Ok, so the majority of you smack talking 360 console goers (and a few naïve PS3 owners) have been waking up with a sore neck for weeks now after heavy sessions of head banging and general moshery to Activision's Guitar Hero 3.

But did you know its also out on PC now? Albeit late? Well your all gamers so some of you might, but most of you probably wont, most of you includes the patrons of my local GAME store who weren't even sure which guitar hero game I was talking about. But after walking that bit further to a good old small scale, independent-but-has-a-shop-in-another-town franchise 'playtime' there it was, adorning the shelf above the counter, guitar Hero 3, PC edition.



Obviously its pretty much the same game as on other systems, and in the case of the 360, its exactly the same game, but minus a few things. More on that later. The game comes with: the game (I feel the need to add this because the box says 'game included!' rather excitedly), A 360 Gibson Explored controller (USB) and of course, stickers, yay.

The game comes with all the 360 songs and characters and there's nothing exclusive to the PC, but this is more a port than a standard release so what do you expect. Now here comes the bone I have to pick with Microsoft. Their complete fear of having PC users enter their special closed network of xbox live. Time and time again PC users are unable to show console goers the true might of a keyboard and mouse. That wouldn't be so much of a problem here except no ones bloody bought the PC version and so far I've met two people online, and one of them dropped off before the song had even started. This is a kind of double edged sword. On the one hand, there's little competition for a good player to beat and if you've got the skills, you could easily see yourself up in the leader boards. But on the other hand, to beat people, you need someone to play against. Another way PC users have been buggered a little harder is the fact that the guitar hero website just isn't for us. What are we lepers? I'd like to find the 6 other people who bought this game please!



A final footnote to the rant would be the fact that if for any reason your disconnected from the internet for a moment while playing the game in the fucking single player everything will freeze for a few seconds, think for a bit and then thoughtfully tell you: 'bit of a problem connecting here boss...' or something to that effect – while the song notes and all goes on without hesitation, breaking you bazillion and six combo or missing just enough seconds of notes to fail through fire and the flames outright. Its annoying glitch which means I never connect to the online service unless I really want to go online. Which is rarely.

So why would I buy this disabled twin brother of the 360? because of the controller. Its all for the controller. Your looking confused so let me elaborate.



Frets on Fire is a freeware open source game that's not so much a clone of guitar hero as inspired by it. It requires you hold the keyboard in a way that seems daft but is both fun, effective and absolutely awesome when your doing a solo. What it lacks in any sort of online play it easily overachieves in four way multiplayer, skins, mods and every song you could ever want to play. every guitar hero song has been converted, every fan made song pack for guitar hero has been converted and so so many more. I wont like to the extensive song list because its in that light grey area of morals no one gives two shits about. But Google is your friend. Having a guitar hero controller for this makes the game a lot more fun and opens up the multiplayer mods.

The other reason is a lot more geeky but also kind of more cool. With a USB guitar hero controller, its pretty easy to just plug it in, download some programs and turn your explorer into a synth. Its got so much potential here that you could learn it as a real instrument. Which I'm doing. However with no musical knowledge, slowly plucking 'smoke on the water' is the most I can manage at the moment.

So why would you buy this game? Well either:

a) you don't have a console.
b) your a geek.
me) all of the above :)

8/10