Zero Punctuation: Guitar Hero III

[angstd]

1: Hard difficulty isn;t too bad. But just as it was said, the last section sucks butt and is impossibly hard. All of you out there who beat dragonforce on expert... you have truly sold your soul to the game "you are fags!"

2: WTF happened to co-op quickplay. I just want to sit down with my friends and play. I don;t want to have to earn every level again, on every difficulty to play with them

Well done Yahtzee. Yet again... amazing.

 

[Evilducks]

I can't accept a game that involves the mastery of the 12 songs you're confined to

Agreed. Unless Rock Band gets released on PC (or Wii), and has a wide range of optional extra songs to buy/download, I won't bother with it. (Although, allowing myself a little dreaming, if they release any Blue Oyster Cult albums for Rock Band... I won't be able to resist.)

You can stop begging for Blue Oyster Cult or other groups from that decade, unless you like covers (GH has had a BOC song or two already). Master tracks recorded in ways useful for the purpose of these games don't exist so they will all have to be re-recorded. The reason Rock Band only has contemporary songs is because they wanted all master tracks. GH still incorporates older music, but again they're covers, and people whine incessantly about it.

Somebody else complained about RO backstabbing Harmonix when they went with a new developer...

Harmonix wasn't backstabbed by RO. RO was the publisher (and owner) of the Guitar Hero IP and they got bought out by Activision. At this point Harmonix was still working with RO to create GH2 and later Rock of the 80's. During this time Harmonix was bought by MTV Games (which I believe EA owns some stake in) so they became competitors. Harmonix got to do what they wanted and that was create Rock Band, an idea that they had pitched to RO earlier but RO felt wouldn't sell well enough due to the additional cost of the drums and difficulty to play them.

As a bit of trivia, RO had been working on a Drum Hero game prior to the announcement of Rock Band but decided to scrap the project when they felt that the game was too difficult for non-drummers to pick up. Creating a peripheral that was sturdy enough to withstand the pounding of continual drum play wasn't cheap either and you can tell this is true by the very shotty nature of the Rock Band equipment, they've had huge problems with all of their peripherals to this point (except the mic). My friend snapped the bass pedal in half and he wasn't even playing it that hard, it was just poorly made.

RO seems to have been correct in their assessment as GH sales are completely obliterating Rock Band currently and its not because Rock Band is supply constrained.


For people posting that playing guitar hero is a waste of time and unproductive... Please stop posting on message boards and go write a best selling novel instead, it will be more productive and has about the same correlation as playing guitar hero and playing an actual guitar.

 

[Yuri2356]

Ben should keep the beard. It looks good on him.

 

[dorn.palor]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nenGgXPHFtw

Yes, we believe you.

 

[milocade]

As always, Zero Punctuation brings that small ray of light into my dingy, poor boy existence.

Also I recommend Rock Band for those who are fans of Guitar Hero but be mindful of the new, cool guitar. Some of them have problems and the company is trying to fix this.

Either than that, the drums r tough. Good Luck.

 

[hootie017]

i love the jerks thing, especially since i used to be apart of the gamespot community,
also i never thought yahtzee was gay, i mean i don't spend anytime in these particular forums, but nothing he has said would lead me to believe he was gay
in fact didn't he devote roughly 20seconds to tits in one review?

 

[4C3C|24Ck]

i cant believe im the first to mention this (or at least i think i am) but...what the hell is wrong with learning to play a real guitar? :|

I agree, the only GH i've played is GHII. After I failed misserably at beating Missirlou on expert, a friend said "That's bullshit, i think that's even harder than playing a real guitar." 4 months of practice later, i realized he was right, and playing a real guitar makes me proud but i do gotta admit, playing GH with a friend is still great fun

 

[Chis]

Master tracks recorded in ways useful for the purpose of these games don't exist so they will all have to be re-recorded. The reason Rock Band only has contemporary songs is because they wanted all master tracks. GH still incorporates older music, but again they're covers, and people whine incessantly about it.

I have no problem with the cover of Godzilla. In fact I think it's just as good as the original. In further fact, I think nearly all of the covers on the original Guitar Hero were fantastic. I am NOT begging, you are just trying to find a reason to take a pot shot from your ivory tower. You've obviously never heard of multi-track reel-to-reel analogue tape which, up until the 80s, was the de-facto recording medium for professional studios. Hell, some of them still use it.

 

[viciousmaniac]

"Mario Kart Syndrome" = sheer brilliance.

Thought I was the only one that found those games since the SNES release to be an annoying mess of over-the-top "crippling" power-ups. I have not-so-found memories of the lightning bolt "power-up" that basically turns all your competitors into complete shit for 5 seconds. What was the point, other than to make the racing redundant and dependent on who gets lucky with power-ups? With the next Mario Kart they should push the envelope further, and add a power-up that gives Mario and friends terminal brain cancer right at the start of a race.

Sad to see that GH3 has some aspects of this, it deserves better multiplayer. P.S. One of your best reviews yet.

 

[Allan53]

I wouldn't say it's good, and I wouldn't say it's bad. I just don't see the point to it.

 

[dannyodwyer]

Aww that was hilarious.
"Mario Kart Syndrome" made me roffel

 

[HuCast]

Best one ever! unbelievable much quotable, strong stuff...i love it

 

[jackolantern]

am i the only person on the planet that think GH sucks?

no, and this is the "review" that relinquishes yahtzee's award for seemingly best taste in videogames on the internet. gh 1 was novel, sure, but it wore thin and quickly became mind numbingly dumb

 

[Arbre]

am i the only person on the planet that think GH sucks?

Yes.

He didn't mention which planet mind you.

 

[jackolantern]

telling a Guitar Hero player to pick up a real guitar is like telling a CS player to pick up a real gun and blow shit up.

that is absurd, sir.

 

[jackolantern]

am i the only person on the planet that think GH sucks?

Yes.

He didn't mention which planet mind you.

i think he meant mars. clearly. unless she's a she - then venus.

 

[jackolantern]

For people posting that playing guitar hero is a waste of time and unproductive... Please stop posting on message boards and go write a best selling novel instead, it will be more productive and has about the same correlation as playing guitar hero and playing an actual guitar.

but, the exchange of ideas is fruitful - much more fruitful than exercising hand-eye coordination in a very uninteresting and limited way

 

[Gab]

I own Guitar Hero 3 and I have beaten the entire game on Expert.

And I have to say, this review was positively brilliant. I agreed with every word of it. Raining Blood is not fun, it's not like Bark at the Moon where at least the song is good and inspires you to keep going, it's just pure, unadulterated shit that is hard for the sake of being hard. I beat it just so I could say I beat it and I have quite literally never played it ever again since then because I'd rather jump in a ditch and then light the ditch on fire.

Also, yeah, WTF did they do with Clive Winston? He was my favorite character too.

 

[Jerakal]

I have to agree with the whole "freak" theory of some of these fucking songs. It seems like only Christ Almighty or that fucking down-syndrome kid on youtube can do some of these songs on expert.

Edit: Anyone aside from the above two examples who would complete such a feat really neds to find a better use for their time... or an occupation that requires bionic fingers... they would make a killing.

 

[zBlade1]

Sure, call me a freak. I've done enough to be considered one in this game (5-star all the expert songs and beat TTFAF anyone?)

In all honesty, this is like taking a hammer, smashing it against my fingers and trying Jordan on expert on a continuous run. I agree almost entirely whole-heartedly with this review (the first in a while, you've been slipping in and out of your groove lately yhatzee.) and... well crap, I'm surprised you didn't burn it more.