But even taking this affordability into consideration, it doesn't make sense to buy this version over the full-featured Xbox 360 one unless you've got a huge monitor and don't care about the uncertainty with downloadable content.
If you've only got a PC or Mac, buying Aspyr's version of Guitar Hero III is an easy choice, especially at its lower price point. The keyboard settings are actually customizable, so nimble-fingered fretmasters can theoretically group the strumming and fret-pressing keys close enough on the keyboard to play with one hand-though I tried it using the default frets and the space bar to strum and failed pretty miserably. Since the game includes a guitar, the keyboard controls are more of a bonus than anything else, and Aspyr certainly implemented them as well as they could have done. Depending on your keyboard-related dexterity, you could certainly get used to playing the game this way, but there's not really an incentive to do so-it's just more fun to emulate real guitar playing with the plastic instrument. Pressing multiple keys at once for chords was most problematic due to the small size of the keys on a typical keyboard. Moving the mouse back and forth horizontally for the whammy bar also felt fairly natural, and was again actually more convenient than using the real whammy bar of the plastic peripheral.ĭespite the enhanced strumming control of the mouse, using the keyboard to press frets felt unnatural, and medium songs that I've played before with ease using the guitar peripheral were a challenge to get through. I haven't mastered both upstrokes and downstrokes on the guitar controller, but I was able to do both with ease using the mouse. Having the strumming actions assigned to the two fast-clicking buttons of a mouse actually affords more control than even the plastic guitar in this regard. The mouse's left and right buttons correspond to up and downstrokes on the guitar, with the middle mouse button serving as star power, and horizontal jiggling of the mouse initiating whammy bar action.
The game conveniently enables lefty flip by default when using the keyboard, reversing the order of frets on-screen to correspond with the order of the keys your fingers are resting on. You'll notice the keys are apparently in reverse order from the default guitar frets, and this is intentional. The default setup uses the V, C, X, Z and left shift keys as the green, red, yellow, blue, and orange frets, respectively. Having one hand on the keys and the other on the mouse makes the disparate actions of strumming and fret-pressing at least tangible, if not mechanically accurate. Using keys to press frets and other keys to strum feels like, well, pressing keys on a keyboard while holding down other keys on a keyboard. Though there are two default setups for keyboard control, and both work well-one using a keyboard-mouse combination and one using keys exclusively-neither effectively captures the essence of Guitar Hero's real-life guitar-emulating enjoyability.Īssuming you have access to a mouse when you're on the road, the mouse-and-keyboard control combo feels much better than the keyboard alone, mainly because you're performing separate actions with each hand.
#Guitar hero 3 pc keyboard controls portable
One of the draws of the PC version is the promise of portable play via notebook PC, making use of the alternate keyboard controls to avoid transporting the unwieldy plastic six-string. Regarding online multiplayer capabilities, the PC version will have everything the Xbox 360 version has-online co-op, online battles-with an interface powered by Activision-owned middleware provider Demonware.Īs you'd expect, playing Guitar Hero III on the PC with the Xplorer guitar feels the same as it always did. Though you'd think downloadable content would be easiest to implement on the PC, Aspyr told me they were still working out a delivery method for new songs, so it may be a while before this content is available.
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