My sister got Guitar Hero III for my kids for their birthday this spring. They play it every day. I guess you can say they are addicted to it…and for good reason. It’s a great game for all ages although I would monitor it if your kids are under 10. We monitor the songs our kids play because some of them aren’t exactly child-friendly.
Guitar Hero III is basically a guitar-simulation game where you play a makeshift guitar. It comes with a controller that is shaped like a guitar. The controller has 5 different colored buttons on the neck and a toggle switch where you would strum the strings. In order to succeed at the game, you have to push the correct button and hit the toggle switch at the time the music notes come on the screen. The music notes come down the screen as the song advances. The buttons on the neck of the controller are like holding down the strings to play different notes.
Below, I have come up with a list of positives and negatives of Guitar Hero III.
The positives are:
It’s just plain fun. This game is addicting. The easy level is, well, very easy. As the levels get harder, it gets less fun for me, but my kids still love it. It’s fun to sit down and act like you are playing all those songs with a makeshift guitar. It’s close to playing air guitar, but a little more in-depth. You have to actually push buttons and hit the strings at the correct times. It’s hard to explain why this game is so fun, but it is. If you stop by your local Wal-Mart, Best Buy, or Circuit City and play a song or two, you will be looking to buy it as soon as possible.
You don’t have to be musically inclined to play. While I don’t have a musical bone in my entire body, I love to listen to music. When we got Guitar Hero III in March, I sat down and tried to play it. In about 3 days, I made it all the way through the easy level㐞 songs. I don’t think there is any way I could learn to play a real guitar, but I was able to keep the beat with the songs on Guitar Hero III like a pro…on the easy level of course.
The age range is great. The game is rated T for Teen, but I would change the rating to T+ for Teen and up. If you are over 30 (like me), you will recognize the vast majority of the songs on Guitar Hero III. In fact, I listened to a lot of them on the radio while I was a teenager.
Game interaction. By game interaction, I mean the parts of the game other than the songs. After playing a song, you get paid like a real musician…after expenses like bar tab, repairs from you tearing up stuff, etc. With the money you make, you can buy new guitars or change characters. There is also a section of the game where you play against the computer to advance. It is a lot of fun as you can sabotage the computer player if you play well in your sections.
Now for the negatives:
Choice of songs. While many of the songs are great, some are less than great. In fact, some are downright terrible. There are a couple of the songs on the game that have basically no beat. You just have to try to hit the notes when they come up on the screen. I’ll be the first to admit that I haven’t been a big rock fan the past 5-10 years, but I think I’ve kept up with music fairly well. There are 4-6 songs on this game that I’ve never heard of. I don’t know if they just needed some extra songs to fill out the play list or if I’ve just missed some of them altogether. Plus, some of the songs are more mature than they need to be. If you just look on youtube, you will see many preteens playing this game. The creators of the game should have realized this and kept a few of the songs with very adult lyrics out.
Advances too quickly sometimes. While I’ve made it through all of the songs on easy and most of them on the second level, there were times while I was playing it that it seemed to get a lot harder all of a sudden. I don’t know if certain songs are just harder to play than others or if the game just got harder at times. I’ve also attempted to play an easy song on the “expert” level and it’s very frustrating because of the difficulty of it.
Price is too high. Even though this was a gift and I didn’t have to pay for it, I think $100 is too expensive for a video game. The majority of new games that come out for the Xbox 360 are in the $50-$60 range, but Guitar Hero III is $100. I guess they increased the price because of the guitar controller included, but since that controller can only be used with a single game, it doesn’t justify the price to me.
Even though there are a few negatives with this game (in my book anyway), I will still recommend it. It is a fun game that is somewhat addicting. My kids think they want to learn to play the guitar in part due to this game. If they follow through with that, they will just be more well-rounded children with a small background in music to go along with everything they are learning at school and on the sports fields.
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