Let's be honest. Real heroes risk their lives to pull people out of blazing infernos. Or they leg it across runways to kick terrorists in the nether regions. However, we'll admit that playing the guitar like a demon is a pretty impressive talent. And what's really odd is that playing the virtual guitar on the X360 can be an impressive feat, too.

Guitar Hero III is the latest in Activision's series of games that lets you play a compact plastic guitar in emulation of famous rock legends. The guitar peripheral this time round is a shiny, black, Les Paul imitation, which looks fabulous and is wireless, so you can rock around your living room without tripping over any trailing cords (just watch out for the coffee table). It's beautifully built and quite solid, too.

If you haven't partaken of Guitar Hero before, the idea is quite simple. Each song is represented by a collection of coloured notes that scroll down the screen. As they reach the bottom, you strum the strum bar and fret the corresponding coloured button; it's basically like playing the instrument to an autocue. There are five fret buttons, although you're only expected to deal with all of them on the harder difficulty settings ('easy' just uses three).

The more notes you play in a consecutive chain, the bigger your score multiplier gets, and using "star power" ups the point count further. This is a power-up activated by tilting the guitar upwards; the Les Paul imitation also has a whammy bar, and wibbling this on long notes racks up further points. Not to mention it's damn good fun.

And that's the core of the Guitar Hero experience: It's just stupendous fun. Even though you're only pressing a few fret buttons, the notes are woven into the beat of the music with such aplomb that you really feel like you're playing the song for real. Any missed notes cause the strings to plink horribly, but the smooth sound of a tune flowing along as you hit the notes perfectly is literally music to the ears. It's an incredibly absorbing game.

Okay, so what's new in this third incarnation? Obviously there's a fresh track list, and it comprises an excellent and varied selection of songs. From the heaviness of Slayer and Slipknot, through to light rock such as Poison and Pat Benatar, not to mention the insanity of DragonForce, there's something for everyone here. We even found ourselves getting into some obscure old metal such as Heart's Barracuda, as playing along to the track makes the music all the more enticing.

Aside from the main career mode, where the player tackles a series of increasingly high profile gigs, there's a new co-operative career that allows two players to take on the lead and bass guitar parts. This is a smart new addition to the formula, although the catch is you need two guitar peripherals.

A two-player duel mode has been introduced, so you can have guitar battles against a mate. In these the effects of power-ups are changed so they do nasty things to your opponent such as breaking one of their strings. These duels also crop up as boss fights in the career mode, in which the player has to tackle guitar legends such as Tom Morello and Slash. Online play has been introduced as well, so you can duel people across the globe.

Despite these additions, at its core the game remains the same, although that's no bad thing. We've only a couple of slight nit-picks with Guitar Hero III, and that's with the background graphics (which aren't particularly well animated) and the occasional song where the rhythm of the notes goes a little off (or it felt that way to us). Otherwise, it's rocking good fun, all the way to the encore.

If you don't want to live forever, if you shout at the devil, if you bark at the moon, you should most definitely go and buy Guitar Hero III. And then see a psychiatrist.