The original Guitar Hero on PS2 became one of the most addicting and biggest party games ever made. People bought it, loved it and told their friends - who did the same after sampling the game for themselves. It spread like wildfire and Harmonix new they had a winner on their hands, so Guitar Hero II followed and sold even better than its predecessor. Some time after this, Harmonix were bought up by MTV and decided to make their own game (the recently released Rock Band), which left Neversoft (of Tony Hawk's fame) to make the next Guitar Hero game. They chose the "if it's not broken then don't fix it" philosophy, instead adding a lot of great stuff to the winning formula. And so here we are with Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock, which features online play, more original tracks and a new "boss" mode. Is it enough to keep the name afloat though, or does it bite off more than it can chew?

For those of you who unfamiliar with the series (and boy have you been missing out!), here's the lowdown. You get a plastic guitar that has five buttons near the top of the neck, each of them a different color (Green, Red, Yellow, Blue, Orange). Notes scroll down a screen lined up with the buttons on your guitar and as they get to the bottom of the screen you must hold down the correct button and hit the strum bar at the same time, as if you're actually playing the guitar. It's that simple! There are four difficulties (Easy, Medium, Hard and Expert) and the higher the difficulty, the faster the notes scroll down. Easy uses only the first three notes, while Medium uses four, so you don't have to move your hand up and down. Hard and Expert then incorporate sliding your hand down to the Orange button, because you only have four fingers to play with and there are five buttons!

Guitar Hero III features the exact same gameplay as its predecessors, which is perfectly fine, because it's incredibly satisfying and enjoyable to play this rhythm-based music game thanks to the unique guitar controller. It also sports the same excellent multiplayer that the first two games had, but now with fully featured online play, something that Xbox Live gamers have been awaiting with great anticipation. Thankfully, this iteration has a far better soundtrack than the previous games and some real classics make an appearance. Welcome to the Jungle, One, Sunshine of Your Love, Black Magic Woman and Paint It Black are just a few of the universally beloved songs from decades past. There are some great choices from modern times too, but the game predominantly features golden oldies. This is without doubt the best soundtrack of the series and definitely benefits from having the master recordings as opposed to weak covers. The game also covers new music like AFI's Miss Murder, The Killers' When You Were Young, Queens Of The Stone Age's 3's And 7's (a favorite of mine!) and Priestess' Lay Down. Some of the new songs are great additions, and some are, to put it bluntly, crap. I guess this comes down to personal taste and you're never going to please everyone - but Guitar Hero III will please most of the people for most of the time, something that's very tricky to pull off.

The career mode now has boss battles too, which can be summed up with one word: random. Sure, it's a nice idea, and going head to head against the likes of Tom Morello is awesome. It's just that the competition only requires the slightest bit of skill. Instead of star power, you can earn attacks for completing certain note streaks, so the only skill you need is to hit these notes and then fling them at the other player. So, for example, you could make the other player's notes flash different colors, or break their whammy bar, or break one of their strings. The problem is, the placement of these power ups is erratic and some of them are entirely useless. Why does the computer-controlled character care if their notes are flashing? He's Tom freakin' Morello! Or Slash! All in all, these encounters are poorly thought out and victory revolves largely around chance.

The boss battles might be easy, but the rest of the game will probably kick your ass. This game is far and beyond any other Guitar Hero in two things; song choice and difficulty. The game itself is technically not as hard, what with a longer amount of time to hit the buttons (a nod towards the casual market perhaps) but the songs are much, much harder. I consider myself a pretty decent Guitar Hero player and Hard was giving me a serious challenge. At about the seventh tier I was having a serious problem over and over - it was killing me. After enough practice on different songs I got through it, but never before had Guitar Hero been this hard. This is fine though, because the hardcore players can face their biggest ever challenge while the game is very accessible to newcomers and casual players in Easy and Medium modes, and a blast to play whichever difficulty you pick!

One change to the game that has the fans divided however is the shift in art style. Guitar Hero III features a very gangly, grungy look that is very reminiscent of Jamie Hewlett's work on the Gorillaz' album covers. The animation of the guitarists is much more fluid and overall the game has a very different tone compared to the cartoony folks found in the first two games. Some characters look better than others, however; the lead singer looks appropriately menacing, with a large jaw and wavy hair, a perfect mishmash of caricature and reality. The drummer, however, looks dumb; aside from his robotic animations, his face looks like it's pressed up against a glass window. At least all the guitarists look good though, with cool new star power moves and more expressive faces.

If there is one major gripe that positively must be fixed before the inevitable release of Guitar Hero IV, it's product placement. Guitar Hero III jams AXE body spray, 5 gum and Red Bull cans into your face so hard that it's almost offensive. The music sponsorships that showed up in Guitar Hero II at least made sense, but in III it seems that the floodgates have been opened. I'm sorry, but having dancers dressed in the Bow-Chicka-Bow-Wow shirts from the new AXE ad campaign is not only stupid, but fleeting. How long is that ad series going to last, anyway? Not as long as Guitar Hero is popular, that's for sure. An entire stage set on the back of a giant Pontiac truck is a bit too much to swallow as well. And is any of it even necessary? Maybe Neversoft just couldn't resist cramming all of these advertisements into the game, like they do with the already lucrative Tony Hawk's series. Guitar Hero is a bonafide cash cow, drawing in gamers and non-gamers alike - it doesn't need the support of random advertisers to stay afloat and it's just too in your face to overlook. Still, it's only a cosmetic issue - it'll bug you at times, but it won't spoil your enjoyment of that wonderful gameplay.

Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock is everything a sequel should be, with new modes, better music and a very nice guitar controller - the 360's Les Paul is a far nicer build than the tacky X-plorer controller from GHII. Online modes are finally here, with leaderboards, head-to-head play and the promise of downloadable content. If it wasn't for the annoying boss battles (which are mercifully few and far between), excessive product placement and the extreme difficulty of the harder modes, the game would be practically flawless - but these issues can't be overlooked entirely. Still, with the new songs and modes, Guitar Hero III is the party game supreme and whether you're a fan of the series or still to sample its melodic delights, there's never been a better time to grab your guitar and get strumming!

Reviewed by James Fanciullo for AceGamez (All Rights Reserved).