Review: Guitar Hero Metallica

MTV has The Beatles: Rock Band coming our way in a few months but brilliance of the music aside I'm not entirely convinced it's best suited to plastic guitar and drum shenanigans.

Rhythm games come down to technique rather than musical nuances and taste - so trying to emulate the formulaic shredding of Kirk Hammett fits better with the whole genre than fingerpicking Blackbird.

The music of Metallica - whether you are a fan of band or not - seems made for Guitar Hero. Throw in some influential tracks from other artist to fill in the sonic gaps between Northing Else Matters and Battery and you have a real winner on your hands.

And while the vocalists among you won't have the most fun with this release there's plenty to enjoy on guitar and drums.

The Mix

We really should thank Activision and Neversoft for the mixes featured in this game. Metallica is a band that couldn't produce a good sounding record if its life depended on it - remember the awful distortion that ruins the great songs on Death Magnetic? Or perhaps the bass-less And Justice for All? Or the ear-destroying travesty of the snare sound on St. Anger?

Here the mixes are much more pleasing on the ear with many songs ending in a more natural live-like manner rather than fading out. Of particular interest is the prominence of the bass guitar in the mix - rather unusual for Metallica. You'd be forgiven for thinking the band didn't have a bassist if you listened to many of the CDs.

The focus of the game is thankfully on the band's better material - the Black Album and everything before. James Hetfield disowned Load, Reload and St. Anger in this month's Metal Hammer magazine and I can't really blame him. So here within Guitar Hero Metallica the band has never sounded so good. Well done Neversoft.

The Notes

While the mixes may be good the note charts aren't always so hot. Plenty of the songs are fun to play on the varying difficulty levels but there are some problems.

The issue of post-Harmonix Guitar Hero over-charting appear in some of the harder levels. You feel like the game designers are trying to make things hard for you rather than translate the musical notes to a natural note chart. At times the chart doesn't seem to bear any resemblance to the song - it's just a nonsensical stream of colours. Neversoft still some way to go to match the excellent Harmonix Rock Band charts.

On the medium level - where most players are likely to settle - the charts are very inconsistent. Some guitar charts feature two button chords yet some rely on single button lines when chords would have been the better choice. And the medium difficulty guitar track for Enter Sandman is just plain rubbish - it has none of the natural flow of the song on a real fretboard.

That said, the note chart problems are offset by how well suited most of Metallica's material is for a rhythm game and with the varied dynamics of clean parts and fast heavy sections guitarists, bassists and drummers will find a lot to enjoy and plenty of challenging sections to learn.

The Extras

The rest of the package is similar - pretty good, but could do better. Graphically there's lots to like in terms of the way the band looks and moves. The recreation of the famous stage sets are very impressive too.

There are some neat extras included. Optional "Metallifacts" that play during performances offer snippets of information about the tracks playing are a neat feature that is sadly underused. There are some videos of the band performing too - though not enough. And watching the making-of videos - especially when Lars is featured - leaves you wanting more.

The photo album is rather odd, rewriting history without Cliff Burton or Jason Newstead. I can understand not wanting to include a digitised Burton for sensitivity issues, but I'd have liked to the band to at least acknowledge their two previous bassists in the photo section if not in the song performances themselves.

The song count isn't as high as the regular Guitar Hero World Tour disk - even when you include the great guest tracks from artists such as Motorhead, King Diamond, Thin Lizzy and Bob Sega. And you can't use your DLC - except for the Death Magnetic downloads. That said, there are enough Metallica tracks here to keep hardcore fans happy.

The career progression isn't that amazing - but allows Guitar Hero veterans to easily unlock all the tracks and then have some fun. Some may view the career as poor - I feel more that it's just some window dressing and didn't get hung up on it. Yes there's a thin story, but it's just there to bridge the gaps between your shredding.

Encore

There's plenty to admire about Guitar Hero Metallica. The game is for the most part lots of fun thanks to the quality of the music on offer. The recreation of the venues and the band performances are very good and a cut above those in Guitar Hero World Tour. If the rest of the package was as good as these elements GH Metallica would be a triumph.

Neversoft is getting better at these Guitar Hero games. But if the developer can't get its note charting in order - and give us the option to choose which guitarist's track we want to play (rather than constantly moving between them) - then Guitar Hero 5 may not be as well received as World Tour.

The final verdict on Guitar Hero Metallica is that this was a worthwhile effort and definitely the best single-band rhythm game so far - but it still feels like we don't get value for money. Great music, shame about the package - which is apt, because many of us felt like that buying Death Magnetic and discovering it sounded like it was recorded on a dictaphone.