Review: Guitar Hero: Smash Hits

2009 is the year of Guitar Hero. Smash Hits marks the second home console release of the year, with Guitar Hero 5, Band Hero and DJ Hero all expected before the close of 2009. I think people are getting Heroed out, with good reason too.

As you might have guessed, Smash hits is a game containing an amalgamation of songs from previous versions of the franchise. This sounds like a great idea for those of us who didn’t get the music game bug until recently, but for others it just seems like a waste of time.

By now, i’m pretty sure you guys reading this know what Guitar Hero is and basically this works exactly the same. You hit the buttons to correspont to what’s going on on screen to play a song and, well, that’s about it. The only new thing here is that you can now play these songs as a full band and that they are all master recordings.

These ‘new’ additions are nice, but I think many fans of the franchise feel that this could’ve been released as downloadable content instead of a full retail game. Not only that, but, unlike Rock Band, users can’t save tracks to the hard drive so there’s a lot of disc swapping involved. Something which is a pain in the arse when someone wants to play one song.

The career mode follows the same Guitar Hero formula: You get a venue, you play a bunch of songs, you move on. This is becoming tired and tested (no that wasn’t a spelling mistake). It really is becoming a bore and I think that with all of these SKU’s Activision are begining to alienate the die-hard fans more than ever.

The game and songs might be the same, but it doesn’t mean that it isn’t fun to play. It’s great to be able to play these older songs as a full band but I think many will feel cheated when they see that the game is, for all intents and purposes, a track pack.

I really don’t know how much more I can say, it’s classic Guitar Hero. It follows the formula that pretty much all gamers must have seen by now and, personally, it’s starting to get on my nerves. I hope Activision realise that soon they’re going to lose all of the fans they’ve gained and run this cash cow into the ground. This was a money grabbing mechanism and whilst it might be good for new players but it’s certainly not what the people wanted. Let’s hope Activision can get GH5 right, otherwise I could see this cash cow becoming a steak soon enough.

It does do some good things, just not enough to warrant charging £40/$60.

6.5/10

Secondary Comments – By Chris Malley

Having reviewed the last Guitar Hero game (Guitar Hero: Metallica) I can see why Anthony is frustrated. Activision are now running this once beloved franchise into the ground and I, personally, can’t see how they’re going to gain the trust of gamers again.

The game is exactly the same as previous iterations with a few new features. Sure, these features are all well and good, but when a game is boring to play it doesn’t mattter. I liked Metallica a lot because of what it did differently to the other games in the series. Not enough has been done here to make me recomend this unless you’ve never played a Guitar Hero game, something I sincerely doubt.

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