Just when we’d thought our fingers had recovered from the battering that endless repeats of Search and Destroy, Carry on My Wayward Son and Freebird had given our fingers throughout the year, along come Activision with a new Guitar Hero. As soon as it hit our collective desks a few Fridays ago we knew what it meant: hours upon hours of practice. Again. Hours of looking like an idiot with a small plastic guitar. Hours of straining so hard during solos that our eyeballs practically explode and our wrists crack. Fun it may be, but Guitar Hero takes its toll.

Especially on me. Y’see, Jay over here is a bit of a Guitar Hero wizard, somehow managing to zoom through pretty much every song ever on expert with little cause for concern. Take, for example, GH3’s inclusion of the epic 6-minute Muse track ‘Knights of Cydonia’. Now, on my side of the office the tune saw me desperately trying to hash through the tricky run section in the middle, hoping against all hope that I could make it through to the end riff before my fingers failed me. This wasn’t even on expert level either – this was on hard. Jay, meanwhile, casually loaded it up on expert, riffed his way through it and proceeded onto territory new.

If you’ve played a Guitar Hero game before then there’s very little revolutionary content in this newest sequel, despite development being shifted to Tony Hawk’s folks Neversoft. Coloured dots still fall from the top of the screen, and you still have to hold the correct fret button and strum in time. There’s still a selection of differing kinds of tune, from classic 1960’s rock-‘n-roll to modern day ‘nu-punk’ rubbish. There’s still a selection of bizarre characters to have as your avatar throughout the career mode, and yes, there’s still the option to go co-op with a mate and see if you can form the world’s greatest armchair band ever. It’s all very, very familiar.

There are, however, a couple of new additions to the mix. First and foremost, aforementioned co-op mode is now mixed with the career mode, giving you and your axe wielding chums a little side-story to work your way through on your way to stardom. The story itself is a miniaturised version of the solo campaign and is played out between song tiers by some rather attractive cartoon styled sections. It’s a nice addition that adds a good deal of flavour to progression, and although it’s nothing too deep or amazingly entertaining, it does the job quite nicely.

Then there are the songs themselves, and as ever they’re a mixed bag depending on personal taste. Particular office favourites include Knights of Cydonia (despite that annoying bit I can’t do), Rage Against The Machine’s typically angry Bulls on Parade and The Rolling Stones’ seminal Paint it Black, whilst ones that we could quite easily not play ever again even if we were paid include The Smashing Pumpkins’ insanely dull Cherub Rock, and a Sonic Youth song so monotonous that it practically causes you to slip into a coma about two minutes in.

On a personal slant, the tunes on offer aren’t quite up to the same level of enjoyment as Guitar Hero 2, which had me sawing my way through Search and Destroy, Carry on my Wayward Son and countless others just for sheer enjoyment’s sake. Is some cases – as with the above-mentioned Pumpkins tune – you are left scratching your head and wondering why the bods at Activision didn’t shell out a little more for one of the numerous better songs in a band’s catalogue. Oh, and can this be the last time we have to sit through Pat Benatar, please?

The other gripe to take away from the songs and their respective charts is that the difficulty level in GH3 is a bit of a mess, with some tunes on expert somehow being vastly easier than others in medium and a huge jump in difficulty between the penultimate and last group of songs, whatever level you’re playing on. Some of the guitar solos, particularly on latter tunes, are not just difficult in the way that, say, Freebird was tricky last time, but practically progression-breakingly random and fast, leaving you the option of countless hours of practice or the hope that eventually you’ll just get lucky with star power.

Not that this is as easy as it once was, either. Star power sections this time around are longer and decidedly more intricate than previously, and to get a good dose of the blue stuff you need to be pretty bloody good at the song in the first place, which kind of goes against the point of needing it. The days of getting the hang of something and just-and-just muddling through are gone.

It’s not that I don’t enjoy a challenge, so don’t get me wrong on that. Should you complete the campaign mode this time around you get an utterly bonkers tune by Dragonforce to attempt, and practicing it on expert and trying to hit as many right notes as you can whilst practically every button flies past the fret bar is strangely cathartic. You can tell that it’s been put there as a wry wink at series fanatics who had a go at the last edition for being too easy, and as such it serves its purpose really well. Heck, I really enjoy making progress through the difficulty levels, learning where I am going wrong and improving as I practice.

The problem Guitar Hero 3 has is that it seems to be confused as to who it is aiming itself at. The harder songs on the game are, compared to previous tunes on each difficulty level, very difficult to what has come before, whilst the difficulty levels themselves have taken somewhat of a jump since last time too. In a way it feels as if Neversoft have aimed the game squarely at the series fanatics and given them something challenging and, to a degree, rewarding, but at the same time have left infrequent players or series newcomers slightly out in the cold.

Something that seems to have left everyone out in the cold is the introduction of the new boss battle mode. Throughout the career there are a trio of them, at which points you drop the usual manner of playing a tune and instead face off against an opponent in some kind of duelling banjos effort that sees you completing riffs, picking up power-ups to hamper your opponent and launching them at them at the most opportune moment. It sounds reasonable and it does give you a slightly geeky sense of satisfaction to see Slash and Tom Morello join you on stage, but in practice the riffs you jam through aren’t at all inspiring and pretty soon you want to go back to simply playing through songs. Oh, and the less said about the final face-off and the riff-induced silliness within the better.

All this might make you believe that Guitar Hero 3 isn’t exactly the apple of my eye, but to be honest that’s not really true. You see, the same addictive nature that has been present since the very first game is still very much there, and despite the frustrations there’s still more than plenty for you to entertain yourself with. Jay and myself have spent hour upon hour working our way through co-op and single-player modes alike, doodling through the setlist and assorted bonus tracks and buying new guitars, characters and tunes as we earn our career cash. It’s good fun, and it’s very moreish.

Problem is, it just doesn’t feel as enjoyable as the last title. Whilst on the one hand it’s a very similar beast, GH3 is a more difficult, more frustrating experience in comparison, and it suffers for it. Sure there’s downloadable content (still at a premium price, sadly) on the horizon, and playing the game over Xbox Live is fun and happily lag-free, but the main meat of the title is rife with random difficulty peaks and troughs, a slightly disappointing choice of tunes and a frankly rubbish new game mode. Time to get the tweaking sticks back out, guys.