It is a truth universally acknowledged that a couple in possession of a second hand PS2 must be in want of a copy of Guitar Hero. I'm a latecomer to this franchise, having only very recently embraced the console (metaphorically speaking, since ours is rather battered, I can't quite shake the conviction that a geeky teenager has been masturbating either on it or in its close vicinity), but from my brief brush with Guitar Hero II at a party, I would say Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock is a worthy successor. I understand, from the cursory glance at the internet that generally constitutes my research, that there's been a change in developer but, aside from one or two tweaks and the introduction of a few new modes, there's been very little change to the core gameplay.

As with anything of this nature, I think people fall into quite specific camps - there are those for whom rocking out like a maniac with a plastic guitar in the privacy of your own bedroom will never hold an appeal and there are those for whom it will. If you fall into the former camp, I am astonished that such people actually exist but I cannot in good conscience recommend you buy Guitar Hero III. If you fall into the latter camp, you probably already own some breed of Guitar Hero game and, therefore, can content yourself with the knowledge that this is more of the same. But oh what same.

Guitar Hero, just to cover the basics, works like this. It comes with its own controller in the shape of guitar and, as a song plays, coloured lights will flash on screen corresponding to the buttons on the guitar controller. You hit the notes correctly and, lo, you are rocking. It's almost entirely unlike playing the guitar but it is a hell of a lot of fun. Furthermore, the controller packaged with Guitar Hero III is wireless which, despite a few uncertain moments early on getting it to recognise its own existence, works surprisingly well and allows for the full range of Hendrix style contortions and heavy metal moshing you may wish to attempt.

Perhaps it's just because I've been playing solidly for the last two days, but I think Guitar Hero III is a little more forgiving than its predecessor in terms of the window you have in which to unfumble your fingers and hit the right note. But since some of the songs, especially at the harder difficulties, are bone-crunchingly tricky this seems a fair compromise. There also seems to be a greater emphasis on hammer ons and pull offs but since I can barely limp through the riff of doom in Paranoid, I'm still clinging like a coward to the easy settings. One of the main (and many) pleasures of the Guitar Hero games has to be their accessibility; in many ways you set you own difficulty, not just by, err, choosing the difficulty (duh) but also in the way you play. The better you become at a song, the more likely you are to start leaping around the room at the same time and wiggling the whammy bar wildly for extra applause. But it does feel beautifully self-regulating and means you rarely grow frustrated.

There are various play modes on offer here: a career mode which allows you to unlock new songs and earn money which you can then spend on increasingly ludicrous guitars and outfits, extra songs and even Tom Morello ($10,000 for Tom Morello, a bargain!) on the journey from some dude's basement to international rock stardom. There are also practice and tutorial modes to help you nail those nasty solos, a quick play mode for when you just have to play Paint It Black and various cool-seeming competitive options that I haven't fully explored yet because it would involve buying a second bloody guitar. The career-mode seems marginally more fleshed out than the one in Guitar Hero II - there are various short, impressionistic cutscenes which just about form a coherent story if you're feeling generous. The look of the game seems to have changed a bit as well: it's simultaneously cleaner and cartoonier, especially in the cut scenes I just mentioned. More attention seems to been lavished on the band itself - including a vague attempt a lip synching - and the different guitarists are all so wonderfully done that I found myself missing notes because I wanted to watch Lars Umlaut doing his overweight Norwegian rocker stamp.

Of course, the thing that really makes a Guitar Hero game is the soundtrack and I think Guitar Hero III might just be the best of the bunch, encompassing fantastic classics like Paint It Black, Anarchy in the UK, Number of the Beast, The Seeker and Black Magic Woman. Basically, it's Dad Rock par excellence. And there are several more modern offerings too (she says, aging herself irrevocably), with songs from The Smashing Pumpkins, Red Hot Chili Peppers, The Killers and other bands young people nowadays are listening to. Nearly half the bunch are the original songs as recorded by the artists which, needless to say, makes you feel about hundred feet tall (even as you inevitably prove yourself the worst guitarist in the history of the music business). Unfortunately this does mean that the covers do stand out more as being covers; most come across as merely uninspiring, in comparison to the originals but some, like the cover of Black Sabbath's Paranoid, are actually depressingly bland. And I have no fucking idea what they did to Holiday in Cambodia. Seriously. Dude.

Ultimately, if you like Guitar Hero and want more of it, you'll like this. And, if at any point in your life you ever secretly or not so secretly wanted to be a rock star, you owe it to yourself to get one of these games, lock the door, close the bedroom curtains ... and rock on! Oh yes.