Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock
Encyclopedia
Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock is a music video game
, the third main installment in the Guitar Hero series
, and the fourth title overall. The game was published by Activision
and RedOctane
, and is the first game in the series to be developed by Neversoft
, after Activision
's acquisition of RedOctane
and MTV Games' purchase of Harmonix Music Systems
, the previous development studio for the series. The game was released worldwide for the PlayStation 2
, PlayStation 3
, Wii
, and Xbox 360
in October 2007, with Budcat Creations
and Vicarious Visions
assisting in the PlayStation 2 and Wii ports, respectively. Aspyr Media
developed the PC
and Mac
versions of the game, releasing them later in 2007.
Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock retains the basic gameplay from previous games in the Guitar Hero series, where the player uses a guitar-shaped controller to simulate the playing of lead
, bass
, and rhythm guitar
parts in rock
songs by playing in time to scrolling notes on-screen. The game, in addition to existing single-player Career modes, includes a new Co-Op Career mode and competitive challenges that pit the player against in-game characters and other players. Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock is the first game in the series to include an online multiplayer feature, which is enabled in the Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, and Wii versions. Initially the game offers over 70 songs, most of which are master tracks
. The Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 versions feature the ability to download additional songs. The musicians Tom Morello
(of the bands Rage Against the Machine
and Audioslave
) and Slash
(of Guns N' Roses
and Velvet Revolver
) make appearances both as guitar battle opponents and playable characters in the game. The PC, PlayStation 3, and Xbox 360 versions also include Bret Michaels
(of Poison
) as a non-playable character.
Critics were generally favorable towards the game, but reviewers noted a difference in the game's style compared to previous installments, associating it with it being Neversoft's first development attempt with the series. The game is often cited to be too difficult, creating "walls of notes" that are difficult to complete, and led to alterations in note placement for future games in the series were designed. According to Activision, Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock is the best-selling video game of 2007, both in terms of units sold and revenue earned, and that it is the first single retail video game to exceed one billion dollars in sales. The company also claimed that it is the second-best selling video game title since 1995, following Wii Play
, and is one of the best-selling third-party games available for the Wii.
Activision
purchased RedOctane
in 2006 for $100 million to achieve "an early leadership position in music-based gaming". In September of that year, MTV
acquired Harmonix
, the developer of all Guitar Hero games up to that point; this purchase would later lead to the development of the competing music-game series, Rock Band
. Without Harmonix's availability, Activision selected Neversoft Entertainment
to develop Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock. Neversoft president Joel Jewett stated his company was asked to develop the game because of a conversation that Jewett had with RedOctane's founders Kai and Charles Huang at the 2006 E3 Convention, in which Jewett mentioned how the first Guitar Hero game helped reduce the stress in the Neversoft offices during their development of Tony Hawk's Project 8
. Several months later, Jewett was contacted by the Huangs, asking if Neversoft wanted to work on Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock. Dusty Welch, head of publishing at RedOctane, recognized Neversoft had a "10-year track record of launching a game every single year and being in the top of the charts" and felt that the development group "brought a better and deeper sense of music sensibilities" to the series. Despite the experience from the previous games, Alan Flores, head of development at Neversoft, commented that the game was "deceptively simple" and that it took much work for their 30-person team to recreate the gameplay for Guitar Hero III. Though they "wanted to take the Guitar Hero experience to the next level" by adding additional instruments in the same manner as Rock Band, they opted to focus on perfecting the guitar gameplay. In 2010, Activision CEO Bobby Kotick stated that they believed Neversoft would help them to develop great games for the series, but has since come to regret their failure to seek Harmonix for further development responsibility and believed this would have been a better move for both companies.
The note tracks, on-stage motions of the band, and stage lighting and effect synchronization were created by the same team of developers who were all musicians and had previous experience in note tracking either from other music video games or from MIDI tracking. The note tracks were developed by placing notes in time with the song; for sections that had difficult parts to track within the game's engine, they opted to use sequences of notes that would seem to the match the music but still be playable. Hammer-ons and pull-offs ("HOPOs") for the previous Guitar Hero games were automatically placed by the software; in this iteration, the engine was designed to allow manual placement of HOPOs to make it easier to create certain effects in songs, such as sustained string bends. Character animations were selected from several made available by the animation team, while stage lighting and effects were selected to mimic those used in live performances from YouTube
or from concert appearances. A separate team came up with the concepts for the various stages and arenas in the game. The team wanted keep the same art style as the previous Guitar Hero games but add "a certain spark" to improve upon previous designs. Once a stage idea was brainstormed, the team sought visual references from real stages to expand upon, and a 2D drawing of the envisioned stage was prepared for review and to remain a constant goal of the stage design. From that, a "pop up
" three dimensional
version of the stage was created, and elements from the 2D concept art were added to determine the appropriate placement of set decorations. This team worked with the animation department to place the band members, stage lighting, and other effects in the game before the final 3D version of the stage was completed. The final stages included several animated elements to help further bring the stage to life.
