I jumped online (360) which runs very smoothly by the way and was able to play both Raining Blood and One right away on any difficulty.
HOLY CRAP. I expected RB to be tough but it is insane even on hard. I was able to beat all previous GH on expert but this one is going to be TOUGH.
One and RB are both quite fun BTW.
No one else is playing this???
I will be very soon
I started playing expert, 4- and 5-starring everything first time out on the first two levels, but got stuck on the guitar battle with Tommy Morello. After losing twice, I lost patience and went down a level to hard (my goal was to unlock Cherub Rock). I played through to level six before putting it down. I don’t think it’s harder than GHII. In fact, the guitar seems MUCH easier to alternate pick (upstroke/downstroke), and the hammer-ons and pull-offs are much more forgiving of sloppiness. On hard, the only level I had to reply so far is, once again, the guitar battle with Tommy Morello. I thought Slash was going to kick my ass, too, but I hung in there and beat him about three or four minutes into the song. Do the songs just go on until somebody loses?
I bought it this morning, but waited to bring it to my brother-in-law’s place this afternoon so we could play it together.
The multiplayer has some interesting twists to the normal game - but what frustrated us is that whoever was on the left side of the screen had his notes playing, and the right side of the screen was more or less mute. Very awkward to be playing on the right and the notes you’re hitting are not the notes you’re hearing.
I’m playing solo tonight though.
OK, I’m on the 8th tier on Hard, and I will revise my opinion. They do throw a hell of a lot more notes at you, and songs requiring up-and-down strumming come very early. Like I said, the game is a heck of a lot more forgiving with timing. The hard level is starting to feel more like Expert on GH2 with what it throws at you, but compensates slightly by allowing you to be a little bit more sloppy.
I’m afraid of Expert of now. It took me two shots to get past “One,” and I four-starred it in the end, but I can’t possibly imagine what more they can do to it to make it more difficult in Expert mode.
Red Octane emailed me Friday with my shipment. Tracking number says it’ll be here Wednesday. I want now dammit! :mad:
I’ve been playing it today. I’m through about six or seven tiers on Expert. Mostly 4 and 5 stars, with one 3 star along the way. I’m finding this game much easer than GHII. At first I thought it was very difficult because of the sheer number of notes they throw at you. But I’m hitting runs and fast note sequences that I would have never hit on GHII. In fact, I think the way they’ve set up the timing is kind of ‘broken’ I’m getting 100% notes hit on passages where I KNOW I was just out of control. It almost seems that as long as one note is being held down, you get credit for the hammer-on even if you hit another note along with it, or another note first, or something.
On the other hand, the runs feel much more natural now, more like they do on a real guitar. You cann just ‘slide’ your hand up and down the fret board and hit the run, while in GHII you had to be very careful to hit each note precisely. To compensate, they throw more notes at you. In the end, it’s probably a wash.
So far, I’ve found the songs to be a lot of fun to play. Black Magic Woman, Welcome to the Jungle, La Grange, and a few others so far are just great. The note charts on a couple of songs seem a bit wrong. Not wrong in a way that makes you miss the notes, but wrong in a way that makes it feel like you’re not quite playing what you’re hearing. They lose a little immersion factor because of that. But other songs are truly great.
I think it’s stupid to have boss battles in career mode. I haven’t played the third one yet, but I hear it’s really hard. I failed against Slash the first time, then got him later. But Boss Battles have nothing to do with the idea of moving your rock career along. They break the story, and put a completely different experience right in the middle of your tour.
There are a few usability problems with game. The Rock meter is much worse than the old one. You don’t see it in your peripheral vision, and the star power lightbulbs are just stupid. You can’t tell how close you are to getting star power, and you don’t seem them running down very well.
