Microsoft
Guitar Hero Smash Hits
By Ryan Newman
Aug 24, 2009, 7 :15 am

Hot off the heels of Guitar Hero: Metallica, Guitar Hero Smash Hits (Smash Hits) is a surprisingly solid title for a compilation piece of fan-favorite songs and incremental refinements. Just how much you get out of Smash Hits depends largely on how much time you’ve spent with previous titles. As for myself, I came in fairly late to the series with Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock, but I’m certainly not alone due to the first three releases being PlayStation 2-only titles. If you’re like me, then Smash Hits is a great way to catch up on the previous releases as it features the most popular tracks of Guitar Hero, Guitar Hero II, and Guitar Hero Encore: Rocks the 80s, as well as Legends of Rock. If you’ve been a fan since the beginning and have long since played every song to death, then new note tracks and band support might not be enough for you.

Smash Hits feels like a farewell for Guitar Hero World Tour before the immanent release of Guitar Hero 5. The 48 tracks are all master recordings – a big plus – with new note tracks and full band support for the bass, mic, drums, and guitar. World Tour’s beginner mode is included, as well as the 8-player “Battle of the Bands,” music studio, rock star creator, and support for GHTunes (to share and check out custom tracks). Metallica’s expert+ mode is also included, as well as its approach to unlocking songs: all songs are available in quickplay while the career mode has locked tiers of set lists for each venue, with each new venue unlocking a new tier whenever enough stars are earned by playing that set’s songs.

The only truly new thing Smash Hits brings to the series is its story. A ‘wonders of the world’ theme sends the reunited band to strange locations, such as the Amazon and polar ice caps, to charge an artifact for the “God of Rock.” Yeah, I never played the other titles for their story either. The actual mechanics are what you’ve come to expect from the band experience: notes have to be strum, sung, or hit in the proper sequence in order to get the crowd on your side. Multipliers for earned hitting successive notes, and stored star power can be unleashed to earn even more points. You can go at it solo or in a band, coming up with or selecting random names and logos and earn cash by performing gigs and fame by knocking out the tiers of songs. A particularly strange design decision is that the ability to create a custom name and logo are for the single-player career mode only, multi-player bands need not apply.

I found the series’ gradual refinements a plus for setting up games, particularly with switching instruments, but there are still some rough edges. For instance, I do wish I could pick from a simple list of logos instead of having to use ‘random’ each time – it’s more annoying than you think. For newcomers, navigating the menus will take a little while to get used to, but you shouldn’t have too many problems after a few songs and the impossible-to-fail beginner level and quickplay mode will help to get you up to speed with the mechanics. If you’ve played the previous titles, then you’re ready start rocking from the get-go.

The main downside to Smash Hits is the track selection itself: many of the songs included were primarily for thrashing away on a guitar and not singing to or whale away on the drums. While it’s certainly nice to have the option to play each song with any of the instruments, the guitar option is the optimal, and most difficult, way to go. The different note tracks might also irk some, with some portions being either harder or easier than before; this wasn’t a serious concern for me because of my inexperience with the original titles, and it also gives players not sick of the songs further opportunities to enjoy them. With the series having been played so heavily, though, I wonder just how many songs are on there that people aren’t sick of. Perhaps enough time has past for the earlier titles, or the fact that the songs are now the masters, for old fans to enjoy their time with Smash Hits, but I found myself wincing a little whenever an old favorite from Legends of Rock popped up on a set list. As it turns out, despite these being fan-favorite tracks, I wasn’t too big on a number of them. It seems that a downloadable solution would have been more of a benefit to more experienced players, to be able to pick just the tracks that interest them, but those newer to the series and hungry to build up their track collection will find the 48 masters welcomed additions to their library.

Overall: 7.5/10

Guitar Hero Smash Hits is an enjoyable finale for a late- or newcomer to the series. Old guards who can stomach hearing their favorites again would do well to give a shot, because the altered track notes provide a new (though not altogether better) challenge and the master recordings are leagues better than the covered versions. I wasn’t a fan of quite a few of the songs, but music being what it is, you can easily check to see if there’s enough in the collection that gets you pumped. As the culmination of the World Tour experience, Smash Hits does a good job of setting the series up for the next big release.