For the game's characters, the developers intended to keep the comical looks from the previous games, but they decided to update their appearances with realistic materials and textures to take advantage of the more powerful level of graphics capabilities of seventh-generation consoles. The designers first drew character sketches to determine the characters' looks and clothing, creating a main and an alternate outfit for each character, which were then made into reference artwork. Afterward, low-level meshes
for each character were created, with details added with Zbrush
, resulting in characters that, before being scaled down for the game environment, had more than six million polygons
. Textures and pixel shaders were added using the team's previous work on Tony Hawk's Project 8 to match the style of earlier Guitar Hero games. Unlike the Tony Hawk games, each character in the game was given a unique skeleton
to match their variations in sizes and shapes, allowing the animators to create unique moves for individual characters. Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock introduces three new characters modeled after real-life musicians. Slash
, Tom Morello
, and Bret Michaels
, each performing one or more songs from their past recordings. All three were brought into the game using motion capture
from the Motion Analysis Corporation.
ported the game to the PlayStation 2, and Vicarious Visions
ported it to the Wii. In September 2007, Aspyr Media
announced they would be porting Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock to the PC and Macintosh platforms. Demos of Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock appeared in Tony Hawk's Proving Ground
for the Xbox 360 in the Xbox Live Marketplace
, and from the Internet as an ISO image
. The demo features five songs ("Lay Down
", "Rock You Like a Hurricane
", "Even Flow
", "Hit Me with Your Best Shot
", and "The Metal
") played within the Desert Rock Tour venue. As shipped, the game did not offer offline Co-Op Quickplay mode, a feature that was included in Guitar Hero II. This mode was added to the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 versions via a patch.
Activision called Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock its "largest product launch ever", selling more than 1.4 million copies, and making over $100 million in its first week of release in North America; another 1.9 million copies were sold in the following month. Subsequently, the company was concerned that they were unable to meet the game's demand for the 2007 holiday season. As of July 15, 2008, the game has sold more than eight million copies. During the first seven months of 2008, the game sold 3.037 million units in the United States, 412,000 in the United Kingdom, and 26,000 in Japan, for a total of 3.475 million units, according to the NPD Group
, GfK
Chart-Track
, and Enterbrain
. More than two million copies of the game were sold for the Wii platform, making it the best-selling third-party title for the platform. Game sales during the first 12 months after the game's release were over $750 million. At the 2009 Consumer Electronics Show
, Activision CEO Mike Griffith stated that Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock is the first retail video game to exceed one billion dollars in sales. According to accumulated data from NPD Group in January 2010, Guitar Hero III is the second best-selling video game in the United States since 1995, following Wii Play
. In March 2011, the title had become the top selling game with $830.9 million in lifetime sales.
. The Gibson Les Paul
controller included with the game's bundled version received particular praise. GameSpy
, in a review of the four console versions, favorable reviewed the new controllers, and called the Wii guitar the best guitar peripheral that they had seen, praising the vibration option.
Several reviews criticized the changes made to Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock compared to previous games in the Guitar Hero series. IGN's review of the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 versions considered the game a "pretty safe effort" from Neversoft, doing little to change the game due to it being their first time working on the series. They also criticized the lack of customizable characters. IGN's review of the Wii version described the game's presentation and art direction as feeling "forced", and, as a result, less visually appealing than previous installments. GameDaily questioned the "white boy soundtrack" and would have liked to seen more tracks from legends like Jimi Hendrix
and Prince
in the mix." GameSpy criticized some of the difficulty tweaks in the game. They stated that "Medium simply feels like Hard-minus-the-orange-button," and that the Star Power phrases were too long, comparing the overall game to a "trial by fire
" in contrast to the previous games in the series. They were also critical of the dongle approach used for the PlayStation 3 controllers, and failings in the online support for the PlayStation 3 version. GameSpot criticized the game for its "heavy dose of in-game advertising
." GameSpy stated that the PlayStation 2 version received "the short end of the stick" because of a lack of online play. Official Xbox Magazine also criticized the game for being "too competitive", a facet not readily found in the previous games. The PC version has been criticized for its high system requirements, and for lag
and slowdown problems even on high-end systems.
created a category for the Highest Score for a Single Song on Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock in its Gamer's Edition
, using the song "Through the Fire and Flames
", noted as one of the most difficult songs in the game. The record has been traded back and forth between Chris Chike, who also won the 2008 Play N Trade
National Guitar Hero III Tournament, and Danny Johnson, the present holder of the record. Both Chike and Johnson have completed the song without missing a note, documenting their performances on YouTube
, though only Johnson has hit 100% of the notes at an official event.
sued Activision for $20 million for misuse of Guns N' Roses
music and its musicians (specifically Slash) in Guitar Hero III. In the lawsuit, Rose claims that when he learned that a Slash-like character and other Velvet Revolver
songs would be included in Guitar Hero II, he refused to allow Activision to use "Welcome to the Jungle
" within Guitar Hero III, nor promotional images of Slash that had already been created. According to Rose's claims, Activision stated that these would only be used as promotional material for a trade show, but ended up using them within the game. Furthermore, Rose asserts that Activision had used "Sweet Child O' Mine", which was only licensed for use on Guitar Hero II, was used for promotional material within Guitar Hero III. The judge in the case has allowed the trial to move forward after an initial hearing in March 2011.
