Topic: PREVIEWS: Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock

[LassePalle]

An Xbox 360 demo at GC and an interview with a PR representative at Red Octane have revealed some new information on Guitar Hero 3 for Wii.
 http://www.nintendoworldreport.com/previewArt.cfm?artid=14282

 Bryan Lamb from publisher Red Octane was kind enough to sit down and talk about Guitar Hero 3 at GC. Before showing the Xbox 360 version, he confirmed that the Wii version would be very comparable to it – both in terms of graphics and gameplay. A lower resolution and a different guitar controller, which has an indentation for the Wii Remote, represent two differences, neither of which will alter the gameplay significantly.    

When asked about online multiplayer a more glaring difference came up, though. As opposed to the other versions, the Wii installment may come without online features. Wii gamers could be missing out on both downloadable content as well as online multiplayer. The reason given was that Nintendo doesn’t have their online structure ready, and no one really knows when to expect it. Red Octane has not ruled out the possibility of launching the game without online features and then add them post-release, when the service gets up and running.    

While the core gameplay remains largely untouched compared to its prequel, Guitar Hero 3 does promise some new features. Apart from new items, characters, and venues, you can partake in boss battles as explained in the earlier preview. Visually, you can now see all the band members play the instruments as they would it in real-life: they hit the right chords at the right time.    

The song list has obviously changed as well. At the show, new songs were announced, bringing the total amount to 44:  

 
• "3's and 7's" – Queens of the Stone Age
 
• "Avalancha" - Héroes del Silencio
 
• "Barracuda" – Heart
 
• "Black Magic Woman" – Santana
 
• "Cherub Rock" – Smashing Pumpkins
 
• "Closer" - Lacuna Coil
 
• "Cities on Flame with Rock and Roll" – Blue Öyster Cult
 
• "Cult of Personality" – Living Colour
 
• "Even Flow" – Pearl Jam
 
• "Generation Rock" – Revolverheld
 
• "Go That Far" – Bret Michaels Band
 
• "Hier Kommt Alex" - Die Toten Hosen
 
• "I'm in the Band" - The Hellacopters
 
• "In the Belly of a Shark" - Gallows
 
• "Knights of Cydonia" – Muse
 
• "La Grange" – ZZ Top
 
• "Lay Down" – Priestess
 
• "Mauvais Garçon" - NAAST
 
• "The Metal" – Tenacious D
 
• "Minus Celsius" - Backyard Babies
 
• "Miss Murder" – AFI
 
• "Mississippi Queen" – Mountain[31]
 
• "My Name Is Jonas" – Weezer
 
• "The Number of the Beast" – Iron Maiden
 
• "One" – Metallica
 
• "Paint It, Black" – The Rolling Stones
 
• "Paranoid" – Black Sabbath
 
• "Radio Song" - Superbus
 
• "Raining Blood" – Slayer
 
• "Reptilia" – The Strokes
 
• "Rock and Roll All Nite" – Kiss
 
• "Rock You Like a Hurricane" – Scorpions
 
• "Ruby" - Kaiser Chiefs
 
• "Sabotage" – Beastie Boys
 
• "School's Out" – Alice Cooper
 
• "She Bangs the Drums" – The Stone Roses
 
• "She Builds Quick Machines" – Velvet Revolver
 
• "Slow Ride" – Foghat
 
• "Suck My Kiss" – Red Hot Chili Peppers
 
• "Talk Dirty to Me" - Poison
 
• "Take This Life" - In Flames
 
• "Through the Fire and Flames" – DragonForce
 
• "Welcome to the Jungle" – Guns N' Roses
 
• "When You Were Young" – The Killers
 

   

More than 70 songs are planned for the final game.    

Regarding difficulty levels, Red Octane and developer Neversoft acknowledge the existence of the series’ hardcore fan base, which demands insane levels of challenge. Their wish will apparently be granted, while entirely new players will be able to instantly pick up and play the game, too.    

