I feel your pain with the cover versions - the ones on Guitar Hero II of Search and Destroy by the Stooges and Mother by Danzig are horrible. Weirdly, none of the covers on the first game seemed that bad.

Interesting to see that the balance seems to have shifted back to older music, II had a near-absence of dadrock (with a few exceptions, like Freebird) whereas I was pretty much all dadrock all the time.

To be fair, the covers aren't actually that bad (with the exception of Holiday in Cambodia, that's a fucking massacre); it's just because the originals are, naturally, infinitely cooler. Bizarrely I think if there had been fewer originals (and that would have been a BAD thing) the covers would have seemed less blah. Possibly I'm just an old fart (and that seems increasingly likely) but I think being a Guitar Hero is all about the dadrock. I mean, I'm happy enough to play The Killers but it doesn't make you feel like God in the same way playing Alice Cooper does. So in track-list terms, I would say III is probably the best of the bunch. I can't quite bring myself to let it go *just* yet in but a week or so, feel free to borrow?

It makes me wonder why they bother with the covers these days; they could surely fill the tracklist with originals perfectly happily, and the game sells so well that royalties are surely not as much of an issue. I assume that they use covers for the songs they simply couldn't get the rights to, but I wouldn't rank the likes of, say, Holiday in Cambodia amongst the top guitar tracks ever anyway.

Amy and my's flat is too small to rock out in without breaking things, but we should see about bringing our guitar over for head-to-head guitar duels.

Yeah, there are a few songs that don't make you think "wow, guitarist!" but, hey, it's still a pretty decent track list.

Your flat is too small to rock out in? That's the most tragic thing I've ever heard. Actually my room is a bit small as well but I find that if you tuck your elbows in you can usually manage not to smash shit up. Also sometimes you can rock out while jumping about on the bed, thanks to the wireless which, to be fair, is soemthing I only do in private. Because I am a person of Dignity. Oh yes.

Tuck your elbows in? Oh man, you're trying to contain the rock. You can't contain the rock. It's free. Free as a bird, now. And that bird you cannot change.

I should probably add an addendum to this review to the effect that I was overly optimistic about the adaptable difficulty of Guitar Hero III; I attempted to play Number of the Beast last night and not only my fingers but my entire arms fell off.