Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock

Guitar Hero has returned with its 3rd release rammed full of rock songs ready for you to strum the night away with.

I’m not a rock lover, infact I normally hate heavy rock music, but this game has completely converted me. I cannot handle all the tracks on the game such as 'Through Fire and Flames' which is enough to blow anyone’s minds out on Easy let alone Expert.

That said, a lot of the tracks are just perfect head nodding, guitar strumming anthems which will keep you sat up to early hours of the morning trying to perfect the chords in certain areas of the song.

This is one advantage of the game, if you struggle with a song on a certain level you can just go and train it up, which allows you to slow the song right down, and practice certain areas of that piece until you get it right, Then once you're ready to go again, you can just jump back onto Career and continue your quest to become a Rock Star!

Some of the tracks included in the game are listed below:-

# Beastie Boys - Sabotage
# Muse - Knights Of Cydonia
# Rolling Stones - Paint It Black
# Smashing Pumpkins - Cherub Rock
# Tenacious D - The Metal
# Weezer - My Name Is Jonas
# Pearl Jam - Evenflow
# Guns N' Roses - Welcome To The Jungle
# Iron Maiden - Number Of The Beast
# Red Hot Chili Peppers - Suck My Kiss
# AFI - Miss Murder
# Queens Of The Stone Age - 3's And 7's
# Slayer - Raining Blood
# The Strokes - Reptillia
# Kaiser Chiefs - Ruby
# Slipknot - Before I Forget
# Sonic Youth - Kool Thing
# Rage Against The Machine - Bulls On Parade
# Prototype - The Way it Ends
# Rise Against - Prayer Of The Refugee
# Sex Pistols - Anarchy In The U.K.
# Aerosmith - Same Old Song and Dance
# Bloc Party - Helicopter
# Disturbed - Stricken
# The Killers - When You Were Young
# Killswitch Engage - My Curse
# Die Toten Hosen - Hier Kommt Alex
# Dragonforce - Through The Fire And Flames
# Gallows - In The Belly Of A Shark
# Living Colour - Cult Of Personality
# Lacuna Coil - Closer
# In Flames - Take This Life
# Senses Fail - Can't Be Saved
# Matchbook Romance - Monsters
# The Fall Of Troy - F.C.P.R.E.M.I.X.
# Backyard Babies - Minus Celsius

Along with career mode, you are also greeted with Co-Op, allowing you to play along with a friend on Bass guitar. Battle mode, which allows you to play head to head against a friend, using battle powers to deter your foe from victory. Normal head to head, which sees 2 players, play off against one another in a 'scored' match. All of these modes are playable also on Xbox live with a Guitar or GamePad.

There are also different branches of levels, from Easy to Expert, each step up in skill adds an extra chord or makes the current cords more complex. I’m currently finishing Medium, and Hard has just added the 5th Orange chord to make my life misery for the next week!

There is also downloadable content from Xbox Live allowing you to add more songs into the game, to give more variety over the soon to be tiresome tracks you currently get with the game.

The game is strangely addictive for such a simple game plot. You press the buttons on your controller or strum your guitar when the coloured blobs pass, in the same way as DDR or other dance mat games, it’s just the lazy boy heavy metal alternative.

Costs are a big concern if you want to play with a guitar, as you will be looking at £65 online to buy the game and guitar, the guitars are not sold separately (easily obtainable) so make your decision prior to getting the game!

With Rock Band coming out soon, this game may soon be overshadowed, but If you like rock music and have experience with Guitar Hero 2, then this is defiantly worth picking up even if its just the game without the guitar.