From leather jackets to lips curled into sneers, an F-you attitude has always served rock ’n’ roll well. So maybe we shouldn’t be too surprised to see Guitar Hero III embrace the snarling, competitive side of music so completely. Still, we can’t help but think…it used to be about fulfilling our rock dreams, man. Guitar Hero, you’ve changed.

Here’s the problem: While the game adds online support for both competitive and cooperative play (about time!), GHIII’s main new gameplay innovation is Battle Mode. Remove the good vibes of a GHII co-op session and replace them with attacks that make notes randomly disappear — or multiply. One attack changes difficulties on the fly, another swaps your guitar from a righty to a lefty. Recovering from some of these attacks means mashing the buttons like a two-year-old having a temper tantrum. It’s super-challenging…but it’s not actually much fun. The focus has shifted from pretending you’re awesome to realizing that you suck. “You HAVE to make him FAIL before the end or else YOU LOSE,” urges the Battle instruction screen. Enough said. What’s worse, online Battles can be as brief as 15 seconds. It can take longer than that to find an online match.

That said, if you’re looking to test your mettle with testosterone metal, GHIII delivers. You may remember Hard mode; it used to be called Expert. Unfortunately, the gap between Normal and Hard is pretty wide, so average players must choose between being bored or abused. We’re also glad to see the co-op career path, but we completely don’t understand the decision to restrict some songs to that mode (Red Hot Chili Peppers’ “Suck My Kiss” and “Helicopter” by Bloc Party among them).

As for the other 70-odd tracks, we won’t argue with “Welcome to the Jungle” or Slash’s participation as a boss (as with Rage Against the Machine’s Tom Morello, you’ll HAVE to make him FAIL in single-player mode to unlock him…and you’ll need to pony up $10K of gig money, too). There’s a wide spectrum of music here, including tracks from Slipknot, Muse, Metallica (at last!), The Dead Kennedys, and a few “guitarists’ guitarists” like bluesy shredders Eric Johnson and Stevie Ray Vaughan. Props to Living Colour for re-recording its biggest hit “Cult of Personality” for the game — and making it even wheedlie-deedlier.

Guitar Hero III feels like it has something to prove to the hardcore player. Trouble is, there are far more gamers who just like cracking a few cold ones with pals and having a nice friendly jam — something for which this iteration in the series was not built, even with its co-op modes. Ultimately, GHIII succeeds as a polished technical workout for top-tier shredders, but the game’s magic was never really about pressing buttons anyway — it was about making the player feel like, well, a guitar hero. Now, we just feel unworthy.

ON XBOX 360

+ The wireless guitar feels great!

+ Easier-to-see hammer-on icons and the note counter are welcome tweaks.

- The focus on competition robs the game of its joy.

? "The Seeker" – that's the best Who track they could get?

8.0