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I've got my sweaty palms on the demo of Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock, so I break out my trusty Gibson X-Plorer Guitar Hero II controller for some of the head rocking that is offered. The demo features five songs to get you rockin’. These tracks are ‘Hit Me With Your Best Shot’, ‘Lay Down’, ‘Rock You Like A Hurricane’ and ‘The Metal’. I’m disappointed to say that I have not really heard any of them before, but for some reason I found myself playing along to ‘Rock You Like A Hurricane’ more than any of the others. Perhaps it’s just due to it being a catchy tune, or more likely I just find it the easiest song to hit the notes on.
In addition to the five Solo only songs, of which all can be played on either Easy, Medium, Hard or Expert, there is also a practice mode, much like the one found in Guitar Hero II. The practice mode allows you to choose parts from the songs and slow the speed down for you to time those notes more precisely. What is more interesting is the Tutorial modes, which include Basic Lessons, Star Power, Advanced Techniques and Guitar Battle. These tutorial modes include a voice from up above, as God himself along with his misguided rock colleague attempt to guide you through the various tutorials. Guitar Hero veterans will understand most of the information that is present here, however seeing as this is only a demo build of the game – the Guitar Battle tutorial offers an interesting insight and even gives you a chance to dish out some guitar attacks to throw your opponents off, whether that be in Xbox Live, local or even Career mode against one of the bosses in the full game. In Guitar Battle, the Power Up attacks replace your Star Power and are dished out in the same way: simply by tilting your guitar upwards.
From what I have played of the demo at least, Guitar Hero III proves to be a very familiar experience from Guitar Hero II, at least Solo wise. I’m more interested to try out the Guitar Battles proper in multiplayer as well as in the Career mode. I expect this will bring a new depth and level of concentration required to master the game as well as your opponents. The Guitar Battle attacks are earned in the same way as Star Power was in Guitar Hero II; by hitting a selection of the highlighted notes in succession to unlock an attack move, you can store up to three moves and you can unleash these on your opponents as and when you please. So for maximum effect you could store two to three varying attack moves and unleash them one after the other on your opponent; it might not be so much fun being on the receiving end though. In the demo we saw Amp Overload and Broken String, these attacks when used against you are obviously meant to break your concentration. The Broken String attack for example, requires you to hold the damaged fret button down and strum away at it as quickly as possible to get it back in tune, which may be challenging if there are plenty of notes in bound, that require your attention as well. This should at least bring a new challenge to the Career against bosses, and of course head-to-head local, as well as on Xbox Live.
Guitar Hero by many is considered a casual game; I however look at it more as a hardcore type of game as if you wish to dominate completely, then it can be incredibly difficult. Guitar Hero is a kind of expensive affair, although for those of you with Guitar Hero II and the X-Plorer Guitar controller, then you can at least purchase Guitar Hero III on its own and use the older, wired guitar if you so choose.
It looks like Legends of Rock has shaped up well and for fans of the previous game, the full game will certainly appeal, and the introduction of online multiplayer should keep gamers heads rocking for much longer – that is at least until Rock Band is released…
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