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Digital Life 2007: Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock Preview

By Alex Petraglia on Friday, September 28, 2007 at 12:00 PM EST  

DL2007 GH3

We previewed Guitar Hero for the PS2 at last year’s Digital Life, where Red Octane gave fans of the series a chance to try out the game before its release. The team had an even bigger booth at this year’s event, drawing scores of rabid wannabe rockstars around a handful of Xbox 360’s. I slung the guitar strap over my shoulder and stepped onstage to see what Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock has in store for gamers next month.

Skimming down the list of available songs, Pat Benatar and Scorpions seemed like solid choices, but I settled on Pearl Jam’s Even Flow. Of the game’s 70+ songs, an estimated 60% of them will be master recordings, rather than covers. Even Flow is one such original and hearing Veder’s unmatched vocals made for an immensely enjoyable experience. For those who don’t have the songs memorized by title alone, Guitar Hero 3 includes the artist and year recorded, unlike its predecessors. Also, rather than list all songs on one lengthy page, three separate tracklists of base, bonus, and downloaded songs can be flipped through.

There are almost no changes to the gameplay (why fix something that ain’t broke?) but the in-game screen has had some slight modifications. Vials, instead of a bar, now hold the staticy blue liquid that is Star Power, which really doesn’t make any difference, but a note-streak counter can be found below the point multiplier and a text-flyover informs the player when he hits streaks totaling 50, 100, and so on.

After jamming out to Vedder’s angst, I posed a handful of questions to Red Octane’s rep at the show, Product Developer Mark Johnson.

First confirmed was our story from last week about the wireless guitar bundles. I asked Johnson about the Wiimote’s usage in the Wii version, which was brought up in this week’s Primocast. A small removable panel allows the Wiimote, which handles all communication to and from the console, to be inserted into the guitar’s body. Its sensors handle the activation of Star Power when the guitar is tilted and its rumble functionality provides force feedback to players. Finally, the dreaded incorrect note plunk will play through the Wiimote’s speaker, rather than your TV speakers, making it more discernable from all the other game sounds.

While local two-player modes like versus and co-op propelled the previous two titles into mainstream phenomena, Guitar Hero 3 will be the first game to offer online multiplayer, including the old favorites: cooperative, face-off, and pro face-off.

When Guitar Hero II came to the Xbox 360 in April, 2007, many wondered why online multiplayer wasn’t included. Most assumed it was due to latency issues and the necessary timing precision that would be required. But Johnson candidly informed me, in the case of Guitar Hero III “…[online] multiplayer wasn’t as hard as we thought it would be.”

My surprise must have been transparent, because he happily went on to detail the scenarios. It doesn’t really matter how exact your competitor’s notes are when they appear on your screen in both versus modes, as long as each player’s own notes are timed correctly on his own screen. In the case of coop, the only additional issue is the need for simultaneous activation of Star Power, but a simple indication on-screen notifies the player whenever his bandmate has his guitar’s neck raised.

Then, at the conclusion of the song, it’s just a matter of correctly comparing each player’s own statistics to determine the winner or overall score.

Further online functionality includes long-term stat tracking and of course, everyone’s favorite, downloadable content.

With wireless guitars, online multiplayer, and by far the best setlist yet, we have no doubt that Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock is shaping up to be the best Guitar Hero yet and will be both critically received and immensely popular among its fans when it’s released at the end of October. Look for our review of the game in the coming weeks.

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Comments

3 Responses to “Digital Life 2007: Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock Preview”

  1. Ron Anderson on October 1st, 2007 9:15 am

    I was at digital life and i was sitting there moving from booth to booth at the guitar hero 3 testing all i did for about 2-3 hours was play guitar hero then i finally got to face someone in battle and its one of the craziest things ive ever done.

  2. Dan on October 2nd, 2007 7:36 am

    With Mark Johnson at your disposal, why wouldn’t you ask him arguably the most important question: Will someone who buys GH3 on the PS3 be able to play GH 1, 2, and 80’s on the PS3 using the new GH3 controller?

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