Better late than never right? Call of Duty 4 will probably be tomorrow and Assassin’s Creed review will come over the weekend.

Well to be honest I was going to hold off on Guitar Hero 3 - being more interested in Rock Band. But with the late breaking news, I managed to get my hands on a copy of GH3 to keep me busy until December.

Initially, Guitar Hero 3 is nothing more than Guitar Hero 2 with a better song list. Of course, I might just think it is better because I’ve played out the GH2 songs till the end of time. I do feel though that there are just more songs I actually recognized this time around. Despite not being a real fan of any present day alternative/rock music, it was still nice to see overplayed songs like The Killers and AFI. Even nicer was including songs I listened to growing up from Guns N Roses, Smashing Pumpkins and Pearljam, while still including classics from Black Sabbath and Scorpions.

So whats new? Well for one, the game just simply feels much more forgiving then Guitar Hero 2. I can sometimes just mash my way through some solo’s that I wouldn’t be able to touch beforehand. It is possible that someone broke in to my house while I was sleeping and replaced my hands with those of Jimi Hendrix… if there was just only an easy way to tell his hands from mine…

Other than that, the two big ticket items you get with Guitar Hero 3 (besides a sore wrist and callused fingertips) are Boss Battles and Online play. Boss Battles are basically you facing off against famous guitarists in a manner that allows you to send attacks to their guitar, causing them to screw up. All in all it is pretty gimmicky, and more annoying than anything else. To win any boss battle, you hit your special notes and then save your attack so the computer misses theirs. Simple, basic, boring, and oh I forgot to mention, with the exception of the last boss battle, you are usually playing some random sounding notes.

Online play is what really shines in Guitar Hero 3. Lacking friends as cool as I, my Guitar Hero experience previous to this game involved me playing alone in my basement. With the exception of there seeming to be endless amounts of “bad servers” (where I can’t connect and then immediately get booted if I do), hosting my own game has yet to cause a problem. People also join quite fast.

It is designed well, you can do a face off (straight point battle), pro face off (point battle on a forced difficulty for both), battle (same as a boss battle only way lamer, since you would have to set a Guinness Record for retardation to actually fail a song, hence all battles ending in sudden death), and co-op (simply play a song together and go for a massive duo score).

I have to say I’m loving the online mode. It just makes me even more excited for when Rock Band actually does come out. Then I’ll be able to live my boyhood dream of sitting in my basement alone and pretending I’m popular. But until that day, I shall continue to develop carpal tunnel syndrome with GH3. If anyone reading this for some reason doesn’t have me on their 360 friends list, my gamertag is Chewstay, not Peppercorn.