Guitar Hero 3

This game is a tricky one to evaluate. Starting off on easy, things quickly progress - and you feel like you're doing pretty well. Well you would do unless you're that hook handed bloke with the dodgy eye. After wowing yourself with an easy run through of Through the Fire and the Flames while the end credits are on, you crank the difficulty up to 'medium'.

This is where the proper fun begins. Now you're using all four fingers on your left hand. Now it starts throwing chords at you. And now it starts making your hand and eye co-ordination feel grossly inadequate.

Throw in some battles against guitar playing legends such as Slash and medium level should take the average player a couple of weeks to get through.

Ok. You've having completed medium, it's the same story as easy really. You feel a sense of achievement when you finish the last song (The Devil Went Down to Georgia), and you beat the last guitar legend. Move on to hard....

Bloody hell - it's a different game altogether! Now you have five keys to press, and only four fingers to press them with which means you can no longer just sit with your fingers firmly on the correct buttons. You now have to move you hand to cover the fifth button. Then move it back to cover the first button. Lights fly down the screen and if you blink you miss them. Look at your hand to see where the keys are and you miss them. If you miss them, you lose your place. You lose your place and take a second or two to recover. A second or two later and you're being booed off stage.

I have completed easy and got 5 stars for each song, many I have gotten 100% and gold starred them. On medium I persevered and finally got 5 stars for each song. I might even gold star a couple with a bit more practice. On hard, I think I have one or two songs that I have scraped 4 stars on, the rest I am lucky to get 3 stars - the crowd are throwing boos and bottles at me by the end. I have maybe 6 more songs to do and that's the Hard level cracked.

So, here I am around 50 days after I received this game and I have played it on almost every game session I have had. That's gotta count for something! There is still EXPERT level to play, but as I am getting on a bit, I don't think I'll be doing that level any time soon...