Guitar Hero III - The Difficulty Brick Wall - Part One
       By: M6.NET
Posted: 2008-11-05 06:48:14
This is a guide to aid you in overcoming the seemingly insurmountable gap in the difficulty settings of what was the highest selling video game of 2007 even though it was only released in October: Guitar Hero III - Legends of Rock. It is well documented that this game has a number of very large jumps in the technical difficulty of the game. These are known as brick walls. The most obvious ones are between the main difficulty modes; Easy, Medium, Hard and Expert. There are however other gaps as well. They are easy to see when you compare say 'Hit Me With Your Best Shot' to 'Through The Fire and Flames' on basically any difficulty. There are simply are not enough songs in between these two extremes, the worst gap for me personally was between the later tracks on Medium difficulty and average ones on Hard.
The general gaps that I have seen people complain about are these:
The 7th and 8th tiers of tracks on every difficulty seem to be much harder than the rest; esp. 'Raining Blood' and other very fast tracks. In the later difficulties it is particular sections of these tracks that become a problem.
The jump between each difficulty setting, especially between medium and hard, I.E. 'Oh GOD NO what is that blue/orange thing on my screen?!'
Specific sections of certain tracks: Such as the start of 'Through the Fire and Flames' on expert, the fast solo in 'One' on hard and expert and the 'Running Triplets' on 'Knights of Cydonia' (DAM THEM ALL).
First of all, as I am sure you have heard before if you are looking for a guide such as this; I will mention that the only way to really get better at this game and progress through the harder modes is to practice, practice, practice. However, there is practice that can help you out and practice that can in fact hinder your progress and lead to bad habits such as never moving your fret hand (which can make the jump to hard mode nearly insurmountable (unless you have five fingers and a thumb)).
Let's start at the start. If you are having trouble with the very beginnings of easy mode, just practice the first few songs (Pat Benetar, etc) until you have gotten the hang of fretting and strumming and all the basic stuff; make sure you have run through the tutorial at least once (if you are playing on the Xbox360 you will get an achievement for it anyway so why not?). Once you have the general idea of how to play the game you might notice that certain tracks or small sections of tracks seem harder than the rest; get used to it, these are the tracks that will keep you up until 5:17am on a Saturday night shaking from all energy drinks that you have been pumping in to try to step up your reflexes. (Actually I think energy drinks help me play certain tracks sometimes but that's probably something to check with your doctor about).
Soon enough you'll be working your way up to the hardest tier of the easy setting. Easy is essentially just that; easy. If you have troubles with any particular track just practice it in the practice mode until you can maintain a decent notes-hit percentage. The main ones to watch for in easy are the battles. You might not be used to using star/battle power functions or playing in lefty flip mode (just one of the many battle attacks that can be used against you), the best practise for this is to play battles against other people (if you can find any). One thing that I suggest you do not do is; play each note with the same finger every time. Once you get into this habit you may continue it into medium difficulty and if you get stuck enough with this style it will make the game very hard for you in hard mode as it is no longer possible after the notes start speeding up and there are five of them to play.
Once you've finished the easy campaign you'll be adding a whole extra note to the mix in the Medium setting. Medium is much faster than easy as well but by this time you'll be used to the game as a whole and you'll probably be having a lot of fun. Medium is for the most part, the main difficulty setting that most casual gamers and other random party goers will play the game at so get used to it as quickly as possible. Medium is essentially the 'meat and bones' of the game for quite a while. If you have any particular trouble my suggestion is, besides the normal practise mode stuff, to go back to easy mode and try to five-star the song on that difficulty. Once you can five star it on easy without thinking you should be able to at least pass it on medium. Sometimes it is best to just leave that track for a while, go try to high score or five/gold star some other track on a mildly challenging difficulty setting. Invite someone over for some co-op/pro face off or figure out some other way to get some general practice in that won't force you to smash your controller/TV/game system.
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