To aid in dialing up the anticipation level for Guitar Hero III Activision has been sending out early demo kits to various outlets. I’ve just spent the weekend with the new guitar and its accompanying five-track game demo and while there does appear to be some missteps—this is still Guitar Hero, through-and-through.

Let’s dispense with some of the potential backwards steps this game appears to have taken. It seems clear that some of the personality from the previous versions is lost. The color palette of Guitar Hero III is decidedly more muted, with less use of vibrant colors. It does give the game a more realistic look, which will certainly appeal to some, but some fans of the first two games may be a little off-put that a certain amount of the over-the-top, cartoonish boisterousness of the originals isn’t there.

Overall this is merely a matter of personal preference, of course, but one place where the duller colors do impact gameplay is with the score multiplier and star power meters. In Guitar Hero as you hit consecutive notes, you achieve higher multipliers, allowing you to hit higher scores. In previous editions it was easy to see what level of multiplier you had without taking your eyes off the notes coming down the screen because the coloring of the display would change accordingly. It was easy to spot from your peripheral vision. Likewise the star power meter, a solid glowing bar that filled in as you hit specific sequences of notes, radiated out such that it was easy to gauge without taking your eyes off the notes while you played.

In Guitar Hero III, however, the more subdued color palette forces you to look directly at the multiplier to see its status. And the star power meter is now a sequence of light bulbs that light up as the meter fills. I found that it, too, was tougher to gauge from my peripheral vision than the old meter.

With those niggling details dispensed with, the good news is that the in-song gameplay appears 100% intact. Despite the change in developers from Harmonix to Neversoft, this game clearly still plays like Guitar Hero. There’s no hint of any issues with the timing of hitting notes and the track list on the demo, consisting of Hit Me With Your Best Shot, Lay Down, Even Flow, Rock You Like a Hurricane and Tenacious D all play just as you’d expect them to, across each of the four difficulty levels. One other nice touch, which it’s hard to believe Harmonix never included, is that that Guitar Hero III also shows the year in which the song was released, right alongside the title.

And then there’s the guitar. Despite the fact that the demo kit ships with a wired guitar, the Guitar Hero III axe is, bar none, the best of the series, regardless of platform. While the all-black sheen does indeed look good (if a little prone to attracting dust), it’s the guitar’s heft that really stands out. Both the PS2 guitars and the 360 version of Guitar Hero II have always felt a little too cheap. This new axe won’t be mistaken for the real thing, but its extra weight, combined with a quieter strummer and a whammy bar that seems a bit better-placed, make it a significant upgrade from previous versions. My only complaint with the wired version of the guitar is the bizarrely short cord attached to it. This may only be an issue with the demo kit, but the cord is only six feet long, so unless you’ve got a USB extension cord, get the wireless version. Of course, you can also stick with the Guitar Hero II controller (it does work with the new game), but you’ll be missing out on the other improvements.

If you’re a fan of the first two games, the only reason not to lay down some scratch for Guitar Hero III is if you’re not a fan of the track list. Obviously, we all want to get a good look at the game’s tour mode and online play before passing final judgment, but unless Neversoft has completely dropped the ball on those two parts of the game, and I doubt it, Guitar Hero III should stand up quite nicely when set alongside its predecessors.