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[Corpus]

Lazer, you need to understand that most people are not as all-powerful as you seem to be when playing games.

[Sar]

To be honest, I'm not utterly fantastic at Guitar Hero games (I got through about two-thirds of GH1 and three-quarters of GH2 on Expert before I got stuck) and I found a little of both of these reactions to GH3.

It is an easier game to play, in general. The window for hitting a note is far wider than any other plastic-toy-guitar game I've played, and most notably the timing doesn't seem to matter at all for hammerons/pulloffs, one can typically go right up and down a roll before the second gem hits the bottom so long as one hits the buttons in the right order. Which is pretty bad, for a music game.

On the other hand, some of the gem placement is... bizarre at best. They seem to have gone to great lengths to put unholy finger-cramping chords in there - sometimes different in two places in the track where the exact same piece of music is being played - just to make it harder, for example. The strumming is insane in the later tracks. Worst of all, the hammeron/pulloff placement seemed to be utterly random and bear no relation whatsoever to the way the tracks are actually played. I'm not a guitarist, but I have enough musical understanding to realise this much. One does not start a roll and then pluck the string just once right in the middle of it... but that is harder to play. When one considers that the really-loose hammeron detection means that strumming on the same note often means a failure, 'cause it's already recognised the hammeron half a second too early and thinks you're playing a second note, that's pretty evil.

On the whole, I found GH1 and 2 and Rock Band feel like music games where you're playing (read whichever meaning of this you choose) along to music; GH3 felt like a puzzle game which happened to have some vague connection to music, but was really more about the developer trying to use the music to trick your instinct into messing up the timing puzzle than it was about playing along to the music.

[Lazer]

Ironically a good 3/4ths of the notes they made hammer ons in the game would sound like complete rubbish were you to not actually pick those playing a real guitar.

Lazer, you need to understand that most people are not as all-powerful as you seem to be when playing games.

Regardless, point stands, it's way easier.

[shinygerbil]

I will say that GH3 is easier - and they've clearly spent a lot less time making it feel like you're playing along with the music.

As Yahtzee says in his wonderfully accurate review, however, the actual songs you have to play in Career Mode are arguably harder. There is a sudden destruction of the already shaky difficulty curve, as you're suddenly given practically impossible songs to play (at least, they are at first). As a seasoned GH2 player, I proceeded through the career pretty straightforwardly, but when I got to that Slayer song... I actually had to grease my fingers to play that damn song. true story.

What they've done, is abstracted the Guitar Hero III-playing techniques from the guitar-playing techniques. Like a lot of cheaply-done games it's more about "knowing the system" than having any real skill at the game.

It's just lucky that, as people have said, GH3 is a lot more forgiving than the previous ones.

Some might try to qualify the new "Devil went down to Georgia", but that hardly even qualifies as music to begin with 

Don't you be knockin'. It is real music.

[Radnom]

...but when I got to that Slayer song... I actually had to grease my fingers to play that damn song. true story.

AUGH. I have no freakin' clue why they chose that Slayer song. It's a great song, but not a great Guitar Hero song. They should have used Angel of Death from the same album. It would be way better to play. Raining Blood is pretty much "PLAY ALL INSTRUMENTS AS FAST AS CAN THEN THROW AT EACH OTHER". Again, love the song, love the album, but not a good GH choice

[Movius]

playing Raining Blood without Postmortem before it should be banned.

[Türbo Bröther]

I myself couldn't imagine pretend playing any Slayer without Kreator as an accompaniment.