, providing only mono
sound. Activision had offered a free replacement remastered game disk that corrects this issue for North American and European releases. Later, Activision further extended the replacement program to include a full refund of the game's purchase price as an alternative to obtaining a replacement disc. A class-action lawsuit over the mono sound issue was settled out of court, and Activision agreed to ship free faceplates for the Les Paul guitar controller to those who requested a replacement disc. Additionally, during the first few days of the game's release, players experienced difficulties uploading their scores to the official Guitar Hero website. Neversoft attributed the problem to "heavy amounts of traffic".
Music video game
A music video game, also commonly known as a music game, is a video game where the gameplay is meaningfully and often almost entirely oriented around the player's interactions with a musical score or individual songs...
, the third main installment in the Guitar Hero series
Guitar Hero
Guitar Hero is a music video game developed by Harmonix Music Systems and published by RedOctane for the PlayStation 2 video game console. It is the first entry in the Guitar Hero series. Guitar Hero was released on November 8, 2005 in North America, April 7, 2006 in Europe and June 15, 2006 in...
, and the fourth title overall. The game was published by Activision
Activision
Activision is an American publisher, majority owned by French conglomerate Vivendi SA. Its current CEO is Robert Kotick. It was founded on October 1, 1979 and was the world's first independent developer and distributor of video games for gaming consoles...
and RedOctane
RedOctane
RedOctane was an American electronic entertainment company perhaps best known for producing the Guitar Hero series beginning in November 2005. RedOctane became a wholly owned subsidiary of Activision in 2006...
, and is the first game in the series to be developed by Neversoft
Neversoft
Neversoft Entertainment is an American video game developer, founded in 1994 by Joel Jewett, Mick West and Chris Ward. Neversoft is best recognized for their line of Guitar Hero and Tony Hawk skateboarding games, known as the Tony Hawk's series...
, after Activision
Activision
Activision is an American publisher, majority owned by French conglomerate Vivendi SA. Its current CEO is Robert Kotick. It was founded on October 1, 1979 and was the world's first independent developer and distributor of video games for gaming consoles...
's acquisition of RedOctane
RedOctane
RedOctane was an American electronic entertainment company perhaps best known for producing the Guitar Hero series beginning in November 2005. RedOctane became a wholly owned subsidiary of Activision in 2006...
and MTV Games' purchase of Harmonix Music Systems
Harmonix Music Systems
Harmonix Music Systems is an American video game development company based in Cambridge, Massachusetts in the United States...
, the previous development studio for the series. The game was released worldwide for the PlayStation 2
PlayStation 2
The PlayStation 2 is a sixth-generation video game console manufactured by Sony as part of the PlayStation series. Its development was announced in March 1999 and it was first released on March 4, 2000, in Japan...
, PlayStation 3
PlayStation 3
The is the third home video game console produced by Sony Computer Entertainment and the successor to the PlayStation 2 as part of the PlayStation series. The PlayStation 3 competes with Microsoft's Xbox 360 and Nintendo's Wii as part of the seventh generation of video game consoles...
, Wii
Wii
The Wii is a home video game console released by Nintendo on November 19, 2006. As a seventh-generation console, the Wii primarily competes with Microsoft's Xbox 360 and Sony's PlayStation 3. Nintendo states that its console targets a broader demographic than that of the two others...
, and Xbox 360
Xbox 360
The Xbox 360 is the second video game console produced by Microsoft and the successor to the Xbox. The Xbox 360 competes with Sony's PlayStation 3 and Nintendo's Wii as part of the seventh generation of video game consoles...
in October 2007, with Budcat Creations
Budcat Creations
Budcat Creations was a video game developer based in Iowa City, Iowa, United States and was a wholly owned subsidiary of Activision, though they formerly had partnerships with Electronic Arts and Majesco. They were largely responsible for porting titles to non-target consoles...
and Vicarious Visions
Vicarious Visions
Vicarious Visions is an American video game developer founded by the high school brothers Karthik and Guha Bala in 1990, which developed some PC and Game Boy Color games in late 90's and 2000. They later developed Terminus, which won two Independent Games Festival Awards in 1999...
assisting in the PlayStation 2 and Wii ports, respectively. Aspyr Media
Aspyr Media
Aspyr Media, Inc. is an Austin, Texas based company that specializes in porting Windows games to Mac OS. It has been in business since 1996, and as of 2003 owns 60 percent of the Mac entertainment market...
developed the PC
Personal computer
A personal computer is any general-purpose computer whose size, capabilities, and original sales price make it useful for individuals, and which is intended to be operated directly by an end-user with no intervening computer operator...
and Mac
Macintosh
The Macintosh , or Mac, is a series of several lines of personal computers designed, developed, and marketed by Apple Inc. The first Macintosh was introduced by Apple's then-chairman Steve Jobs on January 24, 1984; it was the first commercially successful personal computer to feature a mouse and a...
versions of the game, releasing them later in 2007.
Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock retains the basic gameplay from previous games in the Guitar Hero series, where the player uses a guitar-shaped controller to simulate the playing of lead
Lead guitar
Lead guitar is a guitar part which plays melody lines, instrumental fill passages, guitar solos, and occasionally, some riffs within a song structure...
