Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock

Despite sharing the exact same innards as Guitar Hero II, Legends of Rock is, in every conceivable way, a better product than its predecessors. It's better presented, better put together, more professional, more complete. As the series always has, it brings fantastic music together with challenging, addictive, endlessly rewarding gameplay and a great sense of style - only this time it has flawless co-op, online multiplayer, and a 1980s German-language punk anthem. In other words, it's damned near perfect.

Guitar Hero III delivers the rock to PC owners, but it does it with the performance capability of a second-rate bar band.

Now that Harmonix has moved on, Guitar Hero 3 is a safe first entry into the franchise by the new management. The group didn't rock the boat too much and stuck with the tried and true formula of previous Guitar Hero games in most situations. The soundtrack is fantastic and the new online additions are going to take the Guitar Hero community to the next level. The lack of guitarhero.com features on the PC are a disappointment, though. It really is hard to argue with any facet of the gameplay. Everything outside of the game itself, though, is in need of an overhaul as the presentation is growing a bit stale. It's hard to ask that of a first foray into an established franchise, but it's equally hard to look at the game and not see room for improvement. Everyone got it right where it counts, though, and the third entry into the Guitar Hero franchise is just as fun as ever.