gh smash hits boxartI still remember the summer when Guitar Hero 2 came out.  It was a summer not unlike this one.  The sun was hot and the air was clear, but I did not go outside.  I stayed in and worked my way through career mode on medium, then hard, and then expert.  Would you believe, I started impressing girls with my button-shredding abilities?

Video game fans, take my advice.  Stay in this season and hone your fake guitar skills with Activision’s Guitar Hero: Smash Hits.  Some may scoff at this newest entry, a compilation of the greatest hits from previous guitar hero releases, but the core gameplay remains tight and challenging as ever.  The tracks have been taken from Guitar Heroes 1, 2 and 3, with entries from Rock the 80’s and Aerosmith.  All of the tracks are now playable by the whole band – guitar, bass, vocals and drums – just as in Guitar Hero World Tour.  The selection features lots of reliable favourites, but like the rest of the series there’s a heavy weighting on classic rock and metal.

GH has always separated itself from Rock Band by playing up the competitive aspect of the game.  Where Rock Band 2 added favourites like Psycho Killer by the Talking Heads and Eye of the Tiger by Survivor, Guitar Hero 3 saw soul-crushing entries like Raining Blood by Slayer and Through the Fire and the Flames by Dragonforce.  As a devoted Guitar Hero player since the series started, I could simply not get through either of the latter songs, even on hard mode.  Guitar Hero: Smash Hits has remedied the problem by smoothing out the gap between difficulty modes.  It took me lots of work to beat Raining Blood on Hard in GH3, but the song has been rejigged to make it less complicated this time around.  The difficulty definitely ramps up in Expert mode – but even Through the Fire and the Flames lets you play most of the song on the slider bar without worrying about strumming.  On the other hand, it means that the note layouts on your favourite song have probably changed.  If you had almost memorized The Sword’s Freya, for example, you might be as bothered as I was to have to learn the song again.

As the music genre slowly evolves, gamers are becoming more familiar with plastic instruments.  Guitar Hero: Smash Hits doesn’t quite offer anything new in the way of gameplay that a previous entry hadn’t already done.  Guitar Hero: Metallica brought us Expert+ mode on drums – and it’s back.  Some really tough songs have a skull and crossbones icon, meaning you can attach a second bass pedal to your drum kit and blast your way through Lamb of God’s Laid to Rest, among others.  The bass has recently been improved with an open note, where no buttons are pressed, and this makes songs like Rush’s YYZ all the more dynamic and enjoyable.

Despite these subtle changes I have described, this is still a Guitar Hero game, and you have definitely played this before.  The game runs on the same engine as World Tour, and features many of the same options including customizable avatars, guitars and tattoos.  Activision has recently announced a downloadable licensing patch that will make Guitar Hero 5 backwards compatible with most of the tracks on the Smash Hits disc.  This will certainly give the GH franchise some legs, as it jostles to dethrone Rock Band 2 as the reigning rhythm game.

Guitar Hero: Smash Hits has the same visual style as its predecessors.  There is a cartoony feel to the characters on screen matched by realistic motion capturing.  The venues are exotic this time around, everything from the pyramids in Egypt to the strangely-chosen final level in Quebec City.  The sound is generally pretty good in this game, but there are some slight discrepancies between the tracks as they appear here and their original recordings.  No One Knows by Queens of the Stone Age suffers from this – the bass is way too quiet in the game mix.  Audience effects are pretty minor here, and I’m fondly reminded of Rock Band here; nothing sounds as exhilarating as when the audience sings along with your song.

Ultimately, the gaming enthusiast has two distinct choices on the console.  Rock Band is known for its lengthy list of downloadable tracks.  Lots of popular genres are represented, including simpler tracks that demand less skill to play.  This can make it boring for extended play sessions.  Guitar Hero, on the other hand, has always curated a list of challenging songs.  Sure, the series features I Love Rock and Roll and other ultra-basic tracks, but the difficulty ramps up fast.  The career mode of Guitar Hero: Smash Hits is where it’s at.  Practice with this game, and you will be a fret-shredder in no time.

Gameplay: 5/5

Graphics: 4/5

Sound: 4/5

Replay Value: 4.5/5

andPOP 4.5 Stars out of 5






Related Stories: