So guitar Hero3 came out yesterday. It is great, indeed it is glorious.

From the very beginning it is clear that Harmonix is not involved in the game, and this is in both good, and not so good, ways. Harmonix is an awesome group, and while they were partners with RedOctane in the Guitar hero I and II endeavors, and RedOctane owned most of the rights to most things,  I will forever think of the Guitar Hero series as a Harmonix game. The changes are subtle but there, most are for the good, but there are a few things that annoy me. For starters, the entire game has a, well, Tony Hawk feel about it. No surprise there, it WAS made by Neversoft after all. My biggest gripe, and its purely cosmetic and just a personal thing, is the bastardization of Judy Nails. She was the character I always used, because in games I and II she could have been a digital clone of Ariel. It’s not that I have some sick twisted facination with my best friend (well ok maybe a little, but its purely sexual attraction, nothing weird) but simply if I am going to stare at the same person rocking around on stage for hours on end, I want it to be someone who’s easy on the eyes.

However in 3, when Neversoft got their grimy little skate board axle greased fingers on Judy, they seemed to have, well I dont know. Its like the squarshed her down a few inches and plumped her out oddly. Her chest is now 2 sizes two big for her body, shes a few inches shorter than before, and now oddly out of proportion because of it, her face seems far too chubby for the rest of her body because of this, and they beefed up her arms and legs to look rather creepy. All in all looking at her in the selection menu made me go running to the next character option, which was Lars Umlaut, and as we all know hes none to easy on the eyes either, but it was an optical reprieve for me none the less.

Aside from that I am so far happy with the game, the song selection so far is kick ass, and when I was unlocking extra tracks I found Kaiser Chiefs “Ruby” which just about made my day. I was disapointed to see there is no Freezepop songs for the first time, but this is none to surprising because they are personal friends of the Harmonix crew, and likely kept their loyalties to them and Rock Band. The song selection so far is great though, but I wont bore with details on that since its highly documented elsewhere.

Thew new multiplayer battle mode is nice with the twist of having “attacks” to use, instead of star power. Their concept of using this mode against 3 “bosses” made of famous musicians is also a nice change for the campaign mode. It eases a new player into the concept for online play, as well as breaks up the monotany of “beat this song… now this one.. ok good now this one” which is otherwise the only aspect of the campaign mode. One other nice addition is that the cut scenes between venue upgrades got a small but awesome tweak. Gone is the simple graphic of a map with your tour bus driving from point A to point B. In its place is a full cut scene, with a nice artistic twist of no vocal audio. It shows things for example, of after the back yard gig, a guy walks up, shows a business card, throws a ad for a battle of the bands competition in you face, flashes some money and smiles. In other words, you just got a manager and your first gig. The animation style is on par with the guitar hero look and feel, and the lack of spoken dialog is actualy nice, plus there is some good visual comedy in each one, and they are each 10-15 seconds at most to keep it short and simple. Again, this was a good twist that broke up the same ole same ole of the past games, without really changing anything.

All in all I give guitar Hero 4 out of 5 stars, now if you will excuse me… I need to go beat Slash into the ground so I can jack his avatar and rock that pimp ass hat he wears myself.