Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock Review

Commercially this is the peak of the whole plastic instrument boom, and some of that success is earned. Master recordings replace the covers, the set list is stacked with names the previous games could not afford, and online play arrived at exactly the moment the audience wanted it. Neversoft's presentation is louder and more cartoonish, which suited a game selling to people who had never bought a music game before.

The charting is where the handover shows. Passages are transcribed with a density that ignores what a hand can comfortably do, and the closing track is famous less as a song than as an endurance test that a large share of buyers never cleared. The boss battles against Slash and Tom Morello swap rhythm for a duel with random attacks, which throws out the one thing the genre had going for it, namely that failure is always your fault. Battle mode is a novelty. A hugely enjoyable party game with a competitive layer that lost the plot.