Guitar Hero Update

It’s been a while since I posted about Guitar Hero. In fact, it’s been a while since I posted at all. Therefore, I feel it is appropriate to take a moment to brag about how my skills have improved. The last time I posted about Guitar Hero, I was talking about how I got 5 stars on “Number of the Beast” on Expert. This was, in fact, a big deal to me at the time, as it was extremely hard for me to do. Since then, I have gotten over 500,000 points on that very same song. I have also achieved 5 stars on all Guitar Hero 3 Career Mode songs, and also gotten the achievement for scoring 200k on “Cult of Personality” without using Star Power.

I have purchased and played through Guitar Hero: World Tour. I enjoyed the enhanced gameplay, especially the feature that allows notes to be played while a sustain is continuously held. The slider notes are great as well, as I’m a fan of the Hammer-ons and Pull-offs, and slider notes take that one step further, getting rid of strumming altogether :) World Tour fails, however, to amp up the difficulty until the last couple sets of songs. The only one I have yet to beat is “Satch Boogie,” thanks to its section of extremely fast slider notes. I have also yet to achieve 5 stars on “Trapped in Ice” by Metallica. The other songs, however, I found easy to master. I do appreciate the track list, especially “Hotel California,” a song I had not heard before playing it, but now greatly enjoy.

I bought Guitar Hero: Smash Hits last Wednesday and beat it on Thursday. I beat “Through the Fire and the Flames” for the first time on Thursday, and achieved 4 stars on Friday. Today, I achieved 5 stars on “Psychobilly Freakout,” and 5 stars on “Play With Me.” Now, I am only two stars short of a 5star full game, having 238/240 stars. The ones I’m missing are one from “Raining Blood” and of course, one from “Through the Fire and the Flames.” These are all on the Expert difficulty.

I loved Smash Hits, because it has many songs from the original Guitar Hero, which is not available for the Xbox 360, and I’ve never played it. The re-frets of the GH2 songs are excellent as well. Guitar Hero: Smash hits adds the function of seeing your progress on how many stars you’ve while you’re still playing the song, much like Rock Band does.

My GHIII Experience

I got Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock for the Nintendo Wii five days after it came out. I launched straight into Hard mode (I’d had plenty of experience on GHII though I never owned the game… I can play expert on GHII) to unlock all of the songs. In a couple of hours, I’d beaten all of the songs except “Raining Blood” by Slayer, and the battle against Lou of course. So, frustrated, I played at it over and over. No matter how hard I tried, I could not get past the part I was stuck at (Mosh I). So, to vent some steam, I played through Career Mode on Medium to unlock the ultimate goal: “Through the Fire and the Flames” by DragonForce. Finally unlocking this song, I foolishly thought I could beat it on Hard. I failed miserably at 2%. I toned it down to Medium and made it through with only three stars. Sad. Next, I played on Easy, and let me say, if anyone capable of playing hard doesn’t get five stars on TTFATF, they need to go beat their heads into a wall and stay there… Anyways, I practiced some more, but still couldn’t beat “Raining Blood” on Hard. I decided to give TTFATF another shot and went into practice mode to nail the intro. Let’s just say I still haven’t quite “nailed” it, but I can play through it without failing. At the end of the song, I was sweating like no tomorrow. Playing difficult songs takes alot out of you!

 Overall Review of GHIII:

 I enjoyed the gameplay. Guitar Hero III has a great blend of classics and newer music, ranging from “Welcome to the Jungle” by Guns ‘N Roses to “Miss Murder” by AFI. They’ve even got Slipknot (“Before I Forget”) and Metallica (“One”)! I have to say, they didn’t have very many of what we would call Rock Anthems like GHII did. There’s nothing as classic as “Carry On Wayward Son” on the set list, and all of the Extra songs are foreign to me (as in I’ve never heard of band nor song before). The online battle function is pretty much awesome, though on the Wii it’s rather hard to find a match. Overall, I’d give Guitar Hero III four stars. I know I’ve still got plenty of enjoyment to squeeze out of the game.