by: Angela Proto

June 30, 2009

By this point, nearly everyone is familiar with games like Guitar Hero and Rock Band. Players can pick up a plastic guitar, sit down at a plastic drum kit, or grab a microphone and wail along alone or in a band as visuals on screen prompt the player. Full band games are to the point where only a polished product can succeed (Guitar Hero Metallica or Rock Band 2), and anything under that standard is sure to fail (sorry, Rock Revolution).

For a long time, the three downloadable songs by Metallica on Rock Band were the most fun songs to play. They were the kind of songs that were fun on every instrument. Even if one chose not to download anything, any online Rock Band 1 player would find that their band mates would choose Metallica's Enter Sandman nearly every time during Quickplay. Metallica songs and rhythm games just go together. They are like a peanut butter and jelly sandwich: sure, you can have a peanut butter sandwich on it's own, but it's always better with some jelly. Well, the creators of Guitar Hero certainly figured out that Metallica is that irresistible jelly and created a game that no rhythm game fan should miss out on.

To really appreciate just how far Guitar Hero Metallica has come, you need to look back at Guitar Hero's first full band game: Guitar Hero World Tour. Although World Tour was a good game, it was plagued by its broken vocals system, its abundance of awful songs, and its clunky interface. In Guitar Hero World tour, each instrument player could see their multiplier to right of their track. All that was readily available without glancing at the top of the screen was whether or not you had a multiplier going. You didn't know you were failing until your track started blinking red, or if you looked up at the Rock Meter in the top left corner. The Rock Meter told you the entire band's status across the top part of the meter similar to single player, but then showed each band member's health in small vertical bars below. Each member was only marked by their icon, which often was difficult to read. The person with the most difficultly in understanding what was going on was most certainly the vocals: you were rated on each phrase, but the only indication of how you did was in the color of the ball as it exploded, and was something that many casual players may not have even noticed.

Guitar Hero Metallica fixed every single one of these problems, and it seems like it did with a little bit of help from Rock Band. The two major features from Rock Band that Guitar Hero Metallica seemed to have adopted are that you can now see your progress toward each star earned (in the form of a meter that fills up and then changes the star accordingly) and that vocals now rate you with a word to indicate how well you perform. Additionally, each band member, including vocals, has their own personal rock meter. Instruments have their meter to the left of their track, opposite to their multiplier, giving every player a chance to easily tell if they are cruising along effortlessly or if they need Star Power saved for them.

Star Power is probably the only thing that remains troublesome from Guitar Hero World Tour. The mechanics of Star Power is that everyone earns Star Power to be pooled together, and that each member can activate Star Power from that pool. This means that one person can activate it over and over as soon as it's available, or that the band can save up and use it together. The unrefined part about using it as a full band is that unless every Star Power bulb is filled, the only way to know if you have enough is to count the individual bulbs lit, keeping in mind that if it gets down to one bulb lit, no Star Power will be available. The other tricky part is that one player's Star Power will not help a different failing player, so each player needs to depend on themselves to activate Star Power in times of need, hoping that another player has not already used all of the band's Star Power.

Despite the fact that Star Power can feel difficult to coordinate, the rest of Guitar Hero Metallica's game play is flawless. Almost every instrument has improved. Guitar mostly remained the same, with the exception of slide-notes becoming less frequently. The open notes on the bass guitar feel more natural, and finally bass is fun for everyone to play, as opposed to feeling like the gimped-guitar. Drums have the introduction of Expert+, a mode that suggests the use of a double bass pedal and really grinds up the difficultly levels. Vocals have the most significant change though: they are no longer impossible! The vocals are more responsive and less frustrating and it finally is possible to 100% a song on Expert. Guitar Hero Metallica's vocals found the perfect balance between challenge and leniency.

The only real disappointment to the game is that it took a different path than Guitar Hero Aerosmith in giving background information about the band. In Guitar Hero Aerosmith, every venue was introduced with a video of the band discussing why the venue was important to them and telling stories about the band's history. I could not have cared less about the history of Aerosmith previous to the game, but the game's extras felt like an interesting VH1 Behind the Music that I could live out as I progressed. This feeling was lost in Guitar Hero Metallica. While the venues were still meaningful, you had to see out information rather than having it presented to you no matter what. "Metallifacts" are unlocked for songs and you can choose to sit through the song while random facts about the song pop up at the bottom of the screen. Unfortunately, some of the songs are very long, so the Metallifacts will just continously cycle through unless you quit out. Although this provided much more detail and history than Aerosmith's method, it didn't feel as personalized since it wasn't coming from the mouth of the band members itself.

In far as visuals, it's all a matter of personal preference over art style. Unfortunately the custom characters still seem overdone and awkward like they were in Guitar Hero World Tour. You may rarely see your custom character though, as any time a Metallica song is played, it is Metallica members that play it. Metallica's characters look great except for the fact that Lars' mouth is often opened wide and looking creepy while he's playing.

The game's look and feel are important, but the key that made Guitar Hero Metallica great is the track list. Like previously mentioned, Metallica songs were always a hit on full band rhythm games, so it's no surprise that a game consisting of mostly Metallica would be through-the-roof fun. It's simply undeniable that every instrument on every Metallica song is entertaining. Even the majority of songs on the game that aren't by Metallica are great. Obvoiously, if a player is predisposition against Metallia's music style, they will probably write this game off as a dud, but those players should be implored to give it a chance anyway, because the charts are just fun. Fun for anyone: not just fans of the band.

To some extent, Guitar Hero Metallica is everything Guitar Hero World Tour should have been. The interface is cleaned up. Vocals actually work and are fun. Expert+ on drums has been added. The bass' open notes feel more natural. Most importantly, the track list has had the fat trimmed off. With very few exceptions, every song is fun to play. For fans of full-band rhythm games, it is a sin to not purchase Guitar Hero Metallica. Even previous haters of Guitar Hero World Tour will find themselves drawn to this newest installment (for example: the guitar player and drummer of the current #1 ranked scoring career band). Guitar Hero Metallica is full-band Guitar Hero done right. The best news about all of this is that Guitar Hero Smash Hits is soon to follow, and if Guitar Hero Metallica, with its amazing set of songs and improved interface, is any indication of the direction Smash Hits is going in, then Smash Hits and its track list of Guitar Hero favorites is going to be one amazing treat as well.

Share this:

7 10 9 9 10 9

Between the improvements in gameplay and the fabulous soundtrack, you really can't go wrong with this game. This is a must have for any fan of rhythm games involving plastic guitars, plastic drums, and USB mics

Discuss this in the forums!