Guitar Hero III DLC

Not to hit you over the head with Guitar Hero stuff, but I'm behind on my blog for this month, and I'm running out of time to fix that, so here goes...

As I mentioned in my previous post, I've recently purchased all of the available Guitar Hero III downloadable content tracks from the Xbox Live Marketplace, and having played all tracks on all difficulty levels, I now know them well enough to review them. The way it works is that playable tracks in packs of three that are all somehow tied together, either by record label, style, or artist, are released for about two bucks per track. With the equivalent of about 18 track packs or so (or 54 songs), I had my hands full trying to digest all of this new material. Some tracks were in styles I liked ahead of time, some weren't, but that didn't keep me from disliking some of the songs I already knew and falling in love with some that I didn't.

Here are some of my favorites:

- "Ernten Was Wir Säen" by Die Fantastischen Vier: Despite the fact that most of the foreign language songs are of dubious quality, this one is really awesome (and quite long and difficult on higher levels).

- "Pretty Handsome Awkward" by The Used: I had been on the fence about this group for years, but this song convinced me to look into their most recent album...and now it's on my Christmas list. Way to go Guitar Hero!

- "Any Way You Want It" by Journey: You're like, "What?!?" I know, I know. But this song is awesome, and the lead singer of Journey has an incredible voice. Don't hate.

- "Hole in the Earth" by the Deftones: I'm a long-time fan of the Deftones, but my interest in the band had started to waver with their most recent albums. This track however convinced me to give them a second shot...now this CD is also on my Christmas list.

- "Almost Easy" by Avenged Sevenfold: I've already blogged about these guys. Guitar Hero is what got me into them.

- "Stockholm Syndrome" by Muse: I'm not a huge fan of Muse's latest album (off of which the regular GHIII track "Knights of Cydonia" comes), but this track is from their previous (and far superior album) and as such is very fun to play (plus it's difficult and has tons of notes, allowing for some really high scores...).

- The Motörhead pack: I went into these songs thinking I would hate this band's material (my only prior acquaintance being Triple H's theme songs...), but all three of the songs in this pack are fun to play and pretty good musically, so I guess I was wrong.

- "Surfing with the Alien" by Joe Satriani: I always thought the guitar virtuoso crowd was an inflated group with even more inflated egos, but as it turns out, this song is super fun and musical. Maybe I'll have to check out some Satch sooner than later.

- The DragonForce pack: Yes, "Through the Fire and Flames" is both really hard and a really great song, and yes, the three songs in this pack all sound kind of like it, but they're a tad bit easier (I can beat them all on Hard and even gold-star them on Medium), and the band's sound in general is fun, so no real complaints here.

So, that's how the top DLC boils down. If you have a 360 or PS3 and are thinking about buying some of this stuff, I would stay away from the Coldplay, Companion, Dropkick Murphys, Def Leppard, and Isle of Wight Festival track packs, along with maintaining a lowered set of expectations for the free packs, as all of these are generally mediocre.