Guitar Hero III, The Simpsons Game reviews..

The Simpsons Game is out for all Major Systems(PSP this week), and reviews have been generally around the 7 out of 10 range. I have the game, and tend to agree with the reviews for the most part. It is one of those games that doesn't have the best gameplay, can be repetitive, but overall is very fun. The Simpsons TV show writers were used, as opposed to some of the past Simpson console games, and the humor is great.

If you are as big a Simpsons fan as I am, and play video games as well, there is plenty to like in the Simpsons game. At the very least, I would say give it a rental, because there is alot to like here.
When it was revealed that Harmonix(Frequency, Amplitude, Guitar Hero, Guitar Hero II) was no longer apart of the Guitar Hero franchise, alot of people wondered what would happen with Activision's hit. Activision put Neversoft(Tony Hawk Series) in charge of development for Guitar Hero III, and many people, such as myself, were a bit nervous with the decision.

Guitar Hero is a franchise that really can't receive a bad review. Take the same game, put new songs in it, and there you have it. The song list is obviously extremely important, and that's where this game falls short for me, even with 70+ songs.

The New Guitars (Gibson Kramer for PS2, Les Paul for PS3/360/Wii) are great. Can be tough to hold at times while standing, but the buttons feel great, the strum feels equally impressive.

The Boss Battles Suck. The Multiplayer battle mode sucks. I won't elaborate, they should have stuck with ALL encores, not thrown in Boss Battles.

It's not that the Songs featured are overall BAD(although sections 3-4-and 5 are pretty weak), it's that alot of the marquee songs are songs I can turn the radio on and hear on a daily basis. I like Welcome to the Jungle as much as the next guy, but do I really need to hear it more than I am already subjected to in normal life?

The real gems are Cult of Personality by Living Colour, Raining Blood by Slayer, Stricken by Disturbed, Cliffs of Dover by Eric Johnson, and OF COURSE, One by Metallica. Everybody's musical tastes differ, but overall these songs are challenging and FUN. And the Dragonforce song, Through the Fire and Flames, is freaking impossible. Alot of people considered Jordan on GHII hard, and it was, but Dragonforce is harder, longer, and doesn't have an easy loop to recover from the hard passages.
Going back to little old Harmonix. They have this game, called Rock Band, coming out in less than 20 days, I have talked about it before. They have MTV and EA behind them, and they have a nice little track list of almost 60 songs, and they have promised some lofty downloadable content in the way of Whole Albums, and many other songs. They have the better Metallica Song, better Weezer song, Better Queens of the Stone Age song. They have Soundgarden! STP, Bon Jovi, Blue Oyster Cult.... ALOT to look forward to playing.

And you won't just have a guitar, you have the EXTREMELY fun drum set, and a microphone as well, and you have a fresh series that may have something going for it. Check your local Best Buy for the demo, it releases Novemeber 21st. I will post impressions when this one is out, because the demo units I was banging on have alot of wear on them.

P.S. Rock Band went gold. It is so close....