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Guitar Hero: Metallica

Guitar Hero: Metallica

The second Guitar Hero dedicated to one band and one band only (plus their friends) is here and this time it features a band that matters like nothing else.

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I'm not a huge Metallica fan; never have been. Of course, I have some of their celebrated records on the shelf, like The Black Album and Master of Puppets, but it has got to be at least ten years since they've seen the inside of my CD-player. Thankfully, you don't need to be a fanatic merch collector to enjoy Neversoft's latest chapter in the Guitar Hero franchise; Guitar Hero: Metallica. You just have to enjoy the occasional challenge.

Guitar Hero: Metallica starts out pompously and dramatically. To the intro of "best of" album S&M we see James Hetfield, Kirk Hammett, Lars Ulrich and Robert Trujillo mount the stage in slow-mo as they approach their respective instruments, camera closing up on their metal covered rockboots and their angry war faces. It sets the electrifying mood before the show kicks off with ‘For Whom the Bell Tolls', followed by the beautiful ballad ‘The Unforgiven'. I grab a hold of the drumsticks and move the setting to the hardest setting. A couple of notes in and I feel it right away. I had just finished Guitar Hero: World Tour on the hard setting and this felt like a step back in comparison. I easily drum my way through the two tracks that seem unnecessarily stripped down and easy on this difficulty level. It's getting predictable, and I spend as much time looking out the window as I do following events on my TV screen. To my big surprise, I'm almost bored.

And things get progressively worse. When I get to my first real set, it's like walking bang right into the aftermath of the '63 reunion aftermath. Old man ballads like ‘Turn the Page' by ‘Bob Seger and the Silver Bullet Band' and Lynyrd Skynyrds ‘Tuesday's Gone' are one long and slow yawn. A game dedicated to the hard punching music of Metallica should feel like a punch to the face. Instead this starts out as a puny girlie slap.

The turning point arrives with Thin Lizzys legendary ‘The Boys are Back in Town'. I work the playful bass line while keeping steady on the snare and the hi-hat. Now, this is cheerful drumming, and from here on, the game turns into the beautiful monster it's meant to be, and I never look back. ‘One', ‘Fuel', ‘Enter Sandman', ‘Sad But True', ‘Welcome Home (Sanitarium)', ‘Master of Puppets', ‘The Memory Remains' and ‘No Leaf Clover' (in full symphony) come like metal pearls on a barbed wire, and I'm enjoying myself like there's no tomorrow. This is entertainment on an unprecedented scale when all instruments are utilized, and hardly anything in this genre can measure up to playing these classics with a full band.

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As the game approaches its finale, more and more of the 80s aggression surfaces with Fight Fire With Fire, Battery, Dyer's Eve and Whiplash, and the lactic acid in my hi-hat arm starts its engine whenever it hears any of these trash highlights. The songs aren't really crazy hard; but are racing along unbelievably fast and I'm having a hard time keeping up, still playing the same difficulty as in the beginning.

While these tracks are probably best suited to the hardcore trash drummers out there, Hammett's (and to some extent Dave Mustaine's) guitar treatment is ear candy for all the shredders out there, featuring brutal metal riffs and fast solos. These are tracks that separate the plastic guitar players from the real Guitar Heros - some of the paths are so unbelievably hard that the only thing you can do is build up enough Star Power and cross your fingers.

This version features a new addition. You have the option of hooking up a second bass drum pedal. Roughly half of the tracks can be played with two bass pedals, which gives all drum loving pretend-musicians out there a whole new dimension to the word "challenge", which manifests in the expert difficulty setting.

It's the little things that really bug you in Guitar Hero: Metallica. I couldn't start a solo drum career, and then let in a guitarist and a bassist if I had some buddies over. One can't simply drop in, play a couple of songs, and drop out again. You have to start a whole new band career and unlock all the songs from scratch. If not, we're stuck playing in Quickplay. Furthermore, one can't import the track list from World Tour. This is annoying, because my dream set in Guitar Hero involves both Sad But True and System of a Down's B.Y.O.B...

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Even though there were many cool tracks in World Tour, a lot of them felt bothersome to play, because there is a huge difference between a great song and a great Guitar Hero-song. And it looks like Neversoft have discovered just that with Guitar Hero: Metallica. With a couple of honourable exceptions, all the songs play really great.
All in all, Guitar Hero: Metallica delivers a solid track list with 28 Metallica songs and 21 tracks handpicked by the band themselves - songs and artists that have inspired the guys as they close in on their 30th anniversary. The result is a game that surpasses the last chapter in this series, but ultimately needs a couple of fundamental gameplay tweaks to reach the heights of Rock Band 2, which is still the best band game out there.

Track list in Guitar Hero: Metallica
Metallicas tracks:
• All Nightmare Long
• Battery
• Broken Beat & Scarred
• Creeping Death
• Cyanide
• 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
• My Apocalypse
• No Leaf Clover"
• Nothing Else Matters
• One
• Orion
• Sad But True
• Seek & Destroy
• The Memory Remains
• The Shortest Straw
• The Thing That Should Not Be
• The Unforgiven
• Welcome Home (Sanitarium)
• Wherever I May Roam
• Whiplash

Other artistes:
• No Excuses - Alice In Chains
• Turn The Page - Bob Seger
• Albatross - Corrosion of Conformity
• Am I Evil? - Diamond Head
• Stacked Actors - Foo Fighters
• Hell Bent For Leather - Judas Priest
• Demon Cleaner - Kyuss
• Tuesdays Gone - Lynyrd Skynyrd
• Beautiful Mourning - Machine Head
• Blood And Thunder - Mastodon
• Evil - Mercyful Fate
• Armed and Ready - Michael Schenker Group
• Ace of Spades - Motorhead
• Stone Cold Crazy - Queen
• Mother of Mercy - Samhain
• War Ensemble - Slayer
• Mommy's Little Monster - Social Distortion
• War Inside My Head - Suicidal Tendencies
• Toxicity - System of a Down
• Black River - The Sword
• The Boys Are Back in Town - Thin Lizzy

Guitar Hero: MetallicaGuitar Hero: MetallicaGuitar Hero: MetallicaGuitar Hero: Metallica
08 Gamereactor UK
8 / 10
+
Great selection of songs, challenging, great sound quality.
-
Not option to import songs from World Tour, some adjustments to the gameplay would have been welcome.
overall score
is our network score. What's yours? The network score is the average of every country's score

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GRTV: Guitar Hero Metallica

GRTV: Guitar Hero Metallica

NEWS. Written by Bengt Lemne

Want to know what Activision have to say about the upcoming Guitar Hero: Metallica? Check out the Q&A session.



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