Guitar Hero: Metallic

Metallica is looking for an opening act!

The game differs from the venue slated shows seen in Guitar Hero World Tour and the previous listing of songs seen in Guitar Hero III make a comeback here. Players can play any of the instruments available in World Tour, but they must meet the star requirement using any current or past venue before they can continue. I was able to finish the game by playing less than 50% of the game’s songs. There’s incentive to play more though, the track list includes songs and bands that influenced Metallica in some way. Once you’ve played through a song, you can return to find a special Metallifacts section. Here the song is replayed while short paragraphs detail how the song is important to Metallica’s history. This gives every song in the collection a purpose. While it felt like some of the challenge was diminished here, it does give players a chance to skip songs they would normally have trouble with or simply not like to push through to key titles. Other goodies include lyrics and underground recordings among videos that you unlock. 

Before I continue, I must confess – you are in for a good challenge when it comes to playing Metallica. If you think you’ve played “One” on expert when it appeared in Guitar Hero III, you’re in for quite a surprise here. Metallica is known for their show stopping, crowd pleasing guitar riffs and hour long jams sessions while on stage. This is no different in Guitar Hero, where songs sometimes feel like they continue for a very long time and may force many to back off a difficulty or two. This isn’t so much because of the game’s difficulty but rather the endurance needed to finish some of the faster pieces, less you wish to collapse into the fetal position crying for your mother. 

Less you wish to collapse into the fetal position crying for your 
mother, you may need to back off a difficulty or two 

The actual gameplay itself hasn’t really changed except for two new modes available for Drums. If you pre-ordered the game, you were treated to a second bass pedal (which doesn’t appear to work with Rock Band drum sets). This is for a new mode Expert+ where you can play using dual bass pedals. Typically in faster music, the bass is scaled back a bit, but this mode lets you kick things into high gear and really challenge your skills. The other mode was meant as a secret mode similar to the Rock Band 2 “No Fail” but for drums only. Called Drum Over, it turns off the notes for a song but takes a sample from the track you are playing so that it sounds like the album. Using this mode won’t allow your score to translate over to the leaderboards of course, but I am glad to see it. Unfortunately we weren’t able to just jam with friends over online multiplayer. This seems the only way to get new members into your band without nagging your friends or paying for airplane tickets to get everyone in the same room. We also ran into trouble trying to get online multiplayer to allow each band member to pick their difficulty. So if you’re friends play on hard and you haven’t mastered medium, you could be in for quite a nerve wracking experience as my husband discovered when he tried to keep up his easy career drums to our hard difficulty guitars (to be fair, we just got the full band set in January). 

We ran into trouble trying to get online multiplayer to 
allow each band member to pick their difficulty

The only major disappointment here is that not all of Metallica greatest hits are represented here. While the game does a fairly good job offering fans a relative discography throughout the band’s entire career, some really greats are not represented. While everyone will have their personal favorites, I was surprised not to see titles like ‘Ride the Lightning’, ‘No Leaf Clover’ and I’m sorry but who’s idea was it to omit ‘And Justice for All’?!? Oh…right, probably Rock Band’s since it’s available there as DLC. Still, since DLC for the two games is not compatible, it would have been nice to see here if only as a bonus track. Speaking of DLC, the only content supported is Death Magnetic. This was quite a surprise since it seems to me that if the game supports the peripherals, it should also support World Tour’s DLC as well. One last thing, because the game doesn’t remember details by band like Rock Band 2 does, adding members or removing them to play solo forces you to start the game all over again. While I can understand how this could be exploited if not setup this way, it still remains frustrating.

Graphics and Sound

Stages, sound and band members are perfectly rendered. The game’s extra goodies details how the band came in for motion capture sessions to get facial expressions, body movements and graphical representation of the band. Each member looks stunning as experienced while watching the game’s opening sequence, I simply had chills. Accuracy to detail, down to the roadie who runs out to hand James Hatfield a different guitar, gives you the feeling that you are participating in an actual Metallica concert. 

To illustrate some of the care that went into creating the game’s detail, stages, backgrounds and props are authentic down to Lady Justice crumbling. Some of the more interesting unlockable content also feature zombie versions of the band as well as notable rockers like Lemmy from Motorhead and King Diamond.

Stages, sound and band members are perfectly rendered

Players can create their own characters just like in Guitar Hero World Tour or use pre-made characters like Izzy Sparks, Judy Nails and a host of unlockable characters like the band themselves. My only complaint here is that there’s no real change from the Guitar Hero World Tour creation tool. It feels like one minute I’ve been given too much customization while the next I haven’t been given enough. Honestly, I have a pretty good eye but I can’t tell between these miniscule differences in the facial adjustment screen without creating something that should belong to Dr. Frankenstein himself.

As far as sound, this is Metallica. If it’s too loud, you’re too old. The only complaint is regarding the tutorial voice over’s. It sounds completely out of place in a game like this and the only way I can give you an idea, is think Opie Taylor meshed with James Hatfield. It just don’t work.

Value 

At sixty dollars, Guitar Hero: Metallica offers a far greater experience than Aerosmith by far. Still, if you are a fan of only certain Metallica songs, you may want to wait for the price to drop since a few of their more popular titles (And Justice for All) are missing. But with titles like Enter Sandman, For Whom the Bell Tolls, Seek and Destroy, Master of Puppets, and Whiplash, there’s a great compendium of songs to make every Metallica fan happy.

Conclusion 

Any fan of metal rock will find more than enough from both Metallica and the bands that inspired them. With great care taken to pick a stellar track list that best represent the band’s music this is a game that Metallica fans will not soon forget since it is most likely sitting on their game shelf now. If you’re a fan of metal music this is a must own.