Xbox 360 Review: Guitar Hero Smash Hits

Whoever coined the phrase, “Too much of a good thing can kill,” may very well have predicted the future of Music Simulation games. Ever since the Guitar Hero franchise first hit the scene, I was one of the first in line to grab my guitar to start strumming. Each release only made my desire to be a Guitar Hero legend greater. Then Rock Band came out, and I saw the full potential of Music Simulation. I finally understood the meaning of the words “there’s no ‘I’ in band.” Rock Band 2 and Guitar Hero: World Tour made me fully embrace rock lifestyle. Parties, barbeques, and all social gatherings now featured video games as the premiere attraction. And, it wasn’t considered a boyish fetish. Everyone enjoyed it, regardless of age, gender or race. Music Simulation games united the world.

But, when does one say, “Enough is enough?” I had to play Guitar Hero: Aerosmith, for obvious reasons – I love Aerosmith. That was only followed by my desire to drum along with Lars Ulrich of Metallica. But, Metallica finally opened my eyes to the truth. The Musical Simulation playing field was getting over-saturated with titles that were taking advantage of gamers, by taking advantage of branding through sequels. Sure, Guitar Hero: Metallica wasn’t a sequel in name, but everything about it was the same as the titles that came before it. The only difference was the songs.

Now, Guitar Hero: Smash Hits has struck the scene with another sequel that does nothing to improve on the franchise, but still beckons gamers to buy… buy… buy. Much like its Metallica predecessor, Smash Hits only real improvement to the Guitar Hero franchise is the Expert+ Drum difficulty. The difficulty was created as a tribute to Lars, and requires two kick pedals.

Unlike Metallica, however, Smash Hits doesn’t come with songs that were never featured in Guitar Hero or Rock Band before. Instead, you’ll get 48 songs, that are about eighty-five percent awesome depending on your taste, from the prior Guitar Hero releases: Guitar Hero, Guitar Hero II, Guitar Hero Encore: Rocks the 80s and Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock. Now don’t get me wrong, most of these songs kill (like “I Love Rock N’ Roll” and DragonForce’s “Through the Fire and Flames”), and I’m happy they’ve been collected under one title. But, does that warrant paying $59.99 for a game that you have already played?

Existing Guitar Hero aficionados may grind their teeth to learn that several songs have had their note tracks updated. So, if you finally got “wicked-good” at Expert on a song, you’ll have to reset your brain to learn the new note layout. Red Octane also added in Tap Playing to Smash Hits. There are transparent notes, connected by a purple “rope,” where you can slide your fingers back and forth between notes without needing to strum. Although, players who never found their way up from Medium might like this, I momentarily felt robbed by the simplified game play. It’s not a huge problem point, but it did stand out. This is more a matter of taste.

The graphics in Smash Hits is more of the same from the prior Guitar Hero releases. Much like Metallica, you move venue-to-venue accumulating stars in career mode. Also, you get the same cartoony cut-scenes between venues as your band tries to make its way in the world.

Each new venue has a new set of songs to play. The only difference here is that, while I was able to cheat Metallica by not playing the really hard songs (due to the low star requirement to advance), Smash Hits required me to play more songs well in order to advance. This is totally fine here because the song difficulty in Smash Hits is nowhere near as complex as the arrangements in Metallica. You can still create songs and share songs with Music Studio and GHTunes, but this feature was never really refined in this new release. So, you’ll suffer from the same tedious interface.

Unfortunately, just like Guitar Hero: Metallica, Smash Hits suffers from lack of DLC. You can’t import new songs into Smash Hits, nor can you use any of the previous songs you downloaded with the game. I would say that this is an oversight, but this is just game crippling much like the way Windows used to make about ten different versions of their operating system just to take advantage of home users.

All in all, Guitar Hero: Smash Hits is more of the same Guitar Hero goodness you got in the past. Unfortunately, lack of DLC and cross-franchise support is debilitating at best. I would have been happier if Activision had made two Smash Hits packages: one release for new players, who never owned Guitar Hero, and one release available at a discounted price, consisting of only the songs to be added into existing Guitar Hero games. The menus still suffer from the same clunky, unmanageable interface as before. Innovative is one thing that Smash Hits is not. If you don’t own Guitar Hero yet, and are really dying to play only these songs then pick it up, otherwise I’d suggest you check out World Tour instead.