, bass
Bass guitar
The bass guitar is a stringed instrument played primarily with the fingers or thumb , or by using a pick....
, and rhythm guitar
Rhythm guitar
Rhythm guitar is a technique and rôle that performs a combination of two functions: to provide all or part of the rhythmic pulse in conjunction with singers or other instruments; and to provide all or part of the harmony, ie. the chords, where a chord is a group of notes played together...
parts in rock
Rock music
Rock music is a genre of popular music that developed during and after the 1960s, particularly in the United Kingdom and the United States. It has its roots in 1940s and 1950s rock and roll, itself heavily influenced by rhythm and blues and country music...
songs by playing in time to scrolling notes on-screen. The game, in addition to existing single-player Career modes, includes a new Co-Op Career mode and competitive challenges that pit the player against in-game characters and other players. Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock is the first game in the series to include an online multiplayer feature, which is enabled in the Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, and Wii versions. Initially the game offers over 70 songs, most of which are master tracks
Master recording
A multitrack recording master tape, disk or computer files on which productions are developed for later mixing, is known as the multi-track master, while the tape, disk or computer files holding a mix is called a mixed master.It is standard practice to make a copy of a master recording, known as...
. The Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 versions feature the ability to download additional songs. The musicians Tom Morello
Tom Morello
Thomas Baptiste "Tom" Morello is a Grammy Award-winning American guitarist best known for his tenure with the bands Rage Against the Machine, Audioslave, his acoustic solo act The Nightwatchman, and his newest group, Street Sweeper Social Club...
(of the bands Rage Against the Machine
Rage Against the Machine
Rage Against the Machine is an American rock band from Los Angeles, California. Formed in 1991, the group's line-up consists of vocalist Zack de la Rocha, bassist and backing vocalist Tim Commerford, guitarist Tom Morello and drummer Brad Wilk...
and Audioslave
Audioslave
Audioslave was an American rock supergroup that formed in Los Angeles, California in 2001. It consisted of former Soundgarden lead singer/rhythm guitarist Chris Cornell and the former instrumentalists of Rage Against the Machine: Tom Morello , Tim Commerford and Brad Wilk...
) and Slash
Slash (musician)
Saul Hudson , known by his stage name Slash, is a British-American musician and songwriter. He is best known as the former lead guitarist of the American hard rock band Guns N' Roses, with whom he achieved worldwide success in the late 1980s and early 1990s. During his later years with Guns N'...
(of Guns N' Roses
Guns N' Roses
Guns N' Roses is an American hard rock band, formed in Hollywood, Los Angeles, California, in 1985. The band has released six studio albums, three EPs, and one live album...
and Velvet Revolver
Velvet Revolver
Velvet Revolver is an American hard rock supergroup consisting of former Guns N' Roses members Slash, Duff McKagan, and Matt Sorum, alongside Dave Kushner formerly of punk band Wasted Youth. Stone Temple Pilots vocalist Scott Weiland was Velvet Revolver's lead singer from their formation until...
) make appearances both as guitar battle opponents and playable characters in the game. The PC, PlayStation 3, and Xbox 360 versions also include Bret Michaels
Bret Michaels
Bret Michaels is an American musician, actor, director, screenwriter, producer and reality television personality. He first gained fame as the lead vocalist of the glam metal band Poison. Besides his career as lead singer, he has several solo albums to his credit, as well as one chart single...
(of Poison
Poison (band)
Poison is an American glam metal band that achieved great success in the mid-1980s to mid-1990s. To date, Poison has sold over 30 million records worldwide and have sold 15 million records in the United States alone. The band has also charted ten singles to the Top 40 of the Billboard Hot 100,...
) as a non-playable character.
Critics were generally favorable towards the game, but reviewers noted a difference in the game's style compared to previous installments, associating it with it being Neversoft's first development attempt with the series. The game is often cited to be too difficult, creating "walls of notes" that are difficult to complete, and led to alterations in note placement for future games in the series were designed. According to Activision, Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock is the best-selling video game of 2007, both in terms of units sold and revenue earned, and that it is the first single retail video game to exceed one billion dollars in sales. The company also claimed that it is the second-best selling video game title since 1995, following Wii Play
Wii Play
Wii Play, released as in Japan, is a party video game for the Wii console. It is a counterpart to the games Wii Sports, Wii Music and Wii Fit. It features minigames that use characters from the Mii Channel. Several of the games featured are from E3 2006 demos such as the Duck Hunt-styled shooting...
, and is one of the best-selling third-party games available for the Wii.
Development
Activision
Activision is an American publisher, majority owned by French conglomerate Vivendi SA. Its current CEO is Robert Kotick. It was founded on October 1, 1979 and was the world's first independent developer and distributor of video games for gaming consoles...
purchased RedOctane
RedOctane
RedOctane was an American electronic entertainment company perhaps best known for producing the Guitar Hero series beginning in November 2005. RedOctane became a wholly owned subsidiary of Activision in 2006...
in 2006 for $100 million to achieve "an early leadership position in music-based gaming". In September of that year, MTV
MTV
MTV, formerly an initialism of Music Television, is an American network based in New York City that launched on August 1, 1981. The original purpose of the channel was to play music videos guided by on-air hosts known as VJs....
acquired Harmonix
Harmonix Music Systems
Harmonix Music Systems is an American video game development company based in Cambridge, Massachusetts in the United States...
