I adore the Guitar Hero series. It is incredibly fun, can be played co-op, and exposes players to all sorts of great music. Guitar Hero III ups the ante with even more fantastic songs plus a new battle mode for fun head to head gameplay!

Once again you're a small time band starting off in your garage - or make that, your back yard. As you play through songs on your guitar controller, your career begins to take off. You make videos, play larger arenas, and earn money. The money lets you buy yourself new outfits and guitars. As you battle special players, you unlock their characters - like Slash from Guns 'N Roses.

In every Guitar Hero game there have been songs I've liked and other songs I haven't liked. That's going to be true pretty much no matter who you are. They try their very best to provide a wide range of music to suit all guitar tastes, and they do an excellent job at it. Some of the songs are SUPER in this set and got me up off the couch dancing around while I played along.

The new battle mode is a ton of fun. Before, you'd get a simple encore at the end of each set. This time you occasionally have to fight a newcomer for guitar supremacy. In battle mode you earn "attacks" that you can then lob at your opponent. These do things like break strings, make you play double notes, make your screen shake, and much more. It is super fun. Near the end of the game when you're down in "Hades", you have to battle the devil himself playing ... Devil went down to Georgia!

There are of course the extras to unlock by doing things like playing 100 notes in a row, the ability to play against friends head to head locally, plus the new ability to play against others online! Talk about a true challenge! It was always scary enough looking at XBox Live and seeing how amazingly high some of those scores were. Imagine trying to play those people live?

The graphics are great. Each location is fleshed out in fantastic detail, from the flickering flames of Hades to the glowing red lanterns of your back yard. The audience always seems a little robotic, but heck, how much do you want from a guitar game?

Many of the songs are now original band-sung songs - including a Living Color song that the band re-recorded specifically for this game! There are still a collection of songs that are "in the style of" - some are good, some are really not so good. The Stevie Ray Vaughn song stands out as the not-so-good reproduction. Still, what can you do. Why aren't those bands giving the Guitar Hero guys permission to use their real tracks? Don't they know how immensely popular this game is?

We do have the wireless guitar controller and it's worked pretty flawlessly so far. We've noticed a tiny amount of 'misses' with the red button, but that may be us getting used to it, we'll have to see.

Highly, highly recommended. It was so much fun that my boyfriend, a guitar player, would occasionally try to play the "real notes" rather than the Guitar Hero game notes. It really is absorbing!

Make sure you get TWO guitars to go with it, so you can play with a friend!

Rating: 5/5

Buy Guitar Hero III from Amazon.com