaker volume. It drains the batteries slower and it will sound more realistic, though a new player with a maximum volume Wii remote is always good for comic relief.
Technical Difficulties
We have experienced a few problems with this game freezes. It will stop responding for a few seconds while on the menu screen. The game always recovers and it hasn’t affected actual game play. I have not done in-depth research about the issue, but I haven’t seen any blatant references to this problem on the internet. We may have gotten a defective copy, but unless it becomes a bigger issue, we don’t plan to go through the hassle of exchanging it.
Price
This game cost $89.99 for the guitar, the game and a genuinely fun time. It was worth every penny and I couldn’t recommend this game more highly.
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