Wednesday, October 24, 2007

Guitar Hero III demo impressions

I had been anticipating Guitar Hero III: Legend of Rock with some trepidation. Harmonix is staffed almost entirely by musicians, so they really nailed the first two Guitar Hero games. Without knowing much about Neversoft, my fear was that they'd have less of a feel for the subtleties -- that they wouldn't know if what they were making accurately simulated the sensation of rocking out. On the basis of the demo, I needn't have worried. If there is a difference in the control, it's not even as dramatic as the tweaks from the first game to the second. And playing a master track of "Even Flow" was about as great as I'd hoped.

There's no denying that Neversoft has sexed the game up quite a bit. I'm not concerned about character models or anything, because that's not what I'm looking at when I'm playing. The display functions the same, although with brighter colors and funkier fonts -- again, it doesn't affect the gameplay at all, so it's hard to feel strongly one way or another. The only thing I actually didn't like was the constant text notifications in the center of the screen. Getting a "Star power ready!" message is one thing. But seeing "50 note streak!" is just distracting, especially since it bounces around a bit before disappearing. I'm trying to look at something here, dudes.

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