TimGilbreath.com

Take my favorite band of all time, and let them release a version of one of my favorite games of all time, and you’ve got a recipe for me waiting for the doors to my local gamestop to open last Sunday.  The latest version of the Guitar Hero franchise has arrived, and although the gameplay hasn’t changed, the tonal assault delivered surpasses anything Activision has given us to date.

You already  know what to expect with Guitar Hero: Metallica….fast, furious, heavy, and challenging riffs and leads throughout.  The most attractive point about this game is that the songs are difficult, but not impossible….unless you want them to be.  A new difficulty level allows you to bang away at the drums on Expert+, supporting an additional foot pedal to emulate Lars’ exact style and patterns.

I wanted to wait until I had progressed further before I wrote a review, but I can already tell you what a gem this game is.  The premise is a bit cheesy, of course; you are inspired by Metallica to start your own band, and lo and behold, you manage to get an opening spot for the metal gods (don’t we wish it was that easy?).  The game features almost 50 songs, 28 of which are Metallica master tracks.  When you play a guest act song (and there are some incredible ones here, including “The Boys are Back in Town” by Thin Lizzy and a live version of Bob Seger’s “Turn the Page”), you play as yourself, and when a Metallica track is selected,  you come onstage as the band themselves.  The models are accurate, with crisp graphics, and although the standard Guitar Hero “cartoony” type feel is present, the band members look like themselves.  One dissappointment, although real-life musical characters can be unlocked, you will not find Jason Newsted or Cliff Burton in the lineup, for obvious personal reasons to the band.

Songs rage from moderate to insane, with plenty of their toughest tracks available to play, including “Master of Puppets”, “Mercyful Fate”, “Fade to Black”, and others.  You can pretty much bet that anything from the Master of Puppets, Ride the Lightning, and Kill ‘Em All albums will be tough.  Although a solid “Hard” difficulty player on Rock Band 2, I found myself failing some of the tougher songs on Guitar Hero: Metallica on that level and had to stoop to Medium (which at times I found a bit boring, depending on the song).

Online play is here, with everything Guitar Hero World Tour offered and a bit more, including a slightly more involved online band play component, which is much welcomed.

Even if you’re not a Metallica fan, but just a Guitar Hero afficianado, this game will provide plenty of entertainment.  If you’re like me, and spent a portion of your life (or still do) living and breathing the world of Metallica, this is a buy, not a rent.

Well, I’ll admit it, this was a game I wanted, but unlike most of my video game purchases, this wasn’t a “get it on launch day” type of game to me.   After I finally got it around a month or so after its release, I realize that is was worth waiting for.

Before the release of the newest Call of Duty game, Medal of Honor: Heroes 2 was the king of first-person shooter controls on the Wii.  I owned that game since launch, and have lost track of how much time I played it.  The controls were perfect, and covered for the fact that they game didn’t look that great, especially when playing multiplayer mode online.

The controls in World at War aren’t quite as perfect, but come as close as humanly possible.  And unlike Medal of Honor, the graphics have been turned up a notch, even in the online portions of the game.  The special effects used are high-level for a Wii game, and convey a sense of realism not seen in most other FPS’s.  Multiplayer is cut back to a maximum of 8 players from Medal of Honor’s 32, but you don’t really miss the extra players…the action is intense enough, and at times makes you feel panicked, with all of the bullets zipping by and explosions in the distance.

Although the game’s online experience is plauged by the return of Friend Codes, inviting and managing team members and friends is easy once codes have been exchanged.  The Wii version of the game loses quite a few multiplayer game modes and maps, but if you haven’t played the other versions, you don’t realize you’re missing anything…the maps that come with the Wii version are plenty of variety.  The ranking system is a welcome addition, and allows you to unlock more powerful weapons and accessories for use within the online games.  Also, the online portion of the game features Challenges, certain benchmarks it sets that you attempt to meet and surpass (such as 25 headshots with a particular sniper rifle), which in turn unlocks additional challenges.

The campaign (as much of it as I have played) is much better than the Medal of Honor game campaigns on this platform so far, and features the same effects and sense of urgency and danger that the online mode does.  The game obviously has tons of replayability, due to the online mode, and is without a doubt worth a buy.

To put it into perspective, I traded in Medal of Honor to get Call of Duty, and haven’t missed Medal of Honor that much

Us Guitar Hero fans have known about the upcoming Guitar Hero: Metallica game, but recently the entire tracklist has been posted, and wow, are there some good ones in here!  The game is being released on March 29th of this year, and of course, I’ll have a review up shortly after that.

Guitar Hero: Metallica Official Song List

Metallica Tracks:

• “All Nightmare Long”
• “Battery”
• “Creeping Death”
• “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 (Medley)”
• “No Leaf Clover”
• “Nothing Else Matters”
• “One”
• “Orion”
• “Sad but True”
• “Seek and Destroy”
• “The Memory Remains”
• “The Shortest Straw”
• “The Thing That Should Not Be”
• “The Unforgiven”
• “Welcome Home (Sanitarium)”
• “Wherever I May Roam”
• “Whiplash”

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

For those who don’t know, the song he’s playing is “Through the Fire and Flames” on Guitar Hero III….regarded to be the hardest song to play in any Guitar Hero game.  And he’s doing it on expert…with his back turned to the TV for the intro.  Just sick.  I imagine this kid is no more than 12.

So I’ve spent the last month or so (since I got Guitar Hero World Tour for the Wii) debunking any claims that I heard about the supremacy of Rock Band over the Guitar Hero franchise.  This is, of course, without even playing the game.  I just knew that Guitar Hero was better.

After purchasing Rock Band 2 for the Wii this weekend and spending several hours with it, I’ve come to the conclusion that having both franchises around is nothing short of a wonderful thing for us rythym-game lovers.

Guitar Hero World Tour (and to a lesser extent, Guitar Hero III) is a kick-ass game; the first weekend we probably averaged 6 hours per day playing it between my wife, myself, and my kid.  There’s hardly anything I can say I don’t like about the game, but I can say now that there are things that were improved in my opinion with Rock Band 2.

The major issue I have with Rock Band is the appearance of the highway (the highway is the scrolling “fretboard” that the notes appear on, for you Guitar Hero/Rock Band virgins); the notes are thin bars, and in the middle of the action, for example, during a collection of energy powerups, they can be a bit hard to see.  The notes in guitar hero are large, colorized circles, and I’ve never had an issue seeing them.  It’s not that Rock Band made it more challenging with the bars, it’s more like they made it more frustrating.

And that’s where my gripes about Rock Band end, I found the Touring mode more realistic and enjoyable (perhaps because I’m a musician myself, my wife and daughter don’t share my views), and the characters and audience rendered better than on Guitar Hero.  The song selection was very good, although I have to say that Guitar Hero World Tour had a better collection of songs in my opinion.  Through all this however, the downloadable content that will be available (and is already available for Rock Band 2 on the PS3 and the XBOX 360) will shame anything that Guitar Hero has to offer.  The catalog for the PS3 and XBOX are already over 300 songs, and it’s been stated that the Wii will eventually have access to the entire catalog.

The biggest selling point to me was the fact that Rock Band 2 is completely compatible with Guitar Hero World Tour instruments; so I didn’t have to go out and buy the whole band kit, I was able to buy the standalone game (which I got a great deal on thanks to a trade-in) and start playing immediately with the instruments I already had.  Can’t beat it.

So all in all, I think we benefit from both franchises as gamers, as they both have awesome selling points, but if you’re a Guitar Hero fanboy, don’t miss out on the fun by not giving Rock Band 2 a chance.