, the developer of all Guitar Hero games up to that point; this purchase would later lead to the development of the competing music-game series, Rock Band
Rock Band
Rock Band is a music video game developed by Harmonix Music Systems, published by MTV Games and Electronic Arts. It is the first title in the Rock Band series. The PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 versions were released in the United States on November 20, 2007, while the PlayStation 2 version was...
. Without Harmonix's availability, Activision selected Neversoft Entertainment
Neversoft
Neversoft Entertainment is an American video game developer, founded in 1994 by Joel Jewett, Mick West and Chris Ward. Neversoft is best recognized for their line of Guitar Hero and Tony Hawk skateboarding games, known as the Tony Hawk's series...
to develop Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock. Neversoft president Joel Jewett stated his company was asked to develop the game because of a conversation that Jewett had with RedOctane's founders Kai and Charles Huang at the 2006 E3 Convention, in which Jewett mentioned how the first Guitar Hero game helped reduce the stress in the Neversoft offices during their development of Tony Hawk's Project 8
Tony Hawk's Project 8
Tony Hawk's Project 8, officially abbreviated as THP8, is the eighth installment in the Tony Hawk series of video games. It was released on sixth-generation and seventh-generation consoles...
. Several months later, Jewett was contacted by the Huangs, asking if Neversoft wanted to work on Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock. Dusty Welch, head of publishing at RedOctane, recognized Neversoft had a "10-year track record of launching a game every single year and being in the top of the charts" and felt that the development group "brought a better and deeper sense of music sensibilities" to the series. Despite the experience from the previous games, Alan Flores, head of development at Neversoft, commented that the game was "deceptively simple" and that it took much work for their 30-person team to recreate the gameplay for Guitar Hero III. Though they "wanted to take the Guitar Hero experience to the next level" by adding additional instruments in the same manner as Rock Band, they opted to focus on perfecting the guitar gameplay. In 2010, Activision CEO Bobby Kotick stated that they believed Neversoft would help them to develop great games for the series, but has since come to regret their failure to seek Harmonix for further development responsibility and believed this would have been a better move for both companies.
The note tracks, on-stage motions of the band, and stage lighting and effect synchronization were created by the same team of developers who were all musicians and had previous experience in note tracking either from other music video games or from MIDI tracking. The note tracks were developed by placing notes in time with the song; for sections that had difficult parts to track within the game's engine, they opted to use sequences of notes that would seem to the match the music but still be playable. Hammer-ons and pull-offs ("HOPOs") for the previous Guitar Hero games were automatically placed by the software; in this iteration, the engine was designed to allow manual placement of HOPOs to make it easier to create certain effects in songs, such as sustained string bends. Character animations were selected from several made available by the animation team, while stage lighting and effects were selected to mimic those used in live performances from YouTube
YouTube
YouTube is a video-sharing website, created by three former PayPal employees in February 2005, on which users can upload, view and share videos....
or from concert appearances. A separate team came up with the concepts for the various stages and arenas in the game. The team wanted keep the same art style as the previous Guitar Hero games but add "a certain spark" to improve upon previous designs. Once a stage idea was brainstormed, the team sought visual references from real stages to expand upon, and a 2D drawing of the envisioned stage was prepared for review and to remain a constant goal of the stage design. From that, a "pop up
Pop-up book
The term pop-up book is often applied to any three-dimensional or movable book, although properly the umbrella term movable book covers pop-ups, transformations, tunnel books, volvelles, flaps, pull-tabs, pop-outs, pull-downs, and more, each of which performs in a different manner...
" three dimensional
3D computer graphics
3D computer graphics are graphics that use a three-dimensional representation of geometric data that is stored in the computer for the purposes of performing calculations and rendering 2D images...
version of the stage was created, and elements from the 2D concept art were added to determine the appropriate placement of set decorations. This team worked with the animation department to place the band members, stage lighting, and other effects in the game before the final 3D version of the stage was completed. The final stages included several animated elements to help further bring the stage to life.
For the game's characters, the developers intended to keep the comical looks from the previous games, but they decided to update their appearances with realistic materials and textures to take advantage of the more powerful level of graphics capabilities of seventh-generation consoles. The designers first drew character sketches to determine the characters' looks and clothing, creating a main and an alternate outfit for each character, which were then made into reference artwork. Afterward, low-level meshes
Low poly
Low poly is a term used to describe a polygon mesh in 3D computer graphics which has a small number of polygons. It is, however, a relative term, usually referring to meshes in real-time applications . That is to contrast them with meshes in animated movies and special effects of the same era...
for each character were created, with details added with Zbrush
ZBrush
ZBrush is a digital sculpting tool that combines 3D/2.5D modeling, texturing and painting. It uses a proprietary "pixol" technology which stores lighting, color, material, and depth information for all objects on the screen...
, resulting in characters that, before being scaled down for the game environment, had more than six million polygons
Polygon (computer graphics)
Polygons are used in computer graphics to compose images that are three-dimensional in appearance. Usually triangular, polygons arise when an object's surface is modeled, vertices are selected, and the object is rendered in a wire frame model. This is quicker to display than a shaded model; thus...
