With the first two games you could really sense that each track was carefully selected not just for how great it sounds on a stereo system, but also how much fun it was to play in the game. For example, Story of My Life by Social Distortion is a decent enough song, but in Guitar Hero III it’s just flat out boring. The degree to which this bothers you will likely hinge on how musically inclined you actually are. (I’ve seen a number of complaints from Guitar Hero diehards that each music track’s note sheet isn’t done nearly as well as you could expect to find in previous games. Still, if you’re my side of the tone-deaf scale, you’re unlikely to notice. )

Your appreciation of the game’s presentation, too, will likely depend a lot on just how much love you have of how Harmonix handled the previous games. The first two games were bright, loud, colorful and over the top. Part of the reason those games were fun incarnate had to do with the presentation. There was real love there. Guitar Hero III manages to not only mute the volume in some areas, using a much more drab color palette, but also go over the top in ways that many won’t appreciate much. From two venues that make zero sense in the game (Hell and a music video set where you play to an invisible crowd) to female guitarist Judy Nails’s new piercings and suddenly booming bra size, to the trademark quotes that appear when the game is loading content, the game manages to feel a bit more gloomy and far less mature. Many fans will also be more than a little non-plussed that fan-favorite guitarists Pandora and Eddie Knox have been dumped from the lineup and replaced with an anime-style Japanese schoolgirl, complete with knee-high stockings. Creepy.

Criticism aside, the game does have something we can all only wish the earlier games had—online play and cooperatively career play. Off the grid, you can team up with another human axe-wielder to take on a separate co-op career mode. This feature is so obvious it’s shocking to think this is the first time it’s been included. And the online play works very, very well. You can play ranked and unranked sets, choosing the style (face-off, pro face-off or battle), the songs you want to play, the number of songs to play, etc. It works so well that even the battle mode manages to redeem itself a little. The only caveat is the leaderboards, which are frustrating to traverse, and for some reason you can no longer see the total number of players ranked in addition to your own ranking. So, while you might be ranked 1,223, you have no idea if that’s out of 1,225 people or 320,123 people.

Another big improvement for this edition is the new guitar. It’s hefty, it’s well constructed, and best of all, it’s wireless. This new Gibson-modeled axe is far better than the guitars included with the original PS2 games and the Xbox 360’s white Explorer model. Even better, you can use this guitar with Guitar Hero II and, it looks like it’ll work in Rock Band. So, if you’re on the fence as to whether you should stick with your old guitar or go for the upgrade, just do yourself a favor and get the new one. It’s worth every penny.

At the end of the day, both newcomers and most fans of the originals will find a good game that does carry the torch for Guitar Hero forward. No, it’s not nearly as fantastical as the originals, but it’s still not bad. If nothing else, the new guitar and online play make this a worthwhile purchase.