The Guitar Hero series has gone from total obscurity to Activision’s bread and butter in just three and a half years, but the rate at which they release new games has many of us feeling a little oversaturated. I have no doubts that many of you, like me, simply rolled your eyes when Guitar Hero: Metallica was announced, after all, the group has been far from its best for more than a decade. It seems that Guitar Hero developer Neversoft saw this coming, and has worked that much harder on Guitar Hero: Metallica, making it arguably the best single-band focused music game to date.

Guitar Hero: Metallica is basically a tribute to the band, giving players the opportunity to play 28 tracks from both albums and tours from 1983’s Kill ‘Em All all the way up to last year’s Death Magnetic. The track list reads like what you’d expect to see on a Metallica greatest hits album; you get some of the older heavier stuff like Seek and Destroy, Master of Puppets, One and For Whom the Bell Tolls, the early 90s stuff like Enter Sandman, Nothing Else Matters and The Unforgiven and a couple of tracks from this decade. Some fans might be a little disappointed that some of their favourite tracks are missing - there’s very little in the way of their late 90s output, and only one track from St. Anger is present (though most would say that’s a good thing). In all honesty, the only one I’m really missing is Ride the Lightning, though the S&M versions of some other tracks would have made a nice bonus.

In addition to 28 songs from the band, you get access to 21 more tracks that were either covered by the band, or they consider to be personal favourites. These include Ace of Spades by Motorhead, Stacked Actors by the Foo Fighters, Stone Cold Crazy by Queen, Turn the Page by Bob Seger, Toxicity by System of a Down and The Boys are Back in Town by Thin Lizzy. Again, it’s a nice selection, but some players might be disappointed by certain omissions, particularly Whiskey in the Jar, which the band covered on their 1998 Garage Inc album. Players can create their own tracks in the studio and upload them to GHTunes, much like you could in Guitar Hero: World Tour, though it is worth noting you’ll need to re-download any tracks to be able to play them in this game. Also slightly annoying is the fact that only the Death Magnetic downloadable content works with the game; you’ll have to switch back to World Tour to play any songs you’ve bought from the Marketplace. Hopefully Activision will copy Rock Band’s approach to platform based downloadable content in the future.

The basic Guitar Hero gameplay has not changed too dramatically for Guitar Hero: Metallica. Songs can be played by up to four players in a band, with guitar, bass, drums and vocal roles on offer. It’s a little disappointing that James Hetfield’s role as the band’s rhythm guitarist is not replicated – Neversoft apparently threw it on the “too hard” pile, so whoever plays the guitar has a note path that’s a mix of the lead and rhythm guitar roles. There are a few incremental improvements to note - the approach to drumming is much more rhythmic than World Tour’s, which seemed to have players randomly hitting pads rather than actually drumming. On the vocal side, the accuracy of your pitch has been tightened up, so it doesn’t randomly jump up and under the pitch line. We would like to see them take a new approach to vocals, as players can still hum along to songs and get better results than actually singing along.

Guitar Hero: Metallica’s basic elements come together well, and playing the faster, more lively songs the band has produced seems to make the seemingly tired Guitar Hero gameplay a lot more fun than the recent World Tour. One caveat players need to be aware of is that many of Metallica’s tracks in the game are of epic length, coming in around the seven to nine minute range. I can’t think of a track in the game that’s less than four minutes long, a stark contrast to the usual Guitar Hero fare, where most tracks fall below that mark. Guitarists, bassists and drummers are going to be kept busy for that entire length too, so it’s easy to get worn out after playing a few songs. The vocalist, on the other hand, gets to sit around doing very little for stretches of up to three minutes in some songs. They try to subvert that by offering freestyle vocal sections (which are great for building up points if you know how they work), but they’re still a little too sparse.

If you think you’re pretty hot with the drums, Guitar Hero: Metallica offers a new “expert plus” difficulty. This feature lets players to attach a second foot pedal to their drum set (provided free with most pre-orders) for double bass on selected songs. We were unable to test this feature as it is only supported on the Guitar Hero: World Tour drum kit (the game was tested with a Rock Band kit), but have been informed that it really raises the bar when it comes to drumming in the game. There’s also a hidden ‘Drum Over’ mode, which lets players freestyle the drumming on any song without a pre-determined note path or possibility for failure.

Guitar Hero: Metallica features a career mode like every other game in the series, but it is very basic. Don’t expect a whole “relive the history of the band” thing like Guitar Hero: Aerosmith – you basically play a number of songs from a list of sets with a few throwaway animations (about becoming Metallica’s opening act) inserted in between. Sets aren’t continuous like World Tour – a measure of mercy given the length of the songs – and you only need to reach an aggregate score of 70 stars (from a possible 240) to clear the career. This gives you greater freedom over which songs you can play to make it through, and doesn’t force you to go into the really hard tracks until you’re up to it. It’s worth the effort of completing every song, as once completed, you gain access to extra information about the song, including photos, videos (from fan bootlegs to high quality productions), behind the scenes footage and Pop-Up Video style replays called “Metallifacts”, which provides a wealth of trivia about each song.

Visual presentation hasn’t been much of a factor in previous music games, but Neversoft have raised the bar with Guitar Hero: Metallica. The band came in to do motion capturing and lip-syncing, so the performances look quite impressive and pretty natural. Each member of the band has been recreated in a much more realistic fashion than other musicians associated with Guitar Hero, though they still have some exaggerated features. You can also unlock classic versions of each member, harkening back to the days when they all had long hair (however, you can’t unlock former members of the band like Cliff Burton and Jason Newsted). Lemmy from Motorhead and King Diamond from Merciful fate also make appearances. The interface is still a little cluttered, and the bulb meter for star power still sucks, but there’s none of the momentary slowdown featured in the last couple of games.

Guitar Hero: Metallica is a real surprise. We expected another one of Activision’s half-assed money grabs, but were treated to a real tribute to the band, with some fantastic tracks, a wealth of extras, and some helpful improvements. It’s not perfect - some tracks we had expected to see are absent, you can’t have Cliff or Jason on bass, and you can’t play World Tour’s downloadable content, but these are only minor annoyances. Guitar Hero: Metallica is a must for fans (particularly if you were a lapsed fan like this reviewer) or anyone looking for a heavier, more challenging music game.