You can rock with Legends

Bill Hutchens, for the Northwest Guardian

Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock starts out with Foghat’s “Slow Ride” and just keeps getting better.

It’s like a perfectly arranged mix tape that follows a pattern of good songs mixed with great songs mixed with legendary songs. Only, instead of just listening to the music, you are the guitar god who gets to wail away at the hard-rocking numbers.

Here’s how Guitar Hero games work: Guitar Hero games come with plastic guitar controllers, the new versions of which are wireless. There are five colored buttons way up on the neck of the guitar and a strum switch in the center of the body. The buttons correspond to colored dots that flow toward you on your TV screen. Press the correct button(s) and then hit the strum switch at the right time in order to make music.

A few new features make GHIII the best game in the series so far. For starters, in addition to the two-player competitive mode that has you trying to outplay and outrock an opponent, you also get a two-player career mode. One person takes lead, the other bass (you’ll need an extra guitar). Take your band on tour, impress the crowds and move on to fame and fortune. This co-op mode is available online or off, so you and a friend can rock together even if you’re on opposite sides of the world.

More than 70 tracks are included, a mix of newer hits and classic songs. You’ll be playing the Killers’ “When You Were Young” one minute and go on to more revered tracks such as “Welcome to the Jungle” by Guns N’ Roses.

In GHII, it seemed like the best way to get ahead in the rock world was to nail the encores you’d be asked to play every five songs or so. In GHIII, the crowds will still beg for encores, but the way to advance your career is through boss battles. Every so often, you’ll have to engage in duels against Slash, Satan or other guitarists. Beat the boss to prove your mettle. Take your best scores online to compare them with those of other heroes.

Perhaps the best feature of the Guitar Hero games is practice mode, which allows players to slow down difficult songs and even break them into pieces in order to focus on the most challenging passages.

Easy and Medium modes usually only use four of the five buttons on the guitar, meaning you won’t have to slide your fingers up and down the neck in order to hit the notes. Hard and Expert modes use all five buttons and have many more notes flowing toward you on the screen. The only way to go from “Slow Ride” on Easy mode to the insanely tricky “Through the Fire and Flames” (by Dragonforce) on Expert mode is practice, practice and more practice.

GHIII has all of the features you could ask for in a music game, but there’s a new music game looking to knock it from its perch. Electronic Arts will release Rock Band on Nov. 20. The game allows players to put together a virtual band featuring lead guitar, bass guitar, drums and vocals, and it might just usurp Guitar Hero’s throne.

I bring up Rock Band to illustrate a point. It looks like Electronic Arts is gunning for Guitar Hero publisher Activision. It’s not just Rock Band that makes me think this. Take a look at Skate, a new skateboarding game from EA that is going head to head with Activision’s esteemed Tony Hawk series.

I reviewed the latest Hawk game, Tony Hawk’s Proving Ground, last week, and I feel I ought to mention Skate.

In short, it’s wonderful.

Where Hawk’s games are all about fantasy skateboarding, allowing even beginners to defy gravity with ease, Skate is about the art and science of the sport.

A fancy new, albeit touchy, control system allows players to flick the control sticks in different directions to pull off foundation tricks in skater repertoire and then build on those tricks to learn fancier maneuvers.

You can almost work your way up to Hawk-level fantasy moves, but the game’s focus is smartly on real-world physics and the joy of learning how to ollie, nollie and kickflip and build on those tricks. Skate celebrates the learning curve and even allows players to shoot, edit and share videos of their best moves from all over a vast virtual playground.

Is EA after Activision? Their “we’ll-do-you-one-better” attitude seems to say so, but only time will tell if they’ll succeed.

Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock * * * *

System: PS2, PS3, Wii, Xbox 360

Publisher: Activision

Web site: www.activision.com

Price: $89.95-$99.95

Rating: T (Teen) for lyrics and mild suggestive themes

Skate * * * *

System: PS3, Xbox 360

Publisher: Electronic Arts

Web site: www.ea.com

Price: $59.95

Rating: T (Teen) for blood and gore, crude humor, language, mild violence, tobacco reference.

Bill’s Weekend Playlist

1. Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock, Xbox 360 (also for PS2, PS3 and Wii)

2. Skate, PS2 (also on Xbox 360)

3. Zack and Wiki, Wii

4. Jam Sessions, Nintendo DS

5. World of Warcraft, PC (also for Mac)