I picked up Guitar Hero III over the weekend.

It seems a little easier than GH2. It feels like it’s much more forgiving of poorly-timed strums. I might have just gotten better though.

They also got rid of Clive Winston, my favorite character. I had to settle on some punk with a mohawk. I don’t even know the guy’s name. I’m hoping that Clive is just a secret character that I’ll be able to unlock at some point, and then his aged-rocker experience will flow through my fingers and give me the edge I need.

I’m still not that great. I can five-star most songs on Medium without too much difficulty. Hard is…hard. Expert is painful to watch.

I’ve said this before, but I really feel like RedOctane/Activision/Neversoft is limiting themselves with their reliance on classic rock songs. If I ran things I’d release “Guitar Hero: Weirdo Edition” and although it’d only sell five copies it would be chock full of 80s synth-pop and new wave, and classic jazz guitar from the likes of Wes Montgomery and Django Reinhardt! You can’t tell me that wouldn’t be tons of fun, because it would.

I played online last night for the first time. Network play in GH3 is a little rough around the edges. Once you’re in a match things work great, but getting a round to start without seeing ‘Connection Lost’ takes a few tries.

At some point I unlocked the ‘Meet your Maker’ achievement because I “Beat one of the creators of Guitar Hero 3 at their own game.” I was too busy focusing on notes to see what the achievement was, so I have no idea who I actually played against! But I beat them on medium, so they must not have been very good. Or maybe they saw they were playing against a guy named Elbow Macaroni and let me win because I deserved it for having such a great name. I may never know the truth.

Rock on.