The menu system is improved in some places, and worse in others. You can get to the bonus songs without having to scroll through the career, which is nice. But the leaderboard changes suck. When I go to the leaderboard, I want to see where -I- stand in relation to everyone else - not who’s got the highest score. And about 999,900 out of a million customers will feel the same way. Yet the leaderboard always starts at the top. To get to your score, you have to go through a menu system, select “My Rank”, then go back. In all, it’s about 10 button pushes or strums. And worst of all, the thing doesn’t remember your settings, so when you go off and retry the song and come back to see how your positiion changes, you get to do it all over again. This gets old really fast.
There are too many loading scenes, and confirmations. If you hit reset, you have to go through an, “Are you really sure you want to do that?” screens. Bad decision to include that.
They took away my favorite character, but once you unlock Slash or Tomo Morello you can play as them, which is pretty cool.
I ran out of time to finish the game this afternoon. I’ll probably play some more tonight.
The 8th tier is where it’s at Stone. Raining Blood is very hard. So is the solo to One.
Generally I think the song selection is the best of all 3, with GH1 being better than GH2. Online works like a champ, as long as you have a friend to invite to games. I’ve found it suffers from the same issues as several other Xbox live games in that it tries to get you to join games that have already started so you can’t conect. My friend and I played alot yesterday and it worked well. They trick you into thinking that you are both playing in sync though because you really aren’t. I saw my buddies combo meter rising before he ever had notes on my screen but that doesn’t really matter.
Yeah, the rock meter could be better. I’m stuck on the final battle on hard now, but I’ve only tried twice. I’m finding the 360 versions of GH2 and 3 to both be VERY sensitive to star power activation… I can be standing perfectly still and the star power will activate out of no where. Pisses me off. That’s with the xplorer AND the les paul.
All in all a fun game though. I like it better than GH2.
Hi! This is my first Guitar Hero and I suck!
I got 64% on Slow Ride, first time through, blind. I keep having a problem with the orange frets for some reason. Eh, I’ll get better.
On the other hand, I’ve got the Wii version. And my guitar is an awesome guitar. Wiimote plugs right in.
I played 2 on the PS2. Now I have a 360. If I get an adapter, can I use my PS2 guitar on the 360, or would I have to get a 360 guitar?
Negative. No can do. I would have done that if I could.
I picked it up yesterday and I’m having a lot of fun with it. I haven’t played on Xbox Live yet, but I may try it out soon.
The boss battles suck. Winning or losing seems to be based more on whether I get the right attacks rather than whether I play better or not. Give me pro face off mode any day of the week.
I hate hate hate hate what they did to Judy Nails. She’s always been my favorite character.
Well, there aren’t enough songs I really want to play to make me get a new one, then. I would like to do Paint it Black and La Grange, though.
Amen. I don’t know how it is on the other systems, but on the Wii there’s about five stupid animated logos and other crap you have to click through before getting to the actual game menu itself. I found myself screaming at the Wii “JUST LET ME PLAY THE FRICKING GAME ALREADY!” the first time I booted it up.
Why not just buy the PS2 version?
For the XBox - the new guitar is worth the price of admission alone - the old “xplorer” was a major piece of crap…
Right now - stuck on tier 8 (one and that slayer song) on hard - pretty much 5’d all the rest… and I totally agree with Sam on his review - I hit some solo things that I know I didn’t ‘really’ hit.
Any tips on Raining Blood or One? (I get nailed by the solo at 80% on one - can’t seem to get past about 30% on the other - granted, I haven’t done either more than twice so far).
I’m just kinda diggin’ the 360 now, is all.
The 360 will feature downloadable songs as well.
As an actual guitar player I used to play this game using a pick and standard picking methods that worked well until I got to Misirlou on Expert GH2. Then I switched to “pinching” the strum bar so I could consistently hit those super fast long strum sections and that worked well for me. I’m not a 5 star expert or anything, but I got through that song and now use that pinch method almost exclusively. Slayer and Metallica both benifit greatly from this method on GH3. The Mosh 1 part of Raining Blodd was very very tough for me on hard but I got through.
Try the pinch. Takes getting used to and isn’t quite as fun as a regular picking method but it really gives you solid control of wahts happening.