SubscribeThere’s a reason that Metallica has been one of the mainstays in the metal scene; their music is great. When Guitar Hero: Metallica was announced I was pretty excited, but now that I’ve had the game for the better part of a week, let me break down the game.
Pros:
- It’s Guitar Hero that focuses on Metallica. The renderings of the band while you play their songs are incredible, and at times you really feel as if you’re watching Metallica on stage.
- There’s twenty-eight songs by Metallica and they range from Kill ‘em All right up to Death Magnetic. There’s a great slice of their career on this game:
- All Nightmare Long
- Battery
- Creeping Death
- Disposable Heroes
- Dyers Eve
- Enter Sandman
- Fade To Black
- Fight Fire With Fire
- For Whom The Bell Tolls
- Frantic
- Fuel
- Hit The Lights
- King Nothing
- Master of Puppets
- Mercyful Fate (Medley)
- No Leaf Clover
- Nothing Else Matters
- One
- Orion
- Sad But True
- Seek And Destroy
- The Memory Remains
- The Shortest Straw
- The Thing That Should Not Be
- The Unforgiven
- Welcome Home (Sanitarium)
- Wherever I May Roam
- Whiplash
- The songs are incredibly fun to play. I’ve struggled with a few of them because I’m simply not fast enough to play the songs on drums, but even then I’m having a blast failing the song because it’s just that fun.
- The create a character shirt collection is amazing, and I see many shirts that I have owned over the years, including the 10th anniversary Metallica Club shirt. Very nice touch, and I’m sure a lot of fans will enjoy the chance of wearing a shirt they actually own in the game.
- The game menus are fantastic, and really make you feel like you’re staring into the Live Shit: Binge and Purge case. It feels like Metallica before you even start playing.
Cons:
- It’s Guitar Hero and not Rock Band. Guitar Hero is a one player game, always has been and always will be. The multiplayer just doesn’t work as fluidly as does Rock Band. A few examples:
- You share star power, and you cannot activate your power to help an ailing ally.
- If one person fails out, that’s it, the song is over. You’ve all done insanely complicated solos at one point, maybe even failed during them, sorry, can’t happen in GH.
- To use custom characters, each player needs to be signed into an individual profile on the Xbox, and they need to have made their character on that profile to use their custom rocker. This is an extremely repetitious procedure, and after signing into a profile you have to define the storage space, which the game then scans for extra content, and it’s just a total pain in the ass.
- The game is fucking ugly. Rock Band is so streamlined and easy on the eyes. Guitar Hero looks dated; the huge orbs for notes on the track, the lightning… It’s all just hideous. When playing drums or bass, the horizontal purple bar that denotes a bass hit or fretless strum, respectively, are difficult to see at times, and can be missed.
- Fretless bass note. It’s a stupid gimmick to give something extra to bass players and more times than not, it feels as if it’s added randomly just to make the song more difficult. Often, it doesn’t fit with the tone of the note you’re playing, so you’ll be descending a scale and have that note in the middle of it, then again at the end as a lower note. I know that the other notes are treated the same way, but this one is just more prevalent because so much attention is brought to it, and it’s more complicated than you’d think to go from playing a note to not holding any button down, then going back to notes.
- You can create a custom character, instrument and track highway (the spot where notes come towards you) but you only see them while playing the guest songs; once you switch to a Metallica tune, your band becomes Metallica, and your character becomes the person that plays your instrument in the band. Your track changes to whatever is deemed default for that person in Metallica and your customization is out the window. It’s a neat gimmick at the beginning of the game when you’re Metallica inspiring other artists to make a band, after that it wears thin, and if you’re like me and have no desire to play the guest appearance songs, there’s absolutely no point in creating a custom character.
- There’s twenty-one guest appearances on the game, most of which are awful.
- Alice In Chains — "No Excuses"
- Bob Seger — "Turn The Page"
- Corrosion of Conformity — "Albatross"
- Diamond Head — "Am I Evil?"
- Foo Fighters — "Stacked Actors"
- Judas Priest — "Hell Bent For Leather"
- Kyuss — "Demon Cleaner"
- Lynyrd Skynyrd — "Tuesdays Gone"
- Machine Head — "Beautiful Mourning"
- Mastodon — "Blood And Thunder"
- Mercyful Fate — "Evil"
- Michael Schenker Group — "Armed and Ready"
- Motorhead — "Ace of Spades"
- Queen — "Stone Cold Crazy"
- Samhain — "Mother of Mercy"
- Slayer — "War Ensemble"
- Social Distortion — "Mommy’s Little Monster"
- Suicidal Tendencies — "War Inside My Head"
- System of a Down — "Toxicity"
- The Sword — "Black River"
- Thin Lizzy — "The Boys Are Back in Town"
- Of the guest appearances, there’s the original versions of songs that appeared on Garage Inc., which is a good gimmick but fails in execution. Chances are a lot of people playing this game are familiar with the Metallica versions, and these original versions are so different than the Metallica counter-parts you’re not going to enjoy playing them. The other issue I have with this is that I bought a Metallica game to play Metallica songs, I dislike having to play other songs to earn enough stars to move onto the next levels of play. Granted, each time through career mode (one for each instrument, and again for a band, which is two or more players) I’ve only had to play two songs that were not Metallica’s, so that means a total of ten songs by guest artists.
- There’s a few songs that have appeared on Rock Band or earlier iterations of Guitar Hero. I understand that it’s difficult to get song licenses, and only certain songs by artists are available for use in video games, but this is insane. How many times, on how many different games, have we had to play Ace of Spades? I’m so sick of that damn song. Seriously. I’m sure this is just my opinion, but past Slayer, Foo Fighters (even though it’s a terrible song choice), Mastodon and System of a Down, there’s not many bands that I care about. Sure, Queen and Thin Lizzy are alright, but The Boys Are Back in Town is on Rock Band, and I don’t care enough to play it on GH:M, and the Metallica version of Stone Cold Crazy is leagues ahead of the original.
To be fair, I know that some of my beefs with this game can be said for Guitar Hero: World Tour as well, but I didn’t buy that game. I bought this one, and this is a review of my feelings toward this game. Playing the Metallica songs is a blast, and it really makes me wish there wasn’t 21 guest songs, and there were 21 more Metallica songs to pick from. The entire Death Magnetic album is available for DLC (it came out for GH:WT), but I’d rather more songs from the first four albums and Load. The only con that really hurts this game in my eyes is the way the music track looks. It’s really ugly and it bothers me more than it probably should, but the other cons can kind of be avoided if you’re playing by yourself.
I hate giving superficial number ratings, so I won’t do that. If you love Metallica, you won’t be disappointed in the slightest.
Guitar Hero, Metallica, Video Games, GH:Metallica, GH:M, Xbox 360
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