"Guitar Hero and I have a history. Sometimes it's begin good and loyal friend and sometimes it's bent me over the furniture and wailed on my ass with a steak tenderizer but I take all of that with good grace since we both know that the promise of simulated rockstardom will always bewitch the unabashed fantasist that is gaming's core demographic.

It all started when I and a few colleagues were over a friend's house for completely heterosexual reasons and we broke out Guitar Hero 1 on Easy mode in celebration of our manliness and complete lack of desire to fondle scrotums. And, when reached the point when the game wasn't yelling at us for sucking so much - that is sucking at the game, not sucking each other's dicks or anything - it was a lot of fun. It's triumph was in following the philosphy that if you're going to create a game designed to humiliate the player, the least you can do is have some decent music in it. So, while we would stand up there holding our undersized, squeaky, Fisher-Price plastic guitars as we would hold a small yappy dog, we could at least close our eyes and pretend we were up on stage with Joan Jett; holding a small yappy dog.

Guitar Hero become one of the staples of our weekly manly get togethers along with lifting weights and talking about chicks and when the time came for us to move up to Medium difficulty it seemed like an impossible task. I'd gotten so used to only using the first three buttons my pinky finger was an atrophy Pork Scratching attached on the end with Prit Stick. Once again the house rang with the plunks and wails of missed notes but it never stopped being fun even when I was having to duct tape bags of frozen peas to my arms to stop them from seizing up, and when Guitar Hero II finally came out well it was obviously time for us to gird our loins, grow enormous bears, and move up to Hard difficulty. Again, it seemed like madness; having to actually move your hand up and down to hit the fifth button felt like a good way to get wanker's cramp. But, I kept playing and eventually some breakthrough was reached around the time I was jerking off some Tattoed Loveboys and everyone had a good time.

Don't believe the lie of Guitar Hero III; it's actually the fourth title in the series, the third being Rock The 80s which I haven't played but the day I fork out seventy Euros for an expansion pack is the day I swallow razorwire, pull the end out of my ass, and floss myself to death. Guitar Hero III is the hasy cash-in the publishers threw together when they left the cage door open and the old Guitar Hero developers escaped into the wild. Unecessary changes in lecturing and graphics give the game an unscrutable feeling of unease as if a stranger has just walked into your house thinly disguised as your best friend and you wonder if he intends to leave soon or murder you and cannibalize your body.

But the point that I am laboriously trying to get to is that Guitar Hero III made Guitar Hero stop being fun. Oh, it was fun for a while; rattling off the ridiculously long hammer-on sequences in Cult of Personality, like the fretboard was the crotch of a loved one and I'd only a vague idea of where her clitoris was, was challening enough to make me feel awesome for pulling it off, but then I got the last venue and the last set of songs on Hard difficulty and came to a screeching halt because they are fucking impossible. No! Stop! Do not reach for e-mail client. I do not want to hear about how you Five-Starred Blood Rain on Expert because if you did then you are a fucking freak! A freak with either three arms or a trained pet spider working the buttons for you.

But aside from erecting a massive brick wall between myself and somewhere around three songs before the end, Guitar Hero III brings couple of other things to the table. Co-op Career mode is a welcome addition despite their being no faster way to fall out with someone. Battle mode, on the other hand, is a wee-bit broken. The first time either of acquired a power-up and unleashed it it completely crippled the other player and ended the match in five seconds in a clear case of what is known as Mario Kart Syndrome. As for the whole title, perhaps "Legend of Rock", singular, would have been less misleading because the only one is Slash from Guns N' Roses. Well, there's that guy from Rage Against The Machine too but - and no offense to man - if he's a legend of rock then a grilled cheese sandwich is haut cuisine.

Everything Guitar Hero III brings to the table seems to be balanced by what it left out. For one, Co-op Career mode is nice but old Co-op Quickplay mode is out on its ear for no adequate reason. For two, there's more advertisement placement here than the last Terminator movie and about as much dignity. For three, what happened to Clive Winston? He was my favorite character. For four, what the fuck happened to Clive Winston you pricks? In his place we've got some multi-colored, giggly, J-pop...creature and you can't play classic rock with that...thing it's like cock-slapping the Mona Lisa.

Anyway, a review of Guitar Hero is always going to be abrupt because they're little more than jazzed-up color-matching casual games. It's a good thing to have at a party when everybody's drunk and gotten bored of Pictionary. The song list's got some pretty sweet stuff, some mediocre stuff as well (but has that ever been the case?). All in all, it's just not as fun as tonguing at another man's balls.

I mean as it used to be.

...

I'm not gay."