Guitar Hero Metallica -Unofficial Review-

Well plastic guitar fans, the moment we have all been waiting for is finally upon us. We, well, probably just me, have talked about playing these songs since the first time we held that five button guitar in our hands, “wouldn’t it be cool to play Metallica, yeah man that be so awesome” and so on.

So its here, Metallica is finally upon us and to give Neversoft credit. This is the real deal, Metallica have got very involved in this, this is a much better than Guitar Hero Aerosmith or dare I say that travesty called rock band: AC-DC.

From the moment you go into the career mode, you greeted with a fireworks and fanfare of the metal four walking into the stadium and the second you feel the first notes of whom the bell tolls, you know you in for something special.

Not much has changed to heads up display since world tour, except you can now see how many stars you getting while you playing, the feel to it is pretty much the same and while I haven’t played expert+ drums, I’m assured that both kick pedals work well with the drum kit, but can’t say the same for your legs. Also be warned if you do get a second bass pedal it will not work if you are using the rock band drum kit it has to be a official Guitar Hero drum set.

If playing in a band, there are new gauges for each specific person showing how well they are doing and the drummers pedal line is more obvious so it doesn’t blend in with the rest of the screen.

The metal gods are rendered brilliantly for your viewing pleasure and also do their various signature moves while you play, even changing hetfields guitar for the applicable song. The artworks for the albums are there in all there glory plus the extensive range of guitars and drums that have been played by the metal gods through the aeons. The stadiums they have played in are rendered beautifully and the lighting effects and smoke really do help bring you into the game. For example when the drum kicks in on “sad but true” the screen will shake giving you a feel of the power of metal.

The actions of Lars, James, Kirk and Rob are reproduced for each of their songs, they have really drawn you into the experience of being there, those colored buttons will claw at your TV demanding to be played and the harder you play the more you feel exhausted after playing the song which I suspect is what neversoft and Metallica wanted.

On the song list they have now added a very cool feature, enabling you to see the song lyrics and album artwork, plus some videos of them either in concert or going through the motion capture at the neversoft studios.

The guest acts while not known to the whole world do feature Motorhead, Queen, Alice in Chains and various similar style music, which compliments the metal goodness. Also another feature on this its more freeform to get to the end of the set list, all you have to do is earn stars and once you earn enough stars you will unlock more songs unto you finally get to end gig. This gives you the option for going for the slightly more melodic music, instead of the frantic bashing of the heavier tracks.

This game also features the popular but still confusing to me GH tunes, but there is no difference that I have seen from the world tour one.

Multiplayer is pretty much the same as world tour, except for the new power up called “Fade to Black”, no guessing what that does for you. Downloaded songs only consist of the death magnetic album, you can not play any songs you downloaded for world tour on the Metallica disk, you have to swap disks, not sure why myself, considering it’s the same game mechanics.

Achievements consist of the usual suspects, but there is a nice feature you can do a whole set list on medium but as long as you do the last song on expert, you will unlock the expert achievement, also be warned the band completion achievement will only unlock for the person who is signed in as player one, not sure if this happens over Xbox live but it did happen to me on local multiplayer, I shall mention no names.

But all is not perfect in this metal masterpiece, the last song while I wont tell you what it is, is a let down for me personally, especially seeing what you had to do to get there. In the end this can be seen as a glorified track pack you only getting 49 songs, so some people may feel they wait to it comes down in price before jumping in.

I would only personally recommend this to people who are interested in this kind of music or want to capture some of there youth before they found out they are tone deaf and look very dodgy in leather trousers.

While the music is good they won’t appeal to everyone and why they won’t let you play all of the DLC except for the death magnetic album is a real shame especially if you are coming into this genre for the first time. But the care and attention and level of detail they have put into this glorified track pack really does set the standard for future releases and hopefully Van Halen and Rock Band: Beatles will rise to the challenge, personally the only way I can see me playing Van Halen is that It comes with free groupies.

I give this game 8/10

Good review smokin, tis concise yet comprehensive and full of your own unique irreverent humour.

Great review! My brother has this and has been raving about it, I am yet to buy it as I still need to get World Tour to get the whole band and funds are low! I love GH III but only have it on the Wii which I am currently neglecting for my Xbox.

Good Review Bro!
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RabidHellBunny wrote:Great review! My brother has this and has been raving about it, I am yet to buy it as I still need to get World Tour to get the whole band and funds are low! I love GH III but only have it on the Wii which I am currently neglecting for my Xbox.

Sell the wii, that way you wont feel guilty anymore at lookin at it collect dust, also check out one of the posts on how to get a free world tour guitar, might save you some cash and then all ya got to do is buy the game, i give ya the link below.

Mavericks free guitar bonaza

Glad you all appreciate the review and thanks for acceptin me into the inner circle, is there a free buffet on offer

nice review smokin, i still plan on getting it very soon

Gr8 review bud - plan on getting this v soon.

awesome reveiw m8y!!!!