On a side note, Bryan mentioned that Red Octane doesn’t regard Rock Band as a threat to the sales of Guitar Hero 3. He believes the products are sufficiently different from each other. By focusing on the implementation of just one instrument, Neversoft and Red Octane believe that they’re in a very positive position because they can perfect the controls to an extent that would have been impossible had they wrestled with more instruments.

[nickmitch]

"Serious about online" my ass!

[NWR_insanolord]

EA did online on the Wii with Madden, so it has to be something specific that they want that Nintendo doesn't have. My guess is that this has something to do with them wanting to use the Wii Points system that is in place for the Virtual Console and Nintendo doesn't currently have a way to do that. This is completely baseless speculation, but it makes sense.  

[bubicus]

It's pretty obvious to me: Red Octane and Activision don't want to use Nintendo's existing system, and they are too lazy to build and maintain their own system.  

Multiplayer gaming for just two players is not difficult to code these days. It's not like Guitar Hero III throws around the same amount of changing data as something like Starcraft or Counterstrike. Heck, all the necessary data could fit in a few bytes: 1 or 2 bytes for the combination of 5 keys (5 bits) and the whammy (1 byte or less), plus extra bytes (2 or 4) for the timestamp of the strum. Therefore, I must conclude that they mostly just don't want to bother with the server maintenance, which I would think is weird, since they already have a pretty big server bank for their PC games. A smaller part of their reticence would be that they already have the Xbox Live and PSN network hooks worked out, but they want to keep the network codebase mostly the same across all three versions, but since Nintendo Wi-Fi is much more restrictive than XBox Live or PSN, they'd have to do even more extra work.

I wish I knew more about how games on Xbox Live, PSN, and Nintendo Wi-Fi are hosted. I assume that Microsoft, Sony, and Nintendo run the servers, and the third parties pay for usage?

[shammack]

Wow.  This blows.  I don't really care about online multiplayer, but not having downloadable content is a huge drawback (though not unexpected given the Wii's storage limitations).  The game comes out in, what, two months?  If they don't have those features ready now, there's no way they're going to cram them in by then.

I guess I should be grateful it's coming out on Wii at all, but, damn.

[Guitar Smasher]

Isn't it obvious that Nintendo wants nothing to do with online, for as long as they can get away with it?  If Wii happens to be the big undisputed winner of this gen, I wouldn't be suprised if Nintendo did nothing more with online next gen.

[TJ Spyke]

Quote
Originally posted by: Guitar Smasher
Isn't it obvious that Nintendo wants nothing to do with online, for as long as they can get away with it?  If Wii happens to be the big undisputed winner of this gen, I wouldn't be suprised if Nintendo did nothing more with online next gen.

Don't blame Nintendo, blame Activision for being damn lazy. Sega already has an online Wii game (a Japanese only pachinko video game based on Fist of the North Star) and Electronic Arts has one online Wii game out with several more scheduled to release this year. This is just Activision being too lazy and expecting the Wii version to sell great just because the Wii is now #1 worldwide (July NPD pushed it past Xbox 360).

[shammack]

Quote
This is just Activision being too lazy and expecting the Wii version to sell great just because the Wii is now #1 worldwide (July NPD pushed it past Xbox 360).

...and they're probably right.  I know I'll be buying it despite these handicaps, because I'm sure not buying a 360 or PS3.

[darknight06]

Is the PS2 version gonna be offline again as well?  If so this is just Activision being a you know what...  I don't see any reason why the game couldn't connect to Nintendo's server for Wii points info before going to it's own server for the downloadable songs.  And there's ZERO reason for no multiplayer online.  If flippin EA is willing to do EA Nation on MoH2 with 32 different players, and their other sports games (save for Tiger, pity too I probably would've gotten it) there's no good reason to cut it.

I got a question, just how large are the files for these songs that they're so prohibited to work on the Wii.  Really, part of me just doesn't see how they can't just run it off the SD card, it's what Excite Truck and a couple other third party games do anyhow.  Worried about copy protection, DRM it to death like they probably do it on the other consoles.


edit:  I have now been informed that the downloadable packs on the 360 were only 5 to 10MB. If that's so, then it's really BS that the Wii isn't getting that content.  From the way they made it sound it was around 60 to 100MB a pack or something...