I've always wanted to play guitar, and though I have an acoustic one sitting in a case in my room, I know not one thing on proper fingering or even the ability to name a note. Perhaps it's no surprise then that I love the Guitar Hero series, a franchise that lets me live out my guitar fantasies and doing so in a fashion that is fairly easy at first, but requires tremendous skill later on. So is Guitar Hero 3 just as good or even better than the past games? If I told you I was rocking the horns on my left hand now, would that answer your question? Rock on!

THE STORY SO FAR
Imagine my surprise when I found out that Guitar Hero 3 doesn't have just one story but two! Admittedly the stories aren't that involving or even happen that frequently, but they are animated nicely and the incoherent babbling of a language makes them a good laugh too. Depending on whether you go solo or co-op, you'll experience a story that has you starting out from humble beginnings and signing your first big contract, or learning to get back together after a bitter divorce. It's not much, but we appreciate the quality and effort that was put into a feature that honestly would've mattered little overall in the end anyways.

SINGLE-PLAYER: GAMEPLAY
The fundamentals of Guitar Hero 3 are the same as they were in Guitar Hero 2, so we'll just copy the generals over and move on from there.

Career mode is the driving force of the game, in which you'll go to different venues, play different songs, and try to advance through the entire list of songs. You'll start things out by naming your band, picking your guitarist (male and female choices are available), picking your guitar, and then off you go to rock and roll. But first you'll also need to pick which of the difficulties you are going to start with, and if you are a noob, please, please, please hear me when I say do Easy first – cause even on Easy, you will probably suck some.

To break the difficulties down and tell you what you can expect from each one: Easy (you'll only use the first three buttons – green, red, yellow); Medium (you'll only use the first four buttons – green, red, yellow, and blue); Hard (you'll use all the buttons and the song moves faster); and finally Expert (you'll use all buttons, more complicated notes, and the song is at its fastest). You'll also find yourself playing more notes and more of the riffs the higher up in the difficulty you go up. Trust me in that if you can rock out on Expert without breaking a sweat, thou truly are a Guitar Hero – nay – God!

The idea of the gameplay is as simple as could be, as all you have to do is watch the telegraphed guitar notes slide down the neck of your guitar in the game, press whatever the colored keys are when they get to your strum line, and then when they do flick the strum bar on your guitar to play the note. Tadda – simple as pie. But single notes aren't the sole notes, as you'll also have power chords that require you to push more than one key down at a time. You've also got long notes that require you to keep the keys held down until the complete note have finished (these longs notes are your chance to break out the whammy and make the song your own).

However, though things start off simple, then you add more keys in and suddenly it is a different game as you struggle to remember what finger represents what color and catching up if you fall behind. Everything doesn't come in a slow and steady beat either, as you'll have notes come in all sorts of measure in time, meaning you really need to be paying attention to the screen and not your fingering (fingering needs to come naturally). You'll also need to learn more complicated finger moves as well, such as hammer-ons and pull-downs which allow you to play closely positioned notes without having to strum for each one.

Should you fall behind on the Rock Meter (green is you're doing good, yellow is okay, red is bad, and flashing red means you are about to lose) you can always use your built up Star Power, which you get from successfully playing all the star notes that come along as you are playing the song; to activate Star Power all you need to do is crank the guitar upwards and then get playing (Star Power will auto stop after you've expended your meter).

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