CANZE | The Song That Should Not Be: Metallica 'Guitar Hero" misses crucial mark
Over the past few years, it has gotten to the point where the release of a new "Guitar Hero" or "Rock Band" game is a minor cultural event.
Nerds and metal-heads alike miss class and take time off from work to get together and rock out the newest batch of songs - and to argue over the most minute gameplay changes.
"Guitar Hero: Metallica," released this week, is a complete failure in my eyes for one simple reason: the final song.
Some things have just become expected when Neversoft and Activision release a new "Guitar Hero:" corny commercials, lousy animation and really stupid art direction. However, you can count on the song list to rock your face off.
And for the most part, it does. It's chalk-full of highlights, lowlights and deep cuts from every era of Metallica's nearly 30-year career, as well as songs from bands that are considered their inspirations and contemporaries.
Just the fact that you can play Bob Segar's "Turn the Page," followed immediately by Slayer's "War Ensemble" is stellar.
But the cherry on top of every "Guitar Hero" game should be the final song. From "Bark at the Moon" and "Freebird" in the first two games to "Run to the Hills" in "Rock Band," it's been essentially understood that the final song should be epic, difficult, and worth talking about for weeks after the first play-through.
The final song in "Guitar Hero: Metallica" is not "Enter Sandman," "Master of Puppets," or any of the other blistering, skull-bashing classics the band has recorded over the years. Instead, it's "The Thing That Should Not Be."
Never heard of it? My point exactly.
A deeper cut from the "Master of Puppets" album, it's a slow, thumping song that is the closest thing to a ballad that Metallica did in 1986. While as a song it's pretty okay, it isn't terribly difficult, it's not terribly exciting, and there are so many better songs on the game, that you wonder why this one was chosen to be the big-deal final song.
All the other songs are organized into seven tiers of rising difficulty, but the final song is in a special eighth tier all by itself. There is a special background, and a special animation before you play the song, just for the final song. This gives the idea that the developers thought "The Thing That Should Not Be" would be really cool.
It isn't.
I've always considered the build-up and the excitement as you work your way through a series of songs that increase in difficulty and coolness to be the crux of "Guitar Hero" games. And while the "Metallica" incarnation is fun to play as a track pack, it misses the point of "Guitar Hero" games in my eyes, failing to serve up the experience.
The only other major gripe I have with the game is the "You Rock!" animation that plays after a song is finished, which incorporates the big red fist from the "St. Anger" album cover. Because it reminds me that "St. Anger" exists.
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