Good evening.
I need to let everyone know what be goin on....
Ok - so - I am getting some assistance in writing some reviews, so I'm bringing on more staff.
So hopefully soon enough I can post some more crap as I am going to have a few days off soon, and all I have planned so far really isn't much. SO SOOOOOOON!!!
I also decided to start a twitter account, more or less as it should and most likely will end up to be quite a interesting read once I start texting it randomly and also making posts about shit going on here.
See you soon!
P.S - Linky to Twitter - https://twitter.com/Halfbaked84
4/20/09
4/3/09
Guitar Hero Metallica Review
Game: Guitar Hero Metallica
Genre: Musical/Rhythm
Players: 1-4
Systems: Xbox 360, PS3, Wii, PS2
Story -
Yes, Story in a Guitar Hero game....is there really any point to it? No....there isn't which is why my story portion will be SHORT. Basic story is you play as part of a band who sees that Metallica is holding auditions for a opening act, and the first two people you have tryout to join your band are gay looking 80's styled pop-rock looking freaks. You tell them to buzz off and voila! you have just created your new rivals for the auditions and also the rest of the game, although you never battle them directly anyway. You get a decent band together and yer off, you pull up to the auditions to see the 80's dudes already there getting signed....what do you do? You hit them (or try to) with you van and pull up right in front of Metallica and then open the side door to your band rocking the fuck out! Metallica approves and you are in! That's about it for story, they try and battle you a couple more times but otherwise that's about it.
Sidenote - These cutscenes are in cartoon form, which was done by the Metalocalypse animation team. The scenes are really fun to watch if not anything else.
Design -
Quickly ask yourself one question: "Have I played Guitar Hero 3 or World Tour?" If you answer yes, then you don't have to read this portion...it's the same. With only a few small exceptions as it's Metallica's game. First up is the Metallifacts option that you get unlocked after beating a song in carear mode. Metallicfacts is similar to pop-up video but subtitles instead of info popping up on the screen in little handy bubbles. So the game basically plays the song for you complete with band and just scrolls some odd and stupid facts about that song on the bottom of the screen. The problem with this so-called mode is that they don't seem to have enough facts for ANY of the songs in the game, and once they run out it constantly loops the facts. Another unique feature of the game is one of the cheat modes called Always Drum Fill, and it has to be the most fun I've had yet with the music game genre. What it does when turned on is it will play the song for you as usual and the drum track is blank....you play the drums.....however you want....with any song in the game..... Like if you want to play Fuel and have no drums at all, but just keep hitting the cymbals...you could...It would sound like shit, but you could! Also they have models for Metallica, King Diamond and also Lemmy, so when you play songs by them they show up on stage, yepee.....cause I can just stare at the band when playing, you know and not pay attention to the note track...ugh...bonus characters are pointless for me in these games, I make my guy and I'm happy.
Side Note - Holy shit that was longer than I expected, oh well, hope you've played one of the previous ones then. I'm thirsty, off to get a drink.
Gameplay -
Ok I got my drink and now it's time to actually talk about the way the game plays. Lets break it down then. On guitar and bass the game plays just as previous guitar hero games with actually no changes at all, only thing would be the addition of what I call the star slider thingy, which is exactly what it sounds like. It is a small slider bar in the bottom right of the screen that indicates to you how close you are to your next star, under this thing is the note counter as well if you get over around 30 note streak you will see it counting. On the Drums the game plays the same again with the difference being a greater challenging mode, Expert + mode which is something they cooked up at least for this game, who knows if it will make it into the next one. But what it does is requires you to have a mono-splitter and a second bass pedal, as the mode is according to Neversoft (developers) a complete drum track....meaning that it has all the drum notes in there complete with double kick bass portions (hence the need for the extra crap). I did not get to try this feature as I did not want to go buy extra crap to play a single mode in one game.
Sidenote - Apparently if you pre-ordered this from Best-Buy or Gamespot/EBgames you were supposed to get a free splitter and pedal....or at least the pedal. I rented mine so that's why I didn't try Expert +.
