Hands on with Guitar Hero III Mobile

One of the good things about being in the US at a BREW-focused conference is that I've been able to blag a BREW phone for the week to play some games. Including some of the biggies yet to come to the UK.

Namely, Guitar Hero III Mobile. It is coming out in the UK this summer, but publisher Hands-On Mobile has been tight-lipped about just how much of the US edition's connectivity we'll be getting.

What better time to test out that US version, then, on a slinky BREW handset (the LG Voyager, to be precise). The game will be old news to US readers – it's sold over a million downloads here/there – but not to us Europeans.

First, then, it works really well, focusing on just three notes to hit in time to the coloured prompts onscreen, using the '4', '5' and '6' keys. The sound is top-notch, too – almost MP3-quality, rather than polyphonic.

This was the biggest surprise, as I rocked through Santana's 'Black Magic Woman' and Wolfmother's 'Woman' in Easy mode. You'd need headphones to play it in public without feeling embarrassed, of course. But the audio quality really does the game justice.

Then there's the connectivity. You have to download songs before playing them, which takes a couple of minutes. But the draw is that new songs are made available every month, keeping the game fresh (and allowing Hands-On to charge gamers a monthly subscription without them feeling ripped off).

It's a marvellous, marvellous game. My only concern now is that having been spoilt by the whizzy BREW version, will the version that comes to UK Java handsets sound and play well enough in comparison?

Click 'Track It!' for an alert when we find out.