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E3 2007: It may be in the hands of a new developer, but does Guitar Hero 3 still have enough Star Power to rock our world?

If there was one thing to blame for me not checking out as many games as I possibly could at E3, it wouldn’t be because of the lines; there hardly were any at all. It would be because of the black hole that is Guitar Hero 3, constantly sucking me back for that “One more song”.

With Activation taking over the reins of the Guitar Hero franchise, many people have been worried that the change in developers would equate to a change in quality of the core game. Let me quickly shoot down those fears when I say that Guitar Hero 3 looks, plays, and sounds just as fantastic as it did when Harmonix was behind the wheel. While the presentation has undergone some dramatic changes, make no mistake that this is still the Guitar Hero that we all know and love.

That being said, there are a couple of new additions and tweaks to make note of. The first and biggest addition to Guitar Hero 3 is the new Battle Mode, which pits you against a friend in what is essentially the Guitar Hero version of a deathmatch. Unlike the other competitive multiplayer modes in Guitar Hero, in Battle Mode it is possible (and very likely) for you to fail a song. To make things worse, you can’t even use Star Power to save yourself when you’re about to fail that nasty solo. In Star Power’s place are special attacks that you can use by tilting your guitar upwards that will just make your opponent’s life absolutely miserable.

The known attacks so far are Whammy, which will cause your entire fret board to freeze until you mash the whammy bar a certain number of times, Broken String which will only cause one button to freeze, but requires that you press it a lot in order to make it work again, Lefty Flip which requires you to temporarily flip your guitar to your other hand, Amp Overload which will cause the scrolling notes to flash wildly, making it hard to read what you have to play, Double Notes which causes your opponent to press an extra button on every note or chord that comes his way, Difficulty Up which is pretty self-explanatory unless your opponent is playing on expert in which case this attack will not even show up, and finally Steal Power, which is also pretty self-explanatory.