. Textures and pixel shaders were added using the team's previous work on Tony Hawk's Project 8 to match the style of earlier Guitar Hero games. Unlike the Tony Hawk games, each character in the game was given a unique skeleton
Skeletal animation
Skeletal animation is a technique in computer animation in which a character is represented in two parts: a surface representation used to draw the character and a hierarchical set of interconnected bones used to animate the mesh...
to match their variations in sizes and shapes, allowing the animators to create unique moves for individual characters. Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock introduces three new characters modeled after real-life musicians. Slash
Slash (musician)
Saul Hudson , known by his stage name Slash, is a British-American musician and songwriter. He is best known as the former lead guitarist of the American hard rock band Guns N' Roses, with whom he achieved worldwide success in the late 1980s and early 1990s. During his later years with Guns N'...
, Tom Morello
Tom Morello
Thomas Baptiste "Tom" Morello is a Grammy Award-winning American guitarist best known for his tenure with the bands Rage Against the Machine, Audioslave, his acoustic solo act The Nightwatchman, and his newest group, Street Sweeper Social Club...
, and Bret Michaels
Bret Michaels
Bret Michaels is an American musician, actor, director, screenwriter, producer and reality television personality. He first gained fame as the lead vocalist of the glam metal band Poison. Besides his career as lead singer, he has several solo albums to his credit, as well as one chart single...
, each performing one or more songs from their past recordings. All three were brought into the game using motion capture
Motion capture
Motion capture, motion tracking, or mocap are terms used to describe the process of recording movement and translating that movement on to a digital model. It is used in military, entertainment, sports, and medical applications, and for validation of computer vision and robotics...
from the Motion Analysis Corporation.
Release
Activision's original announcement of Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock indicated a planned release in their 2008 fiscal year, ending on March 31, 2008.; RedOctane later clarified a release in the last quarter of 2007, and further revealed that all versions of the game would feature wireless controllers as well as online multiplayer and downloadable content. The game was officially announced by Activision and RedOctane on May 23, 2007 for the PlayStation 2, PlayStation 3, Wii and Xbox 360. Budcat CreationsBudcat Creations
Budcat Creations was a video game developer based in Iowa City, Iowa, United States and was a wholly owned subsidiary of Activision, though they formerly had partnerships with Electronic Arts and Majesco. They were largely responsible for porting titles to non-target consoles...
ported the game to the PlayStation 2, and Vicarious Visions
Vicarious Visions
Vicarious Visions is an American video game developer founded by the high school brothers Karthik and Guha Bala in 1990, which developed some PC and Game Boy Color games in late 90's and 2000. They later developed Terminus, which won two Independent Games Festival Awards in 1999...
ported it to the Wii. In September 2007, Aspyr Media
Aspyr Media
Aspyr Media, Inc. is an Austin, Texas based company that specializes in porting Windows games to Mac OS. It has been in business since 1996, and as of 2003 owns 60 percent of the Mac entertainment market...
announced they would be porting Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock to the PC and Macintosh platforms. Demos of Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock appeared in Tony Hawk's Proving Ground
Tony Hawk's Proving Ground
Tony Hawk's Proving Ground is a video game developed by Neversoft for the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 video game consoles; by Page 44 Studios for the PlayStation 2 and Wii; and by Vicarious Visions for the Nintendo DS...
for the Xbox 360 in the Xbox Live Marketplace
Xbox Live Marketplace
The Xbox Live Marketplace is a virtual market designed for Microsoft's Xbox 360 console that allows Xbox Live members to download purchased or promotional content...
, and from the Internet as an ISO image
ISO image
An ISO image is an archive file of an optical disc, composed of the data contents of every written sector of an optical disc, including the optical disc file system...
. The demo features five songs ("Lay Down
Hello Master
Lay Down redirects here. For the song by Melanie, see Lay Down .-Video game appearances:"No Real Pain" is featured on the soundtrack for the video game Tony Hawk's Downhill Jam. "Talk to Her" is featured on the soundtrack to the video game NHL 07...
", "Rock You Like a Hurricane
Rock You Like a Hurricane
"Rock You Like a Hurricane" a song by the German heavy metal band Scorpions. The song was released as the second track of their 1984 album Love at First Sting.-Description:...
", "Even Flow
Even Flow
"Even Flow" is a song by the American rock band Pearl Jam. Featuring lyrics written by vocalist Eddie Vedder and music written by guitarist Stone Gossard, "Even Flow" was released in 1992 as the second single from the band's debut album, Ten . The song peaked at number three on the Billboard...
", "Hit Me with Your Best Shot
Hit Me with Your Best Shot
"Hit Me with Your Best Shot" is a song written by Canadian singer/songwriter Eddie Schwartz and recorded by American singer Pat Benatar in 1979. It was released as the second single from her second album Crimes of Passion, and reached #9 on the Billboard Hot 100, becoming her first top 10 hit...
", and "The Metal
The Metal
"The Metal" is a song by Tenacious D from their 2006 album The Pick of Destiny. The album was a soundtrack for the film. The song is played during the end credits of the film and is the final track on the album....
