Who would have thought that strapping a controller shaped like a guitar to you and then pressing buttons and strumming in time like some insane amped up, rock version of ‘Simon Says' would prove to be so addictive?

When I reviewed Guitar Hero II back in April it was my introduction to the series as not being a PS2 owner I'd never really had an opportunity to delve into it and see just what all the fuss was about. Suffice to say, my score of 95 was pretty evident of how much not only I enjoyed it, but how big a hit it was with the rest of my family. It's pretty rare for non-gamers to get interested enough to pick up a console controller yet GH2 did exactly that, and that speaks volumes about just how much fun this type of game can be to play.

Pretty soon we're going to have the MTV-ised version of this game type arrive, no doubt advertised to us at insane levels and with its impending arrival fans of the Guitar Hero series have been eagerly anticipating the arrival of GH3 to see what surprises and new additions to the series Activision (and new developer, NeverSoft) have in store for us. Competition is meant to make things better, breed creativity and all that, so with the promise of Xbox Live multiplayer, Boss Battles, a wireless controller (finally), oh.. and Slash from Guns N' Roses, let's find out (apparently working from scratch, with no source code from previous games) how NeverSoft have done.

By now you're all probably familiar with the concept of the game and how it works, but for those who aren't when you first fire the game up you're asked to create a band, you give it a name and then you work your way up from rat infested cellars to playing at massive stadiums earning riches and fame along the way. To progress through the game you have to ‘perform' various rock songs (more about them later), by pressing the fret buttons on your guitar controller, and strum the notes in time to the pattern that scrolls down the neck of your guitar onscreen. By hitting notes in time and completing each track you're awarded a score, and a ‘star' ranking depending on how well you've done. By missing too many notes you can fail the song and then you have to start that track over. During the song, ‘star power' is earned which can be unleashed by titling the controller up, this then activates a score multiplier which doubles the amount of points you earn while it lasts.

This is the format that the single player career mode offers and in GH3 it's made up of 42 tracks spread across 8 locations. The biggest difference this time around is that linking each location you unlock is a story, told cartoon cut-scene style (think a lower quality 2d style of something from a Gorillaz video) of your bands rise from obscurity to international fame. Does it add anything to the game, not really and I found myself just skipping through them before too long. The problem with it is, as you can't create your own character, and that the character you choose to perform as isn't actually featured in these cut scenes, it feels disconnected and irrelevant.

As you pass the first few sections you'll get introduced to one of the new features, Boss Battles. Real life guitarists Tom Morello and everyone's favourite Top Hat wearing style machine, Slash, are in the game just dying to embarrass you in front of your slowly increasing fan base. To progress you have to beat them at their own tracks by firing off power-ups you collect whilst playing through the battle. The power-ups might cause the notes to flip from left to right, increase your opponent's difficulty or even steal a power-up. As the power-up notes are random there's a large amount of luck required but even so, these battles never presented much of a challenge and the final boss was pretty easy to beat with only one or two restarts required.

As with the ‘story' that's been added, the battles don't really add a lot to the single player mode at all and with a game subtitled ‘Legends of Rock' it's disappointing that there weren't a few more ‘Legends' to go up against and unlock to play as. Where's David Gilmour? Where's Dave Grohl, where's Brian May, where's Gary Moore? There's a Carlos Santana track, but why isn't he in the game? Sunshine of your Love by Cream is included, but where's Eric Clapton? Frankly, 2 boss battles just wasn't enough and to make things just a bit more annoying, the tracks from these battles aren't even playable afterwards in the ‘quick play' or any of the other game modes.

So along the way you go from performing at backyard gigs, seedy bars, a video shoot on the back of a semi trailer, a prison and Japan (amongst others) through to Lou's Inferno for the ultimate showdown (whom with, you can probably guess). Money is accumulated, slowly, for purchases at the in-game store where you can pick up new guitars, new guitar finishes, new characters, new tracks and new outfits, just like in GH2. Annoyingly, even after you beat Tom Morello and Slash, they're not immediately available as you still have to spend $10,000 to purchase them.

