Guitar Hero III: Legends Of Rock - Guitar Bundle (Wii)

I bought Guitar Hero III for the Wii a couple of weeks ago. Being an competent if unremarkable guitarist I was curious to see how playing Guitar Hero compared with 'the real thing'.

My initial feelings were a) I look ridiculous playing a plastic ukulele and b) I really should be practising my guitar instead of a guitar simulator. The initial choice of songs was underwhelming; Foghat (meh), Poison (dear God no), Pat Benatar (m'kay), Cream and a few I had never heard of. On the plus side there was Alice Cooper's 'Schools Out'. (I'm always partial to a bit of vintage Vince.) After five or ten minutes figuring out how to synchronise pressing the buttons with the fingers on my left hand with pressing the strum bar with my right hand, I was away and happily playing along on the Easy Level mode.

Compare this with the learning curve when playing a real guitar. Your fingers will hurt due to the strange contortions you are forced to make, the wire strings give you calluses, and your family and neighbours may not appreciate the distorted cat-in-a-mangle noises you are making. Playing a recognisable song is bloody hard work.

However, learning and then playing songs is an immensely satisfying experience in both cases. You don't quite get that oomph you have with an amped up real guitar, but then the GH III ukulele won't give you backache.

There were a few minor annoyances:

1) The playlist is a bit limiting. If you like mainstream classic rock than you'll love the music in the game. The Bloc Party, Stone Roses and Kaiser Chiefs songs seem, I don't know, out of sorts; shoehorned in to appeal to those who might want to play the game but feel ambivalent about Heart, Foghat or Slayer. If you want something a bit different then you are scuppered with the Wii version since other songs cannot be downloaded. A future release that can automatically generate fingerings for any given piece of music would be fantastic, Mr Activision.

2) The avatars aren't to my taste. You have a Bruce Dickinson clone, a JPOP starlet, a Tank Girl, a Hendrix look-alike, a hair metal dolt, Lita Ford's cousin and a KISS-esque fat bloke. The unlockable characters (El Slasho, Mr 'Look At Me Play An Air Raid Siren' Morello from Rage Against The Machine, Lou the Devil and a couple of others) are fine but... These ain't my heroes IYSWIM.

3) Likewise the other members of the band. The singer is always this funny looking bloke in a t-shirt, on bass you have this Derek Smalls/Cousin It cross and at the back beefy guy is always bashing the drums, irrespective of whether you are playing White Zombie, The Strokes or ZZ Top. Band members do tend to dress alike, yunno. If the guitarist looks like an extra from the Rocky Horror Picture show, there is an outside chance that even the brick outhouse drummer is wearing ill-advised lippy.

4) There is no room for improvisation, composition or even playing what you are hearing; you are effectively matching dots on a grid in time to music. That's more fun than it sounds, but still. The number of times I strummed the correct rhythm and got loud clunking noises for my attempts at musicianship are too many to want to recall.

Don't get wrong - I loved the game. It is very easy to just pick up and play, which is more than you can say for a real guitar. Pretty much everyone can do the Easy Level songs without any practice, making the game a winner at parties. You can even rock out with a friend and pretend you are playing to thousands in an enormodome. (The sex and drugs part of the Rawk triumvirate are up to you.) It will inspire you to expand your musical horizons. It might even encourage you to go out and buy a guitar of your own...

Finally, the cost. Other reviewers have stated that £70 is a bit steep. It is, but you are getting a game that will draw you in and give you many months of gameplay, even more if you can persuade a friend or your other half to join you in the co-op career mode. The 'just-one-more-go' aspect is very high.

So is it worth the money? Yes, certainly. It's fun.

Wow, what an experience it is playing Guitar Hero. I am probably not your average gamer, my usual games are Buzz!, Wii Sport, Brain Training an my DS etc (I am a 45 year old female after all...)but have been tempted after seeing people at work playing it (during lunch time!) so took the plunge 3 days ago and have to say have not stopped playing it since. It probably helps that I don't play a real guitar (tried it but too hard) because it's nothing like it and also having a 20 year old son in the house who has already finished the 'Easy' stage and so unlocked many of the songs. The tracks on the game are varied and although I didn't recognise very many, I am enjoying the music in it's own right. It becomes compulsive to try and beat your previous score and so you get to hear the tracks many times-I hope my neighbour likes my efforts!

A warning for people buying the game, the sound is only in mono on this game at the moment, but unless you're desperate to use surround sound, don't let that stop you buying this game. In about a months time you'll be able to have a replacement disc sent to you free of charge anyway, with re-mastered sound. So since the problem will be sorted I've given this game 5 stars because it has kept the brilliant guitar hero game play and added online functionality, and it's so much fun. I'm not too fussed about the new boss battles, I just found them a little annoying to be honest, but having played the first and second game already I've found this game to be even more challenging. I think this is great, obviously it means that less people will be able to complete the game, but it's still easy enough to get into and unlock all the songs. There really isn't any other game experience like this at the moment, I couldn't recommend this game more.