") played within the Desert Rock Tour venue. As shipped, the game did not offer offline Co-Op Quickplay mode, a feature that was included in Guitar Hero II. This mode was added to the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 versions via a patch.
Activision called Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock its "largest product launch ever", selling more than 1.4 million copies, and making over $100 million in its first week of release in North America; another 1.9 million copies were sold in the following month. Subsequently, the company was concerned that they were unable to meet the game's demand for the 2007 holiday season. As of July 15, 2008, the game has sold more than eight million copies. During the first seven months of 2008, the game sold 3.037 million units in the United States, 412,000 in the United Kingdom, and 26,000 in Japan, for a total of 3.475 million units, according to the NPD Group
NPD Group
The NPD Group, Inc. is a leading North American market research company. The NPD Group consistently ranks among the top 25 market research companies in the independent Honomichl Top 50 report, which the media and the research industry acknowledge as a credible source of information on the market...
, GfK
GfK
The GfK Group, established in 1934 as Gesellschaft für Konsumforschung is Germany's largest market research institute, and the fourth largest market research organisation in the world, after Nielsen Company, Kantar Group, and IMS Health...
Chart-Track
Chart-Track
Chart-Track is a market research company that monitors music, videos and software sales in the United Kingdom, Ireland and Denmark and was formed in 1996. In July 2008 GfK took a majority stake in the company....
, and Enterbrain
Enterbrain
is a Japanese magazine publisher established on April 1, 2000. Enterbrain magazines are generally focused on video games and computer entertainment as well as video game and strategy guides. In addition, the company publishes a small selection of anime artbooks. Enterbrain is based in Tokyo, Japan...
. More than two million copies of the game were sold for the Wii platform, making it the best-selling third-party title for the platform. Game sales during the first 12 months after the game's release were over $750 million. At the 2009 Consumer Electronics Show
Consumer Electronics Show
The International Consumer Electronics Show is a major technology-related trade show held each January in the Las Vegas Convention Center, Las Vegas, Nevada, United States. Not open to the public, the Consumer Electronics Association-sponsored show typically hosts previews of products and new...
, Activision CEO Mike Griffith stated that Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock is the first retail video game to exceed one billion dollars in sales. According to accumulated data from NPD Group in January 2010, Guitar Hero III is the second best-selling video game in the United States since 1995, following Wii Play
Wii Play
Wii Play, released as in Japan, is a party video game for the Wii console. It is a counterpart to the games Wii Sports, Wii Music and Wii Fit. It features minigames that use characters from the Mii Channel. Several of the games featured are from E3 2006 demos such as the Duck Hunt-styled shooting...
. In March 2011, the title had become the top selling game with $830.9 million in lifetime sales.
Reception
Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock generally received positive reviews, although it scored lower than its predecessors on review aggregator MetacriticMetacritic
Metacritic.com is a website that collates reviews of music albums, games, movies, TV shows and DVDs. For each product, a numerical score from each review is obtained and the total is averaged. An excerpt of each review is provided along with a hyperlink to the source. Three colour codes of Green,...
. The Gibson Les Paul
Gibson Les Paul
The Gibson Les Paul was the result of a design collaboration between Gibson Guitar Corporation and the late jazz guitarist and electronics inventor Les Paul. In 1950, with the introduction of the Fender Telecaster to the musical market, electric guitars became a public craze. In reaction, Gibson...
controller included with the game's bundled version received particular praise. GameSpy
GameSpy
GameSpy Industries, Inc., known simply as GameSpy, is a division of IGN Entertainment, which operates a network of game websites and provides online video game-related services and software. GameSpy dates back to the 1996 release of an internet Quake server search program named QSpy. The current...
, in a review of the four console versions, favorable reviewed the new controllers, and called the Wii guitar the best guitar peripheral that they had seen, praising the vibration option.
Several reviews criticized the changes made to Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock compared to previous games in the Guitar Hero series. IGN's review of the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 versions considered the game a "pretty safe effort" from Neversoft, doing little to change the game due to it being their first time working on the series. They also criticized the lack of customizable characters. IGN's review of the Wii version described the game's presentation and art direction as feeling "forced", and, as a result, less visually appealing than previous installments. GameDaily questioned the "white boy soundtrack" and would have liked to seen more tracks from legends like Jimi Hendrix
Jimi Hendrix
James Marshall "Jimi" Hendrix was an American guitarist and singer-songwriter...
and Prince
Prince (musician)
Prince Rogers Nelson , often known simply as Prince, is an American singer, songwriter, musician, and actor. Prince has produced ten platinum albums and thirty Top 40 singles during his career. Prince founded his own recording studio and label; writing, self-producing and playing most, or all, of...
in the mix." GameSpy criticized some of the difficulty tweaks in the game. They stated that "Medium simply feels like Hard-minus-the-orange-button," and that the Star Power phrases were too long, comparing the overall game to a "trial by fire
Trial by ordeal
Trial by ordeal is a judicial practice by which the guilt or innocence of the accused is determined by subjecting them to an unpleasant, usually dangerous experience...