As you've read, there are a few issues I had this time around but even with these minor gripes, the addition of the ‘story' and the execution of the Boss Battles, even if it falls short of what I was expecting, don't detract from the game at all. The heart of the gameplay is fully intact and for a first attempt the guys had NeverSoft are definitely allowed a bit of slack. If the rumour going around that they had absolutely none of the code from previous games to work with is true, then they've done a pretty kick arse job of continuing the series. Not only that but by also managing to add a few new features and implement a couple of tweaks (for example the timing of hitting the notes feels a bit friendlier compared to GH2) they've tried to add something new to keep long term fans of the series happy.

The biggest new feature is online multiplayer and although I've only had a limited chance to test it out (due to not many Aussies having the game yet), the games against random people on Xbox Live were all lag and issue free. You can host ranked or unranked Face-Off, Pro Face-Off, Battle and Co-op matches (although the full co-op career isn't available to play) and battle things out online. The Guitar Hero website now also features the ability to setup ‘Tour Groups' and invite people you know in to take on the world. It's been great to see games feature more of these sorts of online and website driven extra features and no doubt it will be popular with the Guitar Hero series as well.

Graphically things aren't too bad with a few improvements over GH2. The arenas themselves seem to lack ‘something' that I can't quite put my finger on (so it could be just me), but it could have something to do with the totally irrelevant advertising found throughout the game. While music related advertising is something we should expect to find nowadays in a game like this, a car manufacturer such as Pontiac isn't. Firstly, what does it have to do with rock and roll, secondly, what does it have to do with Australia as you can't even buy their cars here.

The animation on the guitarists is great, the lead singers lip syncing is really well done also, even if he has some freakishly large mouth that looks big enough to get a football into, but the animation on the drummer is just ridiculous and looks like some animatronic robot left over from a dilapidated carnival. Everything NeverSoft improved in the animations is totally undone with the drummer, it really is that bad. At least thankfully, you don't see it a lot, just like real drummers should be I guess ;-) Overall, the character models are definitely more detailed and if you dig the ‘cartoon' style that the series continues to use you'll notice quite a few improvements in all areas.

The one thing I haven't covered yet, and the single thing that either makes or breaks a game such as Guitar Hero is the song list. The career mode is made up of 42 tracks that should include something for everyone. There's massive variety, and plenty of huge hits including tracks such as "School's Out" by Alice Cooper, "Hit Me with Your Best Shot" by Pat Benatar, "When You Were Young" by The Killers, "Even Flow" by Pearl Jam, "Cherub Rock" by The Smashing Pumpkins and plenty more that are great fun to play through, but (and please remember that everyone's taste in music is their own, and totally subjective) do we really need crap like "Before I Forget” by SlipKnot and does that band qualify as being "Legends of Rock”? Personally I don't think so and including them just robs us of one other killer track that could have been included.

In the song lists favour is that more and more of these tracks are now original recordings rather than covers. If you thought the Axel Rose impersonator from GH2 sucked, then you'll be happy to know that "Welcome to the Jungle” in GH3, and plenty more, are now the original recordings. Some tracks such as "Anarchy in the U.K” and "Cult of Personality” were even re-recorded for the game by the original bands!

One other small complaint at the track list is while it's great to see bands like The Rolling Stones included, the song selection could have been better. Instead of ‘Satisfaction', easily their most well known and instantly identifiable song, we get "Paint it Black”. I'm splitting hairs here, but hopefully there are at least one or two people out there that agree with me. Also this time around there's nothing by The Foo Fighters and for me, "Monkey Wrench” in GH2 was one track I kept going back to over and over. Obviously the downloadable content that's to come will hopefully correct this (another rumour doing the rounds online is that the first DLC pack will be 3 Foo Fighters tracks), and obviously games such as this will never have a track list that keeps everybody completely happy. The issues I have with some of the song choices are mine alone, and out of the 42 tracks in the career, I really only had an issue with two or three, so kudos to NeverSoft, that's a pretty impressive hit rate I guess.