Guitar Hero: Metallica is exactly what it sounds like. Whether Guitar Hero: Metallica is for you depends entirely on whether you're a metal nut who still wears a Master of Puppets t-shirt like it's never going out of style. Spoiler: It did, but who cares?

To Activision and Neversoft's credit, Guitar Hero: Metallica is decidedly more ambitious than their previous band outing, Guitar Hero: Aerosmith. For one, the character models look remarkably better. They're still undeniably creepy, though. There's just something about them that seems... off. But there's less off about lead singer James Hetfield than there was off about Stephen Tyler. It's progress.

That might have had something to do with Neversoft making sure there were developers pretending to be Metallica concertgoers while the band recorded motion capture for the game.

"We had a guy in each corner just f***ing head banging and cheering," Guitar Hero: Metallica lead designer Alan Flores told GameSpy. "They were really into it. James really appreciated we were doing that to make him feel more comfortable."

That wasn't the situation for every artist they've worked with, though.

"The perfect example is Billy Corgan [of Smashing Pumpkins]," explained Flores. "He was doing it and it was just the motion capture crew there and when he's done they're like 'Woo! Yeah!' And he's like 'Can you guys not do that?'"


For the hardcore, Guitar Hero: Metallica introduces the Expert+ mode. Expert+ is an optional difficulty for the drums only. In previous Guitar Hero games, double bass pedal notes were removed from songs because gamers would be physically incapable of hitting the notes without the second bass pedal present. Guitar Hero: Metallica come with a splitter that a second bass pedal can be attached to.

"We have the technology to be able to plug a splitter in and stick a second pedal in there," said Flores. "So we did that and said -- you know, it's Metallica, there's going to be lots of double bass songs in the game. Let's just make this Expert+ [that is] built off the Expert track but with all the double bass drum hits in there and give people the opportunity to play these songs the way they were meant to be played."

Flores doesn't expect most gamers to bother with Expert+. To that point, there is actually an achievement tied to the Expert+ mode. If you're able to complete a single song on Expert+, you're awarded an achievement. We didn't even try a song on Expert+, but if you want to play around with a double bass pedal regardless, that's still an option. The double bass pedals are recognized on any difficulty level.

Difficulty has been an issue for the Guitar Hero series since Harmonix left to develop Rock Band with MTV Games, however. Guitar Hero III was seen as too hard. Guitar Hero: Aerosmith was seen as too easy. Guitar Hero World Tour was just about right.

"I think with Aerosmith and World Tour we sort of smoothed that [difficulty curve] out," said Flores. "We applied the same theory towards Metallica, so the game is totally accessible for Easy and Medium players and starts with some stuff that's not really difficult at all -- you're going to play 'For Whom The Bell Tolls,' which is really easy, you're going to play a Lynyrd Skynyrd song or a Bob Seger [song]."

If you're a fan of Expert+, however, look for the feature to carry over into future Guitar Hero releases. Though Flores couldn't confirm Expert+ would be included in future Guitar Hero games, he said it's something they "would like to keep going."

Like Guitar Hero: Aerosmith, Guitar Hero: Metallica is geared to Metallica fans. Metallica fans are going to be over the moon with the amount of material here.

Me? I'm still waiting for Guitar Hero: Weezer.