Guitar Hero: Metallica Review

In some ways, Guitar Hero: Metallica is the anti-Rock Band. While Rock Band has taken a significant bite out of Guitar Hero’s market share with party-friendly tunes and an unadorned interface, Guitar Hero: Metallica is tailored for the basement-dwelling Guitar Hero and Metallica obsessives who don’t want any pop songs on their plastic guitar games. They just want to rock out, man.

On that front, Guitar Hero: Metallica certainly delivers. Its gameplay is more difficult than an average Guitar Hero game, and its softest tune is by Lynyrd Skynyrd. But what it lacks in mass appeal it makes up for in presentation. Metallica were recorded in 360 degrees in motion-capture suits, creating an experience that feels like watching a DVD of a Metallica concert.

The game’s greatest asset and weakness is its track list, which pulls from Metallica’s back catalog in the form of the hits and deep cuts, in addition to more than 20 tracks by other artists chosen by the band. However, many of the tracks feature too much fretboard-melting that goes on far longer than your enjoyment will last. Even the slower songs — Lynyrd Skynyrd’s “Tuesday’s Gone,” Thin Lizzy’s “The Boys Are Back in Town,” and Bob Seger’s “Turn the Page” — are on the long, complex side of the spectrum.

Singing, like guitar playing, can be an exercise in perseverance as much as skill building. Most of the time on the mic, you’re required to shout, grunt, and scream in harmony with the vocals of James Hetfield, which is slightly absurd since Metallica have never had anything resembling harmonious sing-along vocals in any of their songs. But on the plus side, I finally found out “Fuel” is literally about a car engine.

Lars Ulrich is often held up as one of the best drummers of all time, and the drumming experience is appropriately difficult and fill-heavy. The biggest variable feature of Guitar Hero: Metallica is that it has a level beyond expert on drums, due to the inclusion of a double-bass drum petal. The review copy didn’t have one, but I used to be a drummer, and I had difficulty keeping up with the single-bass drum patterns on expert, so I can only imagine it’s pretty difficult.

Playing bass on Guitar Hero: Metallica is probably the closest to an authentic experience because you begin to feel like Jason Newsted did when he left the group in 2001 (minus the years of alcoholism and hazing) — inconsequential and underutilized. You’re always fourth fiddle, your bass lines never becoming more than barely audible and consisting mostly of percussive riffs meant to augment Lars Ulrich’s drumming, not move the song. Bass is typically a minimally enjoyable experience on Guitar Hero and Rock Band (minus the Pixies tracks on Rock Band), but here it’s downright tedious.

Like all Guitar Hero games, the Career Mode leaves a lot to be desired in the drama department. Because all of the songs are available in the Play Now mode, your principal purpose is to make enough money to buy new guitars and clothes and unlock random factoids about Metallica. That’s cool up until you purchase your 10th Flying-V and fifth pair of leather suspenders and learn a lot of information about Metallica that every fan will already know. Because it’s hard to imagine busting out Guitar Hero: Metallica to play “Whiplash” on expert for shits and giggles after a tough workday, the game has a very short shelf life.

In addition, I was disappointed to find that the game had no real narrative arc other than playing a giant concert as Metallica. Perhaps given the touchy nature of the band’s lineup changes (original bassist Cliff Burton died in a buss accident, original guitarist Dave Mustaine was thrown out, and Newsted departed acrimoniously), a game that follows Metallica’s arc as a locally known hardcore band to the latest classic-rock dinosaurs was unfeasible. But given that Beatles: Rock Band is promising a storyline, the fact that the game features a lot of songs by Metallica might not be enough to compete in the future.

That said, Metallica are probably the perfect band for the Guitar Hero franchise; their music is loved by a legion of incredibly devoted fans, who probably overlap heavily with Guitar Hero fans. Given that Activision can pump these games out at a regular clip (at least one a year, and Guitar Hero: Van Halen and Guitar Hero 5 are slated for later this year), expect more band-oriented titles in the future. Introducing the latest in band merchandise: the $50 video game.
By Andrew Winistorfer of Prefix Mag