By Cody Webb

Anyone who knows me will agree with me when I say that I’m a huge music fan. They’ll also agree when I say that I used to be a huge fan of Guitar Hero until the third game came out. Once they started releasing new games on a daily basis, my interest in the series went further and further down the drain. That is, until I had a chance to play Guitar Hero: Metallica.

Fans of Guitar Hero and Rock Band have always clamored for more of Metallica’s songs, because they were usually the most challenging and the most fun. Metallica is just an awesome band, they’ve been around for years and they’ve spawned many hits. Neversoft did a great job of compiling Metallica’s more famous songs, along with other a few other bands for good measure. Make no mistake, though: the Metallica songs take center stage here.

From their fast songs, like “Hit the Lights” and “Whiplash,” to some of their slower hits, looking at you “Fade to Black,” these songs are an absolute blast to play. But the songs wouldn’t be as fun to play if the characters playing them weren’t fitting, right? Neversoft actually mo-capped (motion captured) Metallica, resulting in the best character models in any Guitar Hero game to date. They look and move realistically so it is almost like watching a concert.

Sadly, the other characters suffer a bit because of the improved Metallica. They use generic moves and occasionally you’ll notice something isn’t quite right with how they’re moving. It’s not too big of a bad thing, though, it’s just something they could have fixed. At least you only see the other characters when you’re not playing a Metallica song. Little touches abound when Metallica takes the stage, though: like the way the orchestra appears when you play “No Leaf Clover.”

The gameplay has been changed a little bit from past Guitar Hero games; players can pay 20 bucks to buy a second drum pedal. You’ll only get any real use out of this if you enjoy playing on the super-hard “Expert +” mode. One of my favorite new innovations is how they’ve added a new note to the bass. It’s a big purple bar that occasionally appears and all you have to do is strum it, resulting in the character thumping the bass, so to speak. It helps to immerse you further into the gameplay, in my opinion.

The folks at Neversoft also revamped the career mode; now players unlock new songs and venues by earning stars from playing songs. This means that you can play through the easier songs over and over to unlock the harder ones, if that’s how you like to advance. All the songs are unlocked in Quickplay mode from the outset, allowing you to jump into whatever song you like the most as soon as you load the disc!

They’ve finally mastered the difficulty curve, meaning no more messes like GH3’s “Hard” mode. These songs are fun to play on any difficulty, especially if you try them on Expert. Neversoft also added a lot of “fan food,” in the form of behind-the-scenes videos and “pop-up facts” for every song! So when you’re not shredding along to their music, you can learn more about the band and their long career.

I certainly hope that Neversoft keeps up with this kind of music-game goodness; if they do, the Guitar Hero series could very well rival the Rock Band games. Of course, there are still improvements to be made, like with the custom characters, but so far they’ve been improving more and more with each game. I’ll give Guitar Hero: Metallica an A, and anybody who is a Metallica fan, heck, anybody who is a fan of good music, should give this one a shot!