Guitar Hero: Metallica

April 6,2009 - In October of 2008 Activision released Guitar Hero World Tour for every major home console on the planet. This edition of Guitar Hero introduced drums and vocals to the formula, effectively bringing it up to speed with their main competitor, Rock Band. The game was a solid game, though it did have a few rough edges here and there. Now only five months later, Activision has released Guitar Hero: Metallica, a game which though it does improve on a few things, it actually ends up going backwards in a few other areas.



For those that don't know, Guitar Hero is a popular rhythm action game where you play along to the notes that scroll down from the top of the screen, or if you're the vocalist, sing along to the words that scroll along the screen. It's a simple formula, but it's also a lot of fun. Guitar Hero: Metallica doesn't really bring a whole lot of new things to the table, and if we were to make an overly simple generalization of what the game is, we would likely call it a simple Song Pack for World Tour. It is a bit more than that though, and in some ways, it's even a bit less than that as well.

The game features a total of 49 songs, 28 of which are by Metallica. The others are by other artists that have either inspired or been inspired by Metallica. That's probably just a catch all statement to justify some of the seemingly random choices of songs that ended up filling out the roster. Not that any of them are particularly bad, far from it, the set list in this game is solid. The Metallica tracks that are in the game include just about every song that you might want to have in a Metallica game. The songs seem to skew towards the first few albums. There are three notable omissions though, ...And Justice For All, Blackened, and Ride the Lightning are not in this game. This is no doubt due to licensing issues with MTV Games, since they are available as Rock Band DLC.

Guitar Hero: Metallica does support downloadable content, sort of... If you purchased Death Magnetic, the latest Metallica album for World Tour then you will be able to play it Guitar Hero: Metallica. None of the other songs you bought for World Tour will work though. Why? It's obviously not a technical problem if you can allow one piece of DLC to work and not everything else. This just seems like a boneheaded move by the Activision marketing department to separate all the games. And there in is this game's biggest problem.

On the Xbox 360 there are currently five Guitar Hero titles available, and none of them can share content. If you want to play Trapped Under Ice, you have to play World Tour. If you're looking to play Freebird, you've got to get out the Guitar Hero II disc. This is the complete opposite of the approach that Harmonix took with Rock Band, where you can have all of your songs in one place.

Guitar Hero: Metallica features almost all of the modes that were present in World Tour. The Career mode has changed a bit though. Unlike in World Tour where you had a map with a specific set of gigs in specific venues, this time around the progression is completely linear. You play some songs, unlock new ones, play through those, and then unlock more songs and continue the process until you reach the end. It's more like the career path in Guitar Hero II, III, or Aerosmith. So in essence they've gone backwards with the career mode.

The rest of the modes, including the Music Studio have remained pretty much unchanged. The music studio does gain a few additional Metallica style guitar effects, but that's about it. The online modes have remained pretty much unchanged as well, with the exception of the Battle Mode which has received a few Metallica themed power ups. It's still the black sheep of the online modes, and no amount of fiddling with it is going to change that.

During the career mode you'll be presented with animated cut-scenes drawn by TitMouse, the folks behind the popular Metalocalypse cartoon on Adult Swim. These scenes are rather well done and tell the story of your band, inspired by a Metallica performance forming up and making their way from rags to riches. Now, while they do look cool and are reasonably amusing, they're completely unnecessary. They don't hurt the game by being there, but you don't play a Guitar Hero game for its story, you play it for the music.

So those are the game's shortcomings out of the way, now we can look at where the game makes improvements over World Tour. In terms of the gameplay, there were only a few rough edges that needed to be sorted out. In World Tour, when you were playing in Band Mode, it was difficult to tell how well your band mates were doing. This has been sorted out now. Each band member now has their own Rock Meter alongside their note highway, where it's easy to see. There is also now a visual representation of how high your Star Rating is for the song you're playing. This makes playing in Band Mode much more enjoyable.

One thing that Neversoft has had some trouble with over the past few Guitar Hero releases has been the difficulty curve going from medium to hard to expert on Guitar. This time around, it feels as if they've hit that sweet spot. Medium is great for people getting in and will offer enough of a challenge to newcomers without being frustrating. Hard introduces the Orange fret and makes very sparing use of three-button chords Finally when you get to Expert, the game throws everything it has at you. The big difference between this game and World Tour is that Hard does not feel like such a huge wall anymore, and that's going to keep people from becoming frustrated. When people get frustrated, they're no longer having fun, and that's what it's really about.

Next is the game's presentation. When you're playing Metallica songs the on-stage band is Metallica. All of the band members look excellent and perform as close to the real band as is possible at this point. James Hetfield does those really pronounced head motions while he's singing and even talks to the crowd before some songs. It's something that adds a little extra authenticity to the whole experience.

Guitar Hero: Metallica is absolutely loaded with extras. There are the Metallifacts videos which allow you to listen to a song while watching the in-game band play. While this is going on, factoids about the song and the band pop up at the bottom of the screen. There are also a number of image galleries, behind the scenes videos, and even lyrics for all the songs.



Finally the biggest addition to the game is the new Expert + difficulty setting for the Drums. This setting requires that you have two bass pedals hooked up to your kit. Not every song in the game has this difficulty available, but there are a lot of them that do. This is not a mode for people just starting out, it's more for the seasoned drummer that wants an even more accurate representation of playing the drums. Make no mistake, playing a song like Dyer's Eve on the Expert + difficulty will take a physical toll on you. So be careful, unless you want to pass out on stage like Lars did during the St. Anger tour.

As a stand-alone game Guitar Hero: Metallica is decent. The 49 songs in the game are all good, though it would be great to be able to export them to World Tour and have everything in one place. That said, all the extra Metallica related content on the disc does somewhat make up for this shortcoming.  Though when you compare it to the 80+ songs on World Tour, it seems a little underwhelming.  All in all, if you're a fan of Metal or Metallica, you are going to enjoy this game. If you're a fan of Rock, then this game probably isn't for you.

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