Gaming Trend

Gaming Trend Review

by Ron Burke

As soon as this product was announced, people immediately screamed that Activision and Neversoft were milking the franchise dry with a retread product.  They yelled that we had already bought these songs, and there was no point in buying them again.  Given that most of us had already cut our fake-instrument-teeth on the Guitar Hero series, what did we need with this ‘greatest hits’ title?  I thought this a bit myself, until I played Guitar Hero Smash Hits. 

To properly review the game I invited over a few friends.  Laura, Dave, Bradford, Matt, William, Mike, Mitzi, Jaime, Ron, Christina, and I were going to put the game through its paces properly – it was plastic instrument party time!  We played through every track in the game, we sang badly, we laughed, we swapped out busted guitars, we grilled sirloin burgers, and we had an absolute blast.  It isn’t often I get to enjoy reviewing a title this much.  Let’s throw up the metal horns and talk about what rocks and what rots.

I kicked off the party a little early with my grinning-the-entire-time rendition of “The Touch” by Stan Bush on Guitar Hero: World Tour.  Bouncing from that to Guitar Hero: Metallica, and then to Guitar Hero: Smash Hits is a good example of good, better, best.  Guitar Hero: World Tour used over-the-top characters that were in the previous title, but with a bit more crazy presentation flair than in competing products.  By the time we got our hands on Guitar Hero: Metallica the game engine had gotten a whole lot better.  Character models were improved drastically, with characters interacting and simply looking more like their real life counterparts.  Improving on the character models that were in Guitar Hero: World Tour (Ozzy, Sting, Jimmy Hendrix, etc.), Guitar Hero: Metallica looked head and shoulders above its predecessor.  Moving forward, developer Beenox grabbed hold of that engine and created Guitar Hero Smash Hits. 

Smash Hits uses a great deal of the improvements brought by Guitar Hero: Metallica.  Fire effects, band interaction, animation smoothing, motion capture, particle effects, interface improvements, and much more were brought forward to this product.  The thing that is missing are the special guests.  No Hayley Williams from Paramore, no Ted Nugent, no Travis Barker, no Zakk Wylde, and no Billy Corgan in this title – Beenox decided to focus more on the tracks than securing master talent to go with the master tracks.  Admittedly, nobody at the party seemed to care.

As you would expect from this title, the framerate is rock solid.  During our play through of the entire game we did not encounter a single framerate hitch or graphical issue of any kind.  The only complaint that anyone had was that the characters are somewhat plain in comparison to Guitar Hero: Metallica, but detail levels from a full-body motion capture is hard to replicate in the 'stock' characters like Midori and Eddie Knox.

When you have five products to choose from, it is pretty fertile ground to select a fantastic soundtrack.  The only hitch here is that the previous products were littered with song covers that were, at best, hit and miss.  Not content with porting over covers, Activision and Beenox secured 48 master tracks.  Bark at the Moon by Ozzy Osbourne, YYZ from Rush, Electric Eye by Judas Priest, Freya by The Sword, Free Bird by Lynyrd Skynyrd, Laid to Rest by Lamb of God, Miss Murder by AFI,  Cowboys from Hell by Pantera, and Laura’s favorite,  Barracuda by Heart, are just a few of the included tracks.  All of these songs had to be rebuilt to utilize all of the instruments, so new song charts had to be created.  As far as the actual song selection goes, it is a fantastic list.  While we could hope for No One Like You from Scorpions, The Warrior by Scandal, Holy Diver from Dio, Before I Forget from Slipknot, and bonus tracks like Trogdor as DLC, there is no doubt that this soundtrack absolutely rocks.   Rock Band, Rock Band II, and Guitar Hero: World Tour have a smattering of tracks that absolutely suck and nobody wants to play them – there was none of that in Smash Hits.  The party was non-stop and everybody loved every single track.  How can I score it less than 100%

