Ok, this one's gonna be a short one. Deal with it. The thing about Guitar Hero: Metallica is that it's pretty much all right there in the title. It's Guitar Hero... with Metallica. If you love Metallica - you'll like this one. If you love Guitar Hero - you'll love this game.
There are some details not included in the title though. First off - it's the new kind of Guitar Hero, the one with more than just guitars. In fact, the drums are the real stars in this Guitar Hero, with double bass pedals and Expert + mode making the challenge for drummers that much more pronounced. This doesn't mean guitar is a cake walk - Metallica seems to have a rule against any song being shorter than 15 minutes long, and thrash metal 6 minute solos are evidently written into the band's code of conduct. Singing... Well, if you can
singscream more than three songs in this game in a row and go for a fourth, you're a greater man than I.
Then there's the whole "it's not just Metallica" thing. Of the 49 tracks in the game, only 28 are from Metallica. The other 21 (maths is fun!) are songs hand picked by the garage metal band for the game - you can check out the whole track list on
the game's details page. Some of the tracks are well picked like Skynyrd's "Tuesday's Gone" and Motörhead's Ace of Spades - others aren't as good (Machine Head have some good songs... Beautiful Mourning is not one).
Other things not stated in the title are the improved graphics - I know graphics in the Guitar Hero games are a fairly secondary concern, but Guitar Hero Metallica actually looks good. The character models of the band members are good though they paint a rather mythological image of the band from when they were young rock gods - not like now, when they're old and slowing. The animations are solid all-round and the background effects are actually pretty good. This isn't to say that the previous games looked
bad - they were simply average.
At the end of the day Guitar Hero: Metallica offers just enough to justify it not just being another track pack - just barely offering enough to be worth purchasing yet another Guitar Hero game. It's fair to argue that Expert + and double bass drums aren't really the sorts
of thing you'd just give away as a content upgrade for normal Guitar Hero World Tour - especially seeing how most of the tracks already in the game wouldn't use the features properly - but at the same time you sorta wish they'd tried.
Oh, and everything said only really applies if you either love Metallica or you love Guitar Hero enough that you don't care about the tracks - if you only crack out GHWT when people come around or you're trying to scare away a female, just wait for Guitar Hero 5. Maybe we'll finally get to play Hold the Line.