Good
This is now the third review I've written for Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock in the past two weeks, starting with our mega-sized Xbox 360 / PS3 / Wii review and then our regulation-size PS2 review. The newly-released PC/Mac port, developed by Aspyr, is essentially the same game with a few feature tweaks, which means console-deprived gamers now have a legitimate means of rocking out. Just be sure you've got a rig capable of some heavy lifting first.
The bulk of Guitar Hero III remains unchanged: it has the the same graphics, the same set list of licensed and bonus songs, the same co-op play, and it's bundled with the same Xplorer USB guitar controller that came with the Xbox 360 version of Guitar Hero II. As has been the case with previous titles, you'll strum along with notes falling down the screen through eight tiers of increasing difficulty, starting with simple songs like "Slow Ride" and "Hit Me With Your Best Shot," eventually reaching epics like Iron Maiden's "Number of the Beast" and Metallica's "One." At its core, the PC version of GH3 shares the same pros and cons as its console cousins: it doesn't mess with the gameplay and has a pretty solid setlist, only faltering in terms of the new boss battles and some increased difficulty that could make it hard for some players to get through the Medium and Hard campaigns. (We won't rehash everything here; for a full dissection of the main game, check out our Xbox 360 review).
The PC version of Guitar Hero III can look extremely sharp.
Hooked up to a big-screen TV, it might initially be hard to tell the difference between the PC and console versions. Capable of running at resolutions up to 1920x1080, the game can look super-sharp with crisp menus and slick character models; Casey Lynch looks as hot as ever.
Unfortunately, you'll most likely feel compelled to turn those graphics down in a hurry, as we had issues with the game stuttering on our main test rig (an Alienware PC with a 2.66 GHz dual-core CPU, 2GB RAM, and a GeForce 8800GTX). Although the game ran fine about 95% of the time, it would often stutter a bit at the start of songs or at random moments throughout, a dealbreaker in a fast-paced rhythm game like Guitar Hero. Sadly, setting the graphics to low detail, turning off the crowd and physics and lowering the resolution to a prehistoric 800x600 didn't seem to help much, leaving us scratching our heads. This same machine has spent the majority of the past month running Enemy Territory, Team Fortress 2 and Call of Duty 4 at 1920x1080 with barely a stutter, so the technical performance is a bit of a downer.