Presentation -
Guitar Hero! Oh you cartoony bitch of a game, you are seriously going to fuck up some kids view of the rock-stars they idolize. The game looks like previous versions with a slight more realistic modeling for the main characters, as I'm sure Metallica would have raped them if they didn't do that right. Well I'm hoping someone at least got a guitar impaled up thier ass for the job they did making them look sort of like good action figures come to life, it was good in a sence and I bet fans of Metallica won't care, but I do! Ok, I stopped caring. The presentation is well done with the menu's working the way they should, except for having to wait for the damn thing check for downloadable content every single time I boot the game even thou they have said the ONLY DLC for this short short game is the Death Magnetic Album and nothing else is going to be released. STOP CHECKING FOR SOMETHING THAT IS NOT THERE EVERY TIME! And why the hell do I have to tell it to save to my hard drive every single time I boot it? Can't it locate a save and just use it unless I have a memory card hooked in? I guess it's not that smart, or maybe the developers arn't that smart? I think I just hit a nail on the head, the good developers all went to work for EA and MTV games and they churn out Rock Band 2, which has something like 500+ songs (with DLC) and oh wait?! is that?!?! yes! A easy way for it to check for DLC only when you get new stuff, and if it checks at all...it's so quick you don't freak out like I did a minute ago.
Side Note - See above I kinda ranted a bit there....sorry. hehehe
Overall -
The game feels like a Guitar Hero game, the game plays like a Guitar Hero game....so why don't I like it as much as I do the Guitar Hero Games?!?! Oh wait...I know, it's because in a game called Guitar Hero I don't see why they need to release band-specific versions, why can't we get some sweet DLC for World Tour that has all the models and everything included? More or less what I am getting at here is this game has TOO MUCH METALLICA. They are a good band so don't start the flaming yet. I played the game, I enjoyed the game, but I did not like being nearly forced to play Metallica almost every other song with no guest stars either! At the very least the Aerosmith version had more songs by other artists and even some guest stars on thier own songs. I know there are Metallica fans out there and they should enjoy this game to the fullest, but someone like me who likes Metallica but is not a large fan? It's a huge and tedious affair that unlike previous Guitar Hero and Rock Band games I found I was switching off for a break much quicker and for longer periods with this one.
Score = 3/4 Baked (4 Out Of 5)
Percentage = 86%/100%
Genre: Musical/Rhythm
Players: 1-4
Systems: Xbox 360, PS3, Wii, PS2
Story -
Yes, Story in a Guitar Hero game....is there really any point to it? No....there isn't which is why my story portion will be SHORT. Basic story is you play as part of a band who sees that Metallica is holding auditions for a opening act, and the first two people you have tryout to join your band are gay looking 80's styled pop-rock looking freaks. You tell them to buzz off and voila! you have just created your new rivals for the auditions and also the rest of the game, although you never battle them directly anyway. You get a decent band together and yer off, you pull up to the auditions to see the 80's dudes already there getting signed....what do you do? You hit them (or try to) with you van and pull up right in front of Metallica and then open the side door to your band rocking the fuck out! Metallica approves and you are in! That's about it for story, they try and battle you a couple more times but otherwise that's about it.
Sidenote - These cutscenes are in cartoon form, which was done by the Metalocalypse animation team. The scenes are really fun to watch if not anything else.
Design -
Quickly ask yourself one question: "Have I played Guitar Hero 3 or World Tour?" If you answer yes, then you don't have to read this portion...it's the same. With only a few small exceptions as it's Metallica's game. First up is the Metallifacts option that you get unlocked after beating a song in carear mode. Metallicfacts is similar to pop-up video but subtitles instead of info popping up on the screen in little handy bubbles. So the game basically plays the song for you complete with band and just scrolls some odd and stupid facts about that song on the bottom of the screen. The problem with this so-called mode is that they don't seem to have enough facts for ANY of the songs in the game, and once they run out it constantly loops the facts. Another unique feature of the game is one of the cheat modes called Always Drum Fill, and it has to be the most fun I've had yet with the music game genre. What it does when turned on is it will play the song for you as usual and the drum track is blank....you play the drums.....however you want....with any song in the game..... Like if you want to play Fuel and have no drums at all, but just keep hitting the cymbals...you could...It would sound like shit, but you could! Also they have models for Metallica, King Diamond and also Lemmy, so when you play songs by them they show up on stage, yepee.....cause I can just stare at the band when playing, you know and not pay attention to the note track...ugh...bonus characters are pointless for me in these games, I make my guy and I'm happy.
