LET'S GO GUITAR HERO FORCE!!

Let's start off today with a quick review of Guitar Hero 3 for the Wii, shall we? Only because it's the one game out of the three new ones this week that I've been playing the most.

At the ceremonial sacrifice of one Wii Remote to the guitar of the Rock Gods, you have your wireless axe ready to shred some tunes. And there's no need to remove the thing to start the game, with its analog nub right there on the guitar to navigate everywhere. So, until anyone wants to play any 2-player game, my Wii Remote is taking permanent resident in that guitar. And I really love assembling and disassembling my guitar, for some reason.

I'll save you most of the filler you'd probably read from other reviews and say this - Guitar Hero 3 is just more songs, and online.

That's it.

Does that make it boring? Hell no. With about 6-7 more songs to play through career mode, as well as the bonus extra songs to purchase, there's gonna be plenty of nights rocking out. As a friend noted, though, some of the cover songs suck ass bad, and the gameplay often focuses more on complexity rather than mapping notes logically to the guitar or beat. Personally, I'm putting this blame on the company switch, which somewhat eases these issues.

The online thing is new for me, since the past two games I've been limited to just the PS2 version. The setup process seems to be quick and painless (mostly because I haven't had any friends to invite yet...cursed friends codes), and scores seem to be submitted once you finish the song, which is very convenient. A word of caution, though - make sure to keep the autosave on. If you disable it, play some songs, and then save the game, your online stats may look a little lacking. Of course, it doesn't help that the site's been hit on and gone down more times than your mom. (Yeah, I went there.) Unlike your mom, though, it takes a licking and keeps on ticking (double-burn!) - so give the site some time to recoup.

One thing I hate, though, is the battle versus game. Who's idea was to add power-ups and the ability to "attack" your opponent with things like "broken strings" and "amp overload"?? Can't people just rock out harder than the other, and then tally up the points? I don't like wasting time trying to read disappearing notes or pressing one button to "fix" a broken string - it's fucking stupid, and anyone who thinks that any wins from this mode is a win should be smacked with their own guitar.

Overall, until Smash Bros Brawl comes out, that Wii's gonna stay cozy in its new guitar home.

By the way, here are my current GH3 stats.