(continued from previous page) ...by the well-worn philosophy of if it aint broke, don’t fix it – and in Guitar Hero’s case, rightly so.

Being one of the biggest party games around, Guitar Hero just wouldn't be the same without some of the classic co-op and adversarial modes as before. So this time around, a strong emphasis on multiplayer was set to provide more than ample amounts of gameplay for both online and off. Along with Co-op, Face Off, and Pro Face Off, a new game mode, called Battle Mode has been added. This stems directly from the Battles throughout the single player. During these battles, the objective is to knock out your opponent before the song ends.

To do this, battle notes replace star power notes throughout the song. Once you hit all the battle notes in a series, you will be granted a power up to use against your opponent to get them to mess up and lose all of their rock meter. This mode gets addicting quick, but be sure you knock them out fast, because if a draw occurs, Sudden Death comes up quick and the Death Drain power up will be attainable. The first to get and activate this power up will likely win.

There are several power ups for Battle Mode, including:

-Broken string: One fret button on the opponent's guitar will not work until it is fixed (by rapidly tapping the button).
-Difficulty up: The opponent will play the song on an increased difficulty for a short duration of time (except for expert difficulty).
-Amp overload: The fret board will shake and cause the notes to blink, making the scrolling notes difficult to read.
-Whammy bar: The opponent will have to use the whammy bar repeatedly before he/she can play notes again.
-Steal power: This will steal your opponent's power-up (this will be lost if used when the opponent has no power-up).
-Double notes: The opponent will have to play any single note as a two-button chord, and any two-button chord as a three-button chord for a short amount of time.
-Lefty/Righty flip: The fret board will be mirrored, requiring the attacked player to change his or her handedness.

All of these modes are available online or off. While at the time of review, the PS3's online set-up was all but broken, the games we did manage to get into were virtually lag free and offered a lot of entertainment. Players can even link their band to GuitarHero.com and track stats, view high scores, and participate in online tournaments. Once we get more time with the online portion of this game, check back for a further review of the features.

The game looks amazing in HD, with lots of bright, vibrant colors and a mostly smooth frame rate. Occasionally, after activating Star Power, some frames will be dropped, which is almost a sin in the music rhythm world. Other than that, the game is very solid. There is, of course, a lag and whammy calibrate option to cancel out and lag you would get from your TV, which is essential.

It looks as if Red Octane and Neversoft just might be able to keep this series afloat for quite some time without the help of Harmonix, who have moved on to work on bigger ambitions at this time. We're just glad that Activision has taken this project seriously and spent the time to enhance gameplay, rather than simulate and recreate it. Be sure to pick this one up.