In November 2005 Harmonix Music Systems, Inc. released a game called Guitar Hero, for the PS2. The premise was simple enough. Play a small, plastic toy guitar in time with a series of color-coded notes to simulate the experience of rocking out to some bad ass tunes in front of a throng of adoring fans. It wasn’t a hotly anticipated release, but it wasn’t long before it and its sequel, Guitar Hero II, became the stuff of gaming legend. Not long after the Xbox 360 release, Harmonix moved on to develop a new, more ambitious music franchise (Rock Band), and publisher Activision tapped Neversoft Entertainment, developer of the popular Tony Hawk franchise, to take over the reins on Guitar Hero III.

Make no mistake, the shoes Neversoft has to fill aren’t just gargantuan, they’re positively ginormous. (It’s a word, you can look it up.) Have they succeeded? The answer to that question depends a great deal on just how much you fell in love with Harmonix’s initial vision for the Guitar Hero franchise. If you’re new to the series or are only a casual fan, you’ll likely love this game. If you’re a dedicated fanatic, it probably won’t pull you in like the originals. If you’re somewhere in between your mileage may vary. Ultimately, Neversoft was able to do the one thing they absolutely had to do: Preserve the overall game experience.

Guitar Hero is a game that succeeds because it makes you feel like you can play a guitar just as well as Eddie Van Halen, Joe Satriani or Jimi Hendrix, and this third iteration is still able to do that. The formulas is simple: You use five colored fret buttons on the neck of the guitar, in combination with a strummer and whammy bar at the base, to follow a pattern of notes on the screen to some of what are hopefully some of your favorite rock tunes. You can just pick up the game and play. You can start up a “band”, touring among eight different locales, ranging from a backyard party to, I kid you not, Hell. Each musical tier includes five songs you can play that slowly progress in difficulty. After you complete a song you’re rated from three to five stars, based on your performance.

All in all there are 40 songs to play (not including three “boss battle” tunes and a slew of unlockable tracks). There are also four difficulty settings, ranging from Easy to Expert. The progression makes sense for a while. However, the dissemination of songs across the difficulty tiers doesn’t always click from a difficulty standpoint as there are songs, for example, in tiers 5 and 6 that are easier than some of the songs in tiers 2 and 3. That’s easily forgivable. But what are not as easily forgivable are the changes to some of the play mechanics.

Guitar Hero and its sequel feel like music games developed by music people; Guitar Hero III feels like a music game developed by game people. No place is that more obvious than the new boss battles, in which you go head-to-head with guitar greats Tom Morello and Slash… and some cloven-footed demon from Hell that goes by the name…Lou. Again, I kid you not.

Instead of the conventional head-to-head face off style (though these modes are still available in multiplayer), these battles against legends of rock still involve playing a track, but instead of collecting star power (which is typically unleashed to pump up the crowd or gain point bonuses) you collect power-ups that disrupt your opposition. You don’t win by being the most accurate or acquiring the most points. You win by making your opponent fail the song. It’s completely antithetical to the point of the game and is perhaps the worst of the new features.

And if you find yourself getting stuck, unable to get past battles against Morello, Slash or Lou, they may just ruin your enjoyment of the career mode. Yes, if you fail enough, you can skip these battles, but don’t count on collecting any achievements for that difficulty level if you do.

More important to Guitar Hero aficionados is the set list. There are a ton of good tracks in this edition. Many gamers will find that they prefer this set list to the earlier games. Certainly, many of the tracks are higher-profile and most are master tracks instead of covers. But while the songs selected are each worthy of inclusion, there’s just not that much variety.