I’m pissed.

I went and dropped $90 on the new Guitar Hero and I’m really disappointed with it. It just doesn’t have the same vibe as the first two. It’s as if Neversoft ripped the heart and soul out of it and replaced it with utter lameness. They shoulda stuck with Tony Hawk.

My biggest gripe is with how the controller handles fast picking. It doesn’t. In GH 1 & 2, I was able to use a guitar pick to pick the strum bar. Now if I use a pick, the strums don’t register. The motion is too fast for the strum bar or something. You actually have to press the strum bar up or down. This makes it so that your strumming hand can never be more than 2 inches away from the strum bar. It’s so aggravating. This means no Pete Townshend windmills or Billy Joe Armstrong wood-sawing strums. Most people will probably miss this bug completely since it only comes up if you are playing the game as you would a real guitar (which most people don’t do). I haven’t seen any mention of it online yet either, so it’s probably not a big enough problem to warrant a recall or software fix (if that’s even possible).

If the strumming thing wasn’t enough, I think the graphics have made a turn for the worse. In addition, there really isn’t anything new in regards to game play. Of course, I haven’t played online yet so I can’t speak about that new aspect of the game. The last thing that pissed me off were the videos. I purchased all of the videos that were available and they were all a total rip-off. Each one was like 2 minutes long… if that. Much shorter than the ones on the original two games. Needless to say, they didn’t go into too much detail about the making of the game or the recording sessions.

Overall, the branding of the game is all over the place and it doesn’t have a cohesive feel like the second one did AT ALL. The segueway videos had the completely wrong vibe to them as well, playing more like anime than like a gritty rock saga.

The one thing it does have going for it is the songs. They rock.

Overall, this train wreck has officially jumped the shark. Bring on Rock Band!!