Yes, Guitar Hero 3 : Legends of Rock is finally out! On Sunday morning I headed over to Game Crazy to picked up my reserved copy and rushed back home to try it out. Now, I’ve played the previous Guitar Hero 2 before on the 360 and had a blast with it, so you can imagine my excitement when I found out it was arriving on the Nintendo Wii.  So I’ve been playing it for the past couple of days and needless to say, I wasn’t disappointed.

The guitar in Guitar Hero 3 now comes packaged with a detachable neck and body which from my understanding is different from the previous Guitar Hero games. The Wii version of Guitar Hero 3 is however quite different from the other consoles since the guitar itself was designed to house the Wii-mote. This of course works out well because it almost seems as if the Guitar Hero game itself was designed perfectly with the Wii in mind. The Wii-mote slips into a housing slot in the back of the guitar’s body, attaches to the connector in the slot, and now you’re all set! You now have a motion sensored guitar, with it’s own speaker, that vibrates, and no syncing or re-syncing needed. Perfectly seamless!

I’ve heard that the Xbox 360 and the PS3 owners are having issues with their guitar since the new detachable neck’s electrical pins aren’t connecting well enough with the body, resulting in the fret buttons not registering when pressed. A co-worker of mine brought his in today to work and showed us that the neck and body of the 360’s version does not actually snap in together as tightly as it should of. Well, I’m happy to report that the Wii’s guitar does not have any of that issues - or none that I’ve came across yet. The neck and body on the Wii’s seem to snap in tightly and perfectly with no loose gaps.

The other cool thing with the Wii’s version is the inclusion of the Wii-mote’s speaker. May not be a big deal to some, but it does enhances the experience when you can actually hear the clinking of the strings from the guitar when the wrong note is played. Not to mention that it’s actually kinda cool how the guitar vibrates when “Star Power” is activated - although this doesn’t seem to be very noticeable when you’re standing up.

Guitar Hero 3 comes packed with a whole new slew of rock songs from the past and present. In all, there is a total of 71 playable songs, while 46 are the main set list of songs you play, there are 25 that are bonus tracks. Now, I will say this right now. I’m not totally big into rock music, but I’ve found some of the songs on here that I recognized from before and discovered a few new ones that I liked. Some of the songs that I was already familiar with and liked are “Bulls on Parade” by Rage Against the Machine, “Paint it Black” by Rolling Stones, “Even Flow” by Pearl Jam, and “Cult of Personality” by Living Colour - which ironically are all “encore” songs in the game. And then there are others that I’ve heard before, but never really listen to until playing the game that I found to be quite “interesting”.

The game features a Quick Play mode (only for single player though), a Career Mode and a co-op Career Mode with a partner, and an Online mode. Not all the songs are available right away. You have to play through the Career mode to unlock them. But one particular issue is that there are certain songs that can only be unlocked in co-op career mode, so if you don’t have a partner with another guitar to play with, then you’re out of luck until an unlock code appears on the Internet somewhere. Guitar Hero 3 also features special rock legends boss characters such as Slash, Tom Morello, and Bret Michaels who can be unlocked after defeating them in a battle. 

The online multiplayer feature worked quite nicely on the Wii without any issues. You can either hook up with a friend online using your friend codes or find a random gamer to battle against. I was able to load up some online battles and one in particular against some guy named “Dan” who totally kicked my ass to “Cult of Personality” - note that at the time I hadn’t even made it to that song yet so it messed me up badly. Needless to say, I think I’m going to stay offline until I get a little better.

One missing feature that the Wii currently doesn’t have is the ability to purchase and download new songs to play like the other consoles. Apparently they are still working to get it functional, but when it’ll be done is still another questions. Some of the issues stems from the the Wii’s limited internal storage and how it can load data saved on the SD cards. Of course there could be a chance that they don’t get it working at all and we’re just stuck with the songs we have now. Hopefully that doesn’t happen…

So anyways, if you haven’t picked this game up yet, you seriously need to now. Definitely one of the most unique games in recent years and I highly recommend it. The game has enough difficulty settings so that even the most novice player (like me) can get into it right away. The variety of songs is enough to keep you interested for a long time, or at least until Mario Galaxy comes out in a couple of weeks…