Guitar Hero, to the uninitiated, might seem like a waste of time. After all, it's basically a game where the player uses a guitar-like controller, strumming it in a vaguely nonsensical way while pushing color-coded buttons.

"Why not just play a real guitar?", the squares must ask themselves. If someone is going to put all of that effort into learning how to play a simulated guitar game, why not get exponentially more chicks by just learning the real thing?

As it is, playing Guitar Hero isn't much of a chick-attractant. But the woman I share a cubicle with plays it, and she probably isn't alone in her gender. Heck, even my girlfriend got in on the GH fun last night after dinner. She hates video games, but to quote her, "It's addictive."

Yeah, duh.

The real guitar question is valid. But it's not one that Guitar Hero Nation seems to care much about. After all, learning how to play My Name Is Jonas or Bulls on Parade would be a lot tougher on a real guitar.

Fantasy is the most fun part of the game. Pretending like you can play these songs like Rivers Cuomo or Tom Morello is just plain fun, even though your only groupies, if you're anything like me, are the stupid cat and the clueless dog.

That's why Guitar Hero III just works. True, it doesn't bring much more to the table than the first two installments did. But why fix a formula that isn't broken? I wasted hundreds of hours playing the first two. It still hasn't gotten old. And with dozens of new songs to play and on a new system ... let's just say I haven't been getting much sleep.

The song list is obviously the best of any of the four games they've made (the Guitar Hero Rocks the 80's list was just awful). It's varied and rich and not just metal or punk.

My only qualm: no Jessica-type track, "as made famous by The Allman Brothers Band."

As an aside, I know Jessica has been relegated to elevator music. In fact, a couple of weeks ago I was waiting to take my grandparents to lunch and my grandfather had the Weather Channel on. Guess which song started playing? I was horrified, but I couldn't stop strumming my fingers to an imaginary fake plastic guitar.

The graphics, at least on the Wii version, are satisfactory. But when you're playing, you're not looking at the background - you're staring intently at which buttons you have to press next.

I don't care how hot Judy Nails is now; take a glance in her direction on Expert and you're screwed. Get it? Nails, screwed?

That being said, I think it's a mite easier than GH 2, especially on Medium difficulty. I remember having a conversation with a friend awhile back. He told me that medium was going to be the new hard. I had to laugh a little bit at that one, especially after playing it for the first time. Medium is the same old medium. Hard is a lot easier than it was in GH 2. Expert is, by and large, for people with too much time on their hands (me) or for people who are masochists (not me).

The Wiimote fits into the guitar. That's rad. The Wiimote also serves as a speaker for the guitar, adding a cool new level of realism to the game when you play the wrong note or have your string broken in battle mode.

Speaking of the new Battle Mode - which consists of taking on an anonymous person over the Internet or your best friend with another guitar controller to task with broken strings, lefty flips or broken whammy bars -I'm not a big fan. It makes the game play a little bit too random and cheap, a little bit too much like your kid brother on Red Bull could beat you, especially if difficulties don't match.

Online play is pretty neat. I would have rather liked to be able to talk to the other person or to at least challenge them to a rematch, but no such luck here. Guess I'll have to stick to making fun of their band name when they connect to my machine. (I'm looking at you, "Rad Rod.")

If anyone is interested in taking me on, I'll provide my Wii Friend code to you. Just shoot me an e-mail at villegask@YourHub.com.