Do we have to do another “video games are not reality” disclaimer? There’s a very common reaction that non-Guitar Hero players tend to have when they see a seasoned GH pro in action: “Wow, if he spent that energy on playing a real instrument, he’d be great!” Just because the controller is shaped like a guitar doesn’t mean that it plays like one. If you hit all the notes, it’s a perfect performance; there are no considerations of style and technique. In other words you can’t hit all the chords right and still sound like shit. Guitar Hero is not a pathetic digital façade of guitar playing, it’s a Fun Game. Are we clear?

Guitar Hero was the breakout game from Harmonix, the studio that produced cult classics like Frequency and Amplitude. The first two Guitar Hero games are some of the more abysmally lame representations of “rock music” ever seen. The characters, the venues, the little quips, are all painfully bad. Neversoft, the compaty that has taken over GH3 from Harmonix, has sadly retained much of the look and feel of the first two games. Granted, they have made the whole game little slicker, thankfully, and added a sheen of their own (slightly) more tolerable punk sensibility.

Also new in this game is the inclusion of songs by the original artist instead of by in-house cover bands. The covers in the first two games were horrible, making good songs bad and bad songs worse. In GH3 some original songs, like Weezer’s “My Name Is Jonas” sound awesome, which makes the game more fun to play. Others, such as Metallica’s “One,” make you wish it were a crappy cover; as the original recordings are almost impossible to listen to. But what’s surprising is that the songs that are covered by in-house bands sound really good this game.

But honestly, who gives a shit about the quality of the songs? It’s the gameplay that matters in this game just like in the first two. Neversoft have given the familiar GH formula a couple of tweaks, some for the better and some for the worse. Most noticeably, they’ve widened the timing window. Guitar Hero has always been one of the most casual rhythm games around, and now that judgment is a hair more lax than it was before. The Wake approves of the relaxed timing, because it complements another change Neversoft has made: this time around, the game is a lot harder. Especially later on in the game, the songs are crammed full of three-note chords, tremolos and crazy solos, and the relaxed timing is really necessary to avoid massive frustration in the last set or two. Bitchy fans have a problem with this: it seems that the developers were going all-out to make the songs as hard as possible instead of staying true to what the guitar part for the actual song is like. That’s clearly the case, and we say why the fuck not? It’s a game, if you want to play the real guitar part then pick up a real guitar. We like the challenge.

Unfortunately, Neversoft has also fucked up in some areas. Co-op mode, one of the most inspired and fun multiplayer aspects of the previous game, is now available for career mode. This is a good idea! Unfortunately, it’s no longer available for quick play. This is a very bad idea! You can no longer play co-op just for fun, you have to start a career and play through all of the songs to unlock them. It’s absolutely ridiculous, and effectively slaughters the pick-up-and-play party game fun of co-op play. Not only that, but some songs are co-op exclusive, a slap in the face to lonely Guitar Hero players. Whatever – they should be making friends anyway.

Also boneheaded is the new battle mode. In battle mode, instead of star power, players receive power-ups which, when deployed, fuck up the other player. This would be acceptable as a strange little multiplayer oddity, but Neversoft has incorporated it into career mode. The “bosses” that a player has to face in career mode are frustrating and annoying, and ultimately add nothing to the game other than a lot of swearing and smashed controllers. There’s icing on top: the songs that you play in the boss battles, which seem like they would be a whole lot of fun to play if there wasn’t some douchebag fucking you up every 15 seconds, aren’t available for free play. Not even “The Devil Went Down To Georgia.” We have no idea what those fuckers were thinking.

These complaints, though frustrating and seemingly obvious mistakes, are fairly minor, and shouldn’t turn you off of the idea of the game. If you liked Guitar Hero before, the only thing you need to know is that now the game is longer and the songs are more challenging. Absolutely nothing in previous GH games compares to when you beat the game and play Dragonforce through the credits, it’s so good it makes all complaints against the game look like tiny little quibbles.