" in contrast to the previous games in the series. They were also critical of the dongle approach used for the PlayStation 3 controllers, and failings in the online support for the PlayStation 3 version. GameSpot criticized the game for its "heavy dose of in-game advertising
In-game advertising
In-game advertising refers to advertising in computer and video games. IGA differs from advergaming, which refers to a game specifically made to advertise a product.The IGA industry is large and growing...
." GameSpy stated that the PlayStation 2 version received "the short end of the stick" because of a lack of online play. Official Xbox Magazine also criticized the game for being "too competitive", a facet not readily found in the previous games. The PC version has been criticized for its high system requirements, and for lag
Lag
Lag is a common word meaning to fail to keep up or to fall behind. In real-time applications, the term is used when the application fails to respond in a timely fashion to inputs...
and slowdown problems even on high-end systems.
Guinness World Record
Recognizing the game's popularity, Guinness World RecordsGuinness World Records
Guinness World Records, known until 2000 as The Guinness Book of Records , is a reference book published annually, containing a collection of world records, both human achievements and the extremes of the natural world...
created a category for the Highest Score for a Single Song on Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock in its Gamer's Edition
Guinness World Records Gamer's Edition
Guinness World Records Gamer's Edition is a Guinness World Records book dedicated to video games. The first edition was released in February 2008 in association with the video games world records' tracking organization Twin Galaxies. The second edition was released in 2009...
, using the song "Through the Fire and Flames
Through the Fire and Flames
"Through the Fire and Flames" is a song by English power metal band DragonForce. The song is acclaimed as the most successful song by the band. The song is a single as well as the opening track from DragonForce's third album, Inhuman Rampage, and features rapid twin guitar solos by Herman Li and...
", noted as one of the most difficult songs in the game. The record has been traded back and forth between Chris Chike, who also won the 2008 Play N Trade
Play N Trade
Play N Trade is a video game and entertainment software retailer. The company, whose headquarters are in San Clemente, California, United States currently operates stores throughout the United States and Canada and is referred to itself as in press releases as "the fastest-growing video game retail...
National Guitar Hero III Tournament, and Danny Johnson, the present holder of the record. Both Chike and Johnson have completed the song without missing a note, documenting their performances on YouTube
YouTube
YouTube is a video-sharing website, created by three former PayPal employees in February 2005, on which users can upload, view and share videos....
, though only Johnson has hit 100% of the notes at an official event.
Lawsuit
In November 2010, Axl RoseAxl Rose
W. Axl Rose is an American singer-songwriter and musician. He is the lead vocalist and only remaining original member of the hard rock band Guns N' Roses, with whom he enjoyed great success and recognition in the late 1980s and early 1990s, before disappearing from the public eye for several years...
sued Activision for $20 million for misuse of Guns N' Roses
Guns N' Roses
Guns N' Roses is an American hard rock band, formed in Hollywood, Los Angeles, California, in 1985. The band has released six studio albums, three EPs, and one live album...
music and its musicians (specifically Slash) in Guitar Hero III. In the lawsuit, Rose claims that when he learned that a Slash-like character and other Velvet Revolver
Velvet Revolver
Velvet Revolver is an American hard rock supergroup consisting of former Guns N' Roses members Slash, Duff McKagan, and Matt Sorum, alongside Dave Kushner formerly of punk band Wasted Youth. Stone Temple Pilots vocalist Scott Weiland was Velvet Revolver's lead singer from their formation until...
songs would be included in Guitar Hero II, he refused to allow Activision to use "Welcome to the Jungle
Welcome to the Jungle
"Welcome to the Jungle" is a song by American rock band Guns N' Roses, featured on its 1987 debut studio album, Appetite for Destruction. It was released as the band's second single on October 3, 1987, and reached number #7 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart and number #24 on the UK Singles Chart...
" within Guitar Hero III, nor promotional images of Slash that had already been created. According to Rose's claims, Activision stated that these would only be used as promotional material for a trade show, but ended up using them within the game. Furthermore, Rose asserts that Activision had used "Sweet Child O' Mine", which was only licensed for use on Guitar Hero II, was used for promotional material within Guitar Hero III. The judge in the case has allowed the trial to move forward after an initial hearing in March 2011.
Technical issues
Although the Wii version of the game was advertised as supporting Dolby Pro Logic II, players reported that the game would output audio in neither Pro Logic II nor stereoStereophonic sound
The term Stereophonic, commonly called stereo, sound refers to any method of sound reproduction in which an attempt is made to create an illusion of directionality and audible perspective...
, providing only mono
Monaural
Monaural or monophonic sound reproduction is single-channel. Typically there is only one microphone, one loudspeaker, or channels are fed from a common signal path...
sound. Activision had offered a free replacement remastered game disk that corrects this issue for North American and European releases. Later, Activision further extended the replacement program to include a full refund of the game's purchase price as an alternative to obtaining a replacement disc. A class-action lawsuit over the mono sound issue was settled out of court, and Activision agreed to ship free faceplates for the Les Paul guitar controller to those who requested a replacement disc. Additionally, during the first few days of the game's release, players experienced difficulties uploading their scores to the official Guitar Hero website. Neversoft attributed the problem to "heavy amounts of traffic".