To test out the higher difficulty levels on guitar, we broke out our secret weapon – Bradford.  Bradford snapped up the guitar and cranked up to Expert on almost every track, putting all of the songs through their paces.  He immediately noticed that some songs have gotten easier (a fact that I pointed out on my review of Guitar Hero Metallica), while others like Barracuda had gotten a little bit more difficult.  Also brought over from Metallica is the Expert+ setting for drums, complete with double-pedal action.  I never quite put Battery to bed from Guitar Hero: Metallica, but I found a new nemesis and its name is Through the Fire and Flames.  In the last tier of tracks is the legendary guitar shredfest Through the Fire and Flames from Dragonforce, and there is no doubt that this is a track that’ll require serious practice. I bumped back to Medium and Bradford begrudgingly dropped back to Hard, and we managed to hack our way through the song, but it wasn’t pretty.  The fact that we were able to actually complete it does say something though – Guitar Hero Smash Hits is more focused on the fun and less on intense finger-filleting fretwork. 

On the other end of the spectrum, a few more novice players decided to give the game a try.  Again, the difficulty has been relaxed a bit, giving players a fighting chance to skill up.  We even got a few novice singers on the microphone, busting out some Judas Priest and Metallica.  The overbearing insta-fail nonsense present in Guitar Hero: World Tour has been eased, so players don’t feel like they are ‘letting everyone down’ if they aren’t quite up to par. 

The tracks in Guitar Hero Smash Hits follow the lead from Guitar Hero: Metallica.  All of the tracks are unlocked for quickplay without need for special codes or playing through the career mode – perfect for partying.  In the career mode you’ll use the stars you pick up by doing well in your performances to unlock the next track tier.  There are 240 stars possible, but you’ll need far less than that to technically ‘beat’ the game – you won’t feel like you can’t beat the game because of just a handful of tough tracks. 

Guitar Hero Smash Hits brings a lot of the innovations present in Guitar Hero: Metallica to the table, but doesn’t really innovate much.  There really aren’t any new features to speak of, but in this case, more of the same is just fine. 

There was one thing that players encountered during quickplay that they found annoying – apparently when you create a playlist of songs, you have to tap the bass pedal to clear them before you can play something else because if you don’t you’ll end up replaying your previous selection.  It’s a minor nuisance, but something that all of the players mentioned to me individually.

There are only 48 tracks in Guitar Hero Smash Hits, but don’t fret (ha!  See what I did there?) because every single track in the game is decent.  Even the tracks that are hard to beat (heh) are fun to play as they give a bit of challenge to otherwise eased difficulty levels.  The post-game impressions of the partygoers were pretty solid – everyone sang the praises (giggle) of the gameplay and interface improvements, as well as the track selection.  Guitar Hero: Smash Hits is a great encore (I can’t help myself!) for those songs that didn’t get the full band treatment.  The only busted string (ok, even I’m rolling my eyes at this point) is that a good chunk of these songs overlap with Rock Band 1, 2, or DLC.  Here is a list of ‘shared’ tracks:

Boston - "More Than A Feeling"
Franz Ferdinand - "Take Me Out"
Foo Fighters - "Monkey Wrench"
Kansas - "Carry On Wayward Son"
Lamb Of God - "Laid To Rest"
Rush - "YYZ"
The Police - "Message In A Bottle"
Judas Priest - "Electric Eye"
Ratt - "Round and Round"
Pat Benatar - "Hit Me With Your Best Shot"
Iron Maiden – “The Trooper”

Obviously if you’ve picked up these courtesy of Rock Band, you’ve lost a whopping 23% of the 48 total tracks.  I’m not saying there isn’t room for both by any stretch of the imagination, but it does add a little sting to that $59.99 pricetag. 

I went into my review for Guitar Hero Smash Hits expecting a retread, but instead saw all of these great tracks get new life.  The improvements from Metallica fused with a less niche soundtrack, is simply plastic-instrument-band heaven.  While we won’t get a full band Jordan experience from Buckethead, there is a lot to be said for busting out an awesome rendition of Cult of Personality from Living Colour.  Guitar Hero Smash Hits hits all the right notes and really strikes a chord for me - I recommend it. 

Gaming Trend Score

90

1. Graphics: 85
2. Audio: 100
3. Controls: 95
4. Gameplay: 90
5. Value/Replay: 80
6. OVERALL:90