Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock

Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock is a rhythm game developed by Neversoft. It is the third installment in the Guitar Hero series, Neversoft's first attempt at creating a Guitar Hero game, and known to be the best game in the franchise to most fans and is also the fastest selling game in the franchise's history, being one of the first video games to make over $1 billion in sales.

Why It Rocks

 * 1) Each character represents a different style of rock. For example, Xavier Stone (psychedelic rock), Midori (pop rock), and Metalhead (industrial metal).
 * 2) The main setlist has even more original recordings than Guitar Hero II, though there are still a few cover versions.
 * 3) *"Anarchy in the UK" by the Sex Pistols and "Cult of Personality" by Living Colour were both re-recorded by the original bands because the original master tapes were lost.
 * 4) Its setlist is the best selection of songs in the series to most people, having iconic rock songs like "Welcome to the Jungle" by Guns N' Roses, "Cult of Personality" by Living Colour, mixed with popular heavy metal songs such as "Before I Forget" by Slipknot, "One" by Metallica, "Raining Blood" by Slayer and more, including the now iconic "Through the Fire and Flames" by DragonForce.
 * 5) Some of the best sound design in any rhythm game, ever! Bar None!
 * 6) The formula of the series was perfected with this game, with great note placement that looks and feels like you are playing all of the notes in the song correctly.
 * 7) The hit window has been drastically increased from Guitar Hero II, where it is easier to hit notes on all versions, making it less of a chore to FC the harder songs.
 * 8) The HOPO (Hammer Ons and Pull Offs) system in the game was also perfected, meaning you could hold an HOPO in advance from a far distance, making it easier to hit intricate HOPO sections.
 * 9) It introduces cheats, such as the iconic Hyperspeed, Performance Mode (where you need to memorize the notes because the highway disappears), Precision Mode (where it is harder to hit notes, like GHII), and the ability to Unlock Everything, which, you guessed it, unlocks every Guitar, Bass, Song and Character in the game.
 * 10) It had a hugely positive impact on the music industry, like DragonForce's "Through the Fire and Flames". The song cracked the Hot 100 by selling 35,000 downloads a week after the game's release. And Guitar Hero III also caused Guitar Center to have a 27% increase in sales, meaning the game was so awesome that it encouraged gamers to become musicians.
 * 11) The Xplorer controller is compatible with this game along with the new Les Paul guitar, which feels better than the Xplorer.
 * 12) It also introduces guitar battles where you can battle 2 Legends of Rock, Tom Morello of Rage Against the Machine, and Slash from Guns N' Roses. After you defeat them, you get to play an encore with them! The encore songs are awesome, with Tom Morello's being Bulls on Parade, and Slash's being the iconic Welcome to the Jungle, making that encore even more hype than playing Bulls with Tom. Also, after you beat the encores, you unlock them! Yes, you can play with Tom Morello or Slash in this game!
 * 13) Bret Michaels, the lead singer of glam metal band Poison, also appears to sing "Talk Dirty to Me" (albeit a cover without his voice), and "Go That Far" (which is by Bret himself).
 * 14) The game has a wide variety of Guitars, such as the Kramer Fatboy, a Neversoft Eyeball Bass, and in the PS2, and Wii versions, the old SGs from Guitar Hero and Guitar Hero II. Which can be pretty hilarious to watch your character perform with a plastic guitar.
 * 15) Better motion capture for the rest of the band. For example, the singer now moves around instead of standing still, and the drummer now properly hits the pattern of the songs.
 * 16) The PC version features mod support, and you can add custom tracks in the game.

Bad Qualities

 * 1) The main setlist still has a few covers, and a few of them, like Sunshine of Your Love, and Paranoid, are still pretty bad (though they are better than GHII's covers).
 * 2) The Les Paul guitar's neck has a very poor connection, particularly with the PS3 and Xbox versions of it, which causes dropped notes, and sometimes buttons will die and stop working until you reconnect it, strangely enough, the Wii version's Les Paul is not as bad, if anything it is better than the Xbox and PS3 versions.
 * 3) The PC port isn’t very good, as it is extremely unstable, it also has insanely high system requirements. Also custom fretboard mods can crash the game, and the only way to fix it is by reinstalling the game.
 * 4) The game is EXTREMELY HARD on Hard and Expert, though despite that, it can be very rewarding when you FC a song on Expert.
 * 5) A few of the songs are mis-placed, such as Lay Down being in tier 3, despite being too difficult for that tier on Hard and Expert, and Knights of Cydonia being placed in tier 7 despite it being hard enough to be tier 8 material.
 * 6) The Wii version is a mediocre port, due to the fact that the graphics are severely downgraded from all other platforms, even PS2, and the guitars need to have the Wii remote placed inside of them. Because of this, it drains the battery of the Wii remote faster, has no accelerometer, meaning if you use an adapter and play with it on Clone Hero, Tilt will not be able to be mapped, and Due to the fact that the guitar is an extension of the Wii remote, the input lag is horrible.
 * 7) The guitarist animations are more limited than Guitar Hero II. The crowd looks awful, and your character will no longer move around the stage.
 * 8) *The male singer looks creepy when the camera focuses on his face.
 * 9) * While the drummer now properly hits the pattern of the songs, the animations for him are stiff and really awkward.

Reception
The game received critical acclaim from critics, having an 8.9 from IGN, an 8.5 from CNET, & an 8/10 from GameSpot. and is often called the best game in the series by most fans because Neversoft perfected the formula, the fantastic note placement, perfect hit window and the good wireless guitar. It was also the fastest selling game in the franchise, earning over US$100 million on its opening week, and crossing the $1 billion mark after 2 years.

In the ten weeks since the game's launch, players had downloaded more than five million songs.