Side Note - Holy shit that was longer than I expected, oh well, hope you've played one of the previous ones then. I'm thirsty, off to get a drink.
Gameplay -
Ok I got my drink and now it's time to actually talk about the way the game plays. Lets break it down then. On guitar and bass the game plays just as previous guitar hero games with actually no changes at all, only thing would be the addition of what I call the star slider thingy, which is exactly what it sounds like. It is a small slider bar in the bottom right of the screen that indicates to you how close you are to your next star, under this thing is the note counter as well if you get over around 30 note streak you will see it counting. On the Drums the game plays the same again with the difference being a greater challenging mode, Expert + mode which is something they cooked up at least for this game, who knows if it will make it into the next one. But what it does is requires you to have a mono-splitter and a second bass pedal, as the mode is according to Neversoft (developers) a complete drum track....meaning that it has all the drum notes in there complete with double kick bass portions (hence the need for the extra crap). I did not get to try this feature as I did not want to go buy extra crap to play a single mode in one game.
Sidenote - Apparently if you pre-ordered this from Best-Buy or Gamespot/EBgames you were supposed to get a free splitter and pedal....or at least the pedal. I rented mine so that's why I didn't try Expert +.
Presentation -
Guitar Hero! Oh you cartoony bitch of a game, you are seriously going to fuck up some kids view of the rock-stars they idolize. The game looks like previous versions with a slight more realistic modeling for the main characters, as I'm sure Metallica would have raped them if they didn't do that right. Well I'm hoping someone at least got a guitar impaled up thier ass for the job they did making them look sort of like good action figures come to life, it was good in a sence and I bet fans of Metallica won't care, but I do! Ok, I stopped caring. The presentation is well done with the menu's working the way they should, except for having to wait for the damn thing check for downloadable content every single time I boot the game even thou they have said the ONLY DLC for this short short game is the Death Magnetic Album and nothing else is going to be released. STOP CHECKING FOR SOMETHING THAT IS NOT THERE EVERY TIME! And why the hell do I have to tell it to save to my hard drive every single time I boot it? Can't it locate a save and just use it unless I have a memory card hooked in? I guess it's not that smart, or maybe the developers arn't that smart? I think I just hit a nail on the head, the good developers all went to work for EA and MTV games and they churn out Rock Band 2, which has something like 500+ songs (with DLC) and oh wait?! is that?!?! yes! A easy way for it to check for DLC only when you get new stuff, and if it checks at all...it's so quick you don't freak out like I did a minute ago.
Side Note - See above I kinda ranted a bit there....sorry. hehehe
Overall -
The game feels like a Guitar Hero game, the game plays like a Guitar Hero game....so why don't I like it as much as I do the Guitar Hero Games?!?! Oh wait...I know, it's because in a game called Guitar Hero I don't see why they need to release band-specific versions, why can't we get some sweet DLC for World Tour that has all the models and everything included? More or less what I am getting at here is this game has TOO MUCH METALLICA. They are a good band so don't start the flaming yet. I played the game, I enjoyed the game, but I did not like being nearly forced to play Metallica almost every other song with no guest stars either! At the very least the Aerosmith version had more songs by other artists and even some guest stars on thier own songs. I know there are Metallica fans out there and they should enjoy this game to the fullest, but someone like me who likes Metallica but is not a large fan? It's a huge and tedious affair that unlike previous Guitar Hero and Rock Band games I found I was switching off for a break much quicker and for longer periods with this one.
Score = 3/4 Baked (4 Out Of 5)
Percentage = 86%/100%
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