Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock (PlayStation 2, 2007)

"The best Guitar Hero yet."
Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock is the fourth game in the Guitar Hero series, and not only is it the best Guitar Hero so far, it may very well be the most fun music game of all time.

The obvious place to start is the song list. For me, that makes or breaks a music game. Odds are, almost everyone who played the first three games in the series (Guitar Hero, Guitar Hero II, and Guitar Hero Encore: Rocks the 80's), can point out at least one or two songs that simply do not belong in a guitar game. Not so with Legends. With such classic rock staples as KISS, Heart, ZZ Top, and Aerosmith, along with newer bands such as Slipknot and Disturbed, and the highly demanded Metallica and Slayer, this song list could not be better. Add that to the fact that most of the songs are Master Tracks, and you have the best sounding music game ever.

Next up, the gameplay. Put simply, it's top-notch. Using the new Kramer guitar controller, you hold down the appropriate fret button and strum the note as it passes. Same gameplay as the last few games, but with a few added modes. The first one worth noting is the new Battle mode. You and a friend will play through a song, although instead of the normal Star Power, you get Battle Power. Basically, these are attacks that you can throw at your competitor in order to make them miss and fail the song. Co-op play returns as well, but in the form of a separate career, complete with six encore songs that can ONLY be unlocked in co-op.

Sadly, Co-op play is where this game's one big flaw is apparent. There is no longer a Co-op Quick Play option. You must play through the tiers of a co-op career. Once you beat all of the songs, you unlock everything else from the Single Player career for play. The problem is, though, that you can only play on the difficulty combination in which you originally unlocked the songs. In other words, if you beat the career with an Expert-Hard combo, you have to do the career yet again in order to play the songs on Medium or Easy (or with a Hard-Hard or Expert-Expert combo).

Other than that complaint, there is nothing else wrong with Guitar Hero III. The graphics are fantastic (although no match for it's next-gen counterparts), the songs are even more challenging than anything from the previous games, and the battle mode (including the single-player battles against Slash and Tom Morello) is probably the most fun I have had out of any video game in quite a while.

Final score: 9.5/10

Reviewer's Score: 9/10, Originally Posted: 11/02/07

Game Release: Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock (w/Guitar) (US, 10/28/07)