Guitar Hero Metallica

Guitar Hero Metallica

It’s taken Metallica a while to come around to the idea of music games. Perhaps they thought making their songs available for people to play along with on plastic instruments would somehow cheapen them? Whatever the reason, Hetfield and co. have blocked their records from appearing in Guitar Hero for years. Quite what changed their minds is anyone’s guess, but, having lent their names and likeness to this, the first Guitar Hero spin-off to be based around a single artist, the change of heart has been quite comprehensive.

Much like last year’s AC/DC Rock Band spin-off, Guitar Hero Metallica pulls music from across the band’s back catalogue, from their earliest thrash metal beginnings with Hit the Lights, through the Black album era which birthed some of their best known hits, right up to last year’s Death Magnetic. In addition to a raft of music from Metallica themselves, all 28 tracks of which use the original masters, the band has also chosen a slew of contributions from other artists, music that has influenced the band over their many years of service to hard rock.

Developer Neversoft has taken to the commission with some gusto. The game begins with the careful recreation of the opening minutes of a contemporary Metallica concert. Played out in a giant arena, the band enter stage to the theme tune from The Good, The Bad and the Ugly before launching into For Whom The Bell Tolls, a sucker punch of a song from the band’s second record, Ride the Lightning. This segues neatly into The Unforgiven, a sort of inverted ballad from 1991’s Black album.

It's quite the opening, impressing with its tightly choreographed light show and camera work, and it provides a compelling backdrop to Guitar Hero’s standard musical lanes, which indicate what buttons must be pressed at what time to trigger the drum, bass or guitar notes. From the grandeur of the stadium you're then thrust into the back of a cheap van, cast as a member of a lowly tribute band who must work their way through the game’s venues and stages in an effort to replicate Metallica’s success.

It’s the same Guitar Hero structure we’ve come to know and love, the career mode bolstered by all of the features seen in last year’s World Tour, such as the music studio and full band multiplayer. Because much of the music is filled with notes, it makes for interesting levels and Neversoft turn out their best note charts to date since they took over control of the series.

While the package might not offer quite the same amount of on disc content as World Tour, and also limits access to tracks from the Guitar Tunes store to those ones by Metallica, it’s nevertheless a worthwhile purchase for players eager for more content to sink their frets into. For fans of the band, however, those who the game’s explicitly aimed at, the package offers all the appeal of a brilliant ‘Best Of’ compilation record, packed with trivia and fanservice, as well as a solid game to boot.

4 out of 5