Guitar Hero Smash Hits
This may not be apparent at the time you’re reading it, so I have to say: this is the first guitar hero review we’ve done for this site. Of course I’d love to have gone back and do the previous titles first, but in the interest of getting reviews out as close to the release date as possible our hands were tied. The reason this is relevant is because I haven’t yet had the chance to explain my feeling on the guitar hero brand. How I feel it compares to the rock band brand, and how I feel about the stream of guitar hero releases. In any case here we go…
Guitar Hero: Smash Hits is the latest game in Actiniums Guitar Hero franchise. If you haven’t really been following the franchise it’s basically exploded into one of the more successful brands in video games. The original set of games were played only with guitars. However, with last year’s release of Guitar Hero World Tour, the game now supports a full band mode with drums and a microphone.
Smash Hits is an idea to capitalize on the great songs that were available in previous GH titles, but were never playable in full band mode until now. Those games include GH1, GH2, GH: Rock the 80’s, GH 2, GH: Aerosmith. For many fans this is a great idea because there are a lot of amazing songs from those old games that just aren’t available on the new platforms. Long after GH had come out on the 360 and gamers had traded up for the promise of downloadable content, came the PS2 exclusive Rock the 80’s. It had tons of great tracks that were not available elsewhere until now. Also announced was that all the tracks from GH1 would be made available as downloadable content for GH2, this never cam to fruition so again this is the first time to get some of these tracks again.
There are a lot of great tracks on here. Some omissions and additions have me shaking my head, but I understand that this is not “GH: Greatest Hits”, it’s “GH: The best hits we could negotiate rights over to get this out a profitable price”, so I’ll leave it at that.
Honestly this should be a simple decision for you. If you have Guitar Hero World Tour with all the instruments already, you need to pick this up. It is, in my opinion, a better set list than that game. If you don’t have that (or rock band, or at least a guitar), you’ll need it to play this as this didn’t come bundled with instruments. Truthfully, if you haven’t been involved in the guitar hero craze up until now, than this won’t do anything to change your mind. If you’re really curious I recommend buying one of the old cheaper bundles with just the guitar as a test run, see if it’s your thing before really investing in it.
