Review: Guitar Hero Greatest Hits

In order to present a fair representation of the game as a game, rather than, say, a compilation album, one must attempt to set aside personal taste in music. This should be obvious, and I only raise it here because of the name of this particular game. When the subtitle “Greatest Hits” is used, it opens up that debate somewhat - not necessarily to the extent of whether these are the best songs from the series musically (therein lying the dreaded subjectivity), but it certainly seems that an examination of whether they are the most fun to play is worthwhile.

First however, let me rewind to the beginning. I came to Guitar Hero a little late. I never quite understood the appeal of looking foolish while flailing at a plastic guitar until I happened upon a demo unit of the franchise’s third instalment in a shop, discovered it had Cliffs of Dover by Eric Johnson, and was sold then and there. Since then I have obtained both Rock Band and Guitar Hero: World Tour, but aside from a small handful of songs was rather disappointed with both of them. The expansion to a full band format has diluted the focus, and I find the guitar parts - which are my main interest - less enjoyable as a result.

Smart Moves

My interest was piqued, therefore, but Greatest Hits - a game which would contain the best tracks from the guitar-only versions of Guitar Hero, updated with the latest engine and playable as a 4-piece. At last, a band game where all the guitar tracks would be interesting - just what I was looking for. The tracks aren’t just replicas of the originals either - for a start, all 48 songs are master recordings - a far cry from the sometimes dubious cover versions found in the earlier games. The note charts have also been tweaked to include features from World Tour - the slider bar sections, holding one note while playing others, and open strums for the base.

Greatest Hits also includes a number of features from Guitar Hero: Metallica, most notably an Expert+ mode for some drum tracks, and the availability of all the songs via the quickplay menu without the need to unlock them through the career - a particularly smart decision, as I suspect a lot of players will want to try out their old favourites immediately. Career progression also works like Metallica, with new stages being unlocked after a number of stars have been obtained, rather than through completing all the previous songs, which greatly reduces the likelihood of hitting a wall and being unable to continue.

Cracked

GHTunes and custom character creation also make an appearance, and it’s here that the cracks begin to show. Some time ago I spent a quiet afternoon making a few characters for World Tour, and while it’s totally unimportant to the gaming experience it would be nice to have some way to import them into Greatest Hits. Much more troubling, however, is GHTunes - once again, songs downloaded in World Tour cannot be played in Greatest Hits, despite the two sharing the application and featuring exactly the same song list. As a result there are now two copies of an electro/synth mangling of Pachabel’s Canon sitting on my Xbox’s hard drive - a situation which would have been completely avoidable with just a little thought and effort.

It doesn’t end there. Greatest Hits features neither DLC, nor the ability to import its tracks into World Tour. While this might make sense for a band-specific spin-off in order to keep the experience intact, it seems incredibly blinkered here. Harmonix has shown the way with Rock Band 2 and the musical juggernaut it can become by importing the tracks from Rock Band, but Activision seems unwilling to follow suite. I now have four different music game discs, and the hassle of having to switch both the physical media and the software to play a desired song is often enough to put me off completely. For that matter, there’s no reason why the songs from Greatest Hits couldn’t have been released purely as DLC for World Tour, except that creating a boxed product force people to pay for songs they might not if buying individually, and thus squeezes a little extra milk from the great cash cow that Guitar Hero has become.

Disection

When the game was first announced there were three songs in particular which I was certain would be included - Free Bird by Lynyrd Skynyrd, Through the Fire and the Flames by DragonForce, and Sweet Child O’ Mine by Guns N’ Roses. While the first two both made it, Sweet Child, unbelievably, is missing. I can only assume (and I hasten to add that this is pure conjecture) that there were some licensing issues because not only does it have everything required to be a great band song, it would also have provided some much needed variety. This is perhaps the biggest problem with Greatest Hits – the track list features far too many songs of the power chord or thrash metal variety, particularly in the later stages of the campaign. There are numerous songs which could have been used to alleviate this - the likes of Ziggy Stardust, Texas Flood or Black Magic Woman to name but three, but none of them feature.

In fact, the more I think about it, the more I believe Guitar Hero: Greatest Hits can be epitomised by the song I disliked the most from Guitar Hero 3 - Raining Blood by Slayer. This was one of the prestige tracks - so difficult that if you could 5-star it on expert you should be worshipped as a plastic-guitar-playing deity, and for that reason I can understand its inclusion, even though I despise it for actively trying to break my hand. Greatest Hits’ version however is considerably more forgiving on the Hard difficulty, but harder on Expert, ending with a sustain on all 5 fret buttons which I’m not convinced is physically possible. This expanded gap between the Hard and Expert tiers is not limited to Raining Blood - it seems like an attempt to appeal more to hardcore fans worried about their favourite songs being dumbed down. The process however has led to a number of tracks becoming an over-charted, incoherent mess on Expert, definitely not fulfilling the marketing promise of being the “most fun Guitar Hero songs”.

Certainly there is some fun to be had here - mostly in brief stints as a party game - but the track list is not what it could have been. When combined with the lack of DLC or interoperability with World Tour, I find it difficult to wholeheartedly recommend Guitar Hero: Greatest Hits, particularly when good sales figures will encourage Activision to maintain this approach, rather than making something that’s actually worthwhile.