Guitar Hero: Greatest Hits brings together all of your old favourites from GH: 1,2,3 Aerosmith and Rock The 80’s into one game. But with so many Guitar Hero games on the market is this release worth taking a look at?

Gameplay:

When you first load up the career you’ll be pleasantly surprised to see that the game has opted for the classic GH career progression layout, as opposed to the ‘gig’ layout we’ve seen in games like World Tour and Rock Band. The aim of the career, like every other Guitar Hero game, is to beat the songs to progress to the next block of tracks with each block getting more and more difficult as you play through the career. It’s refreshing to see the old school layout make a return and it’s definitely a lot more fun to advance through the career than it was in World Tour. The career progresses very well in difficulty and the songs picked for the encores are definitely the best possible choice. There has never been any real story for the Guitar Hero careers but the attempt made in Greatest Hits is the best I’ve seen.

Unfortunately there are no real new features to go over and review in this game. Greatest Hits is really just an exaggerated track pack. The only new feature I managed to find was the addition of ‘The Artefact’ which summarises your best performances on every song and lets you view stats for the individual song including your high score, best star rating and best percentage of notes hit. It’s nothing major but it’s nice to have everything on one screen instead of having to hunt down your stats. Apart from that everything is the same as World Tour, the interface, character animations and so on are all identical to World Tour. If anything, the game has been stripped back to the bare essentials, which re-enforces my statement about this being an exaggerated track pack.

The game also allows for Xbox Live play both competitively and co-op. The competitive game modes are exactly the same as we’ve seen in previous Guitar Hero games and include Pro Faceoff, Faceoff and Battle, so nothing new has been brought to the table where online is concerned. But I do have one major problem with the online functionality and that’s the removal of the Band Career option. You can still play this mode on the same console at home, but it has been completely neglected for Xbox Live, even though it was included in World Tour. You are still able to play songs with your friends on Live in a band, but only in Quickplay events, you’re not able to progress through the story as part of a band over Live. This is really unfortunate because this is something I was expecting to be included and it’s one of the defining features of World Tour. The only real incentive for owning this game is that you can now play all of your old favourites with the addition of drum and vocal charts on songs you would have only played guitar on in previous games. This is a nice little feature of the game but it’s nothing to shout about, something like this could have been easily made into DLC for World Tour. It’s confusing as to why Activison didn’t opt for this rather than release a standalone title, especially when nothing new has been added to expand and improve the franchise.

Graphics:

Graphically the game is standard, I have always loved Guitar Hero’s unique art style, and like all the other aspects of this game, nothing has changed. The graphics and art style are exactly the same as World Tour. But in all honestly, when you’re trying to ace a song the last thing you’re paying attention to is the movie that’s playing in the background, so it’s forgiveable that the developer hasn’t changed anything graphically for this edition.

Possibly my favourite aspect of this game is the unique venues added. You get the chance to rock out in the most awesomely surreal landscapes imaginable, from the London sewage system to the lost city of Atlantis. The detail and effort that has gone into creating these venues is outstanding and when you first play on a new venue I’ll guarantee you’ll smile every time.

Sound:

Because there are no new additions to game that really expand on the franchise, the only thing worth buying this for would be the track list, and fortunately Greatest Hits has a superb track list, with all of your favourites from the previous games it’s like a big school reunion where everyone has just become more beautiful with age. Most of your favourites are in here including The Trooper, Bark At The Moon, Freebird, Beast And The Harlot, and Through The Fire And The Flames all of which have been given a facelift with new note layouts for the guitar segments. In some ways this is a good thing and songs have been improved on but in most cases it’s hit and miss. Some songs have also been made more difficult, which in my opinion isn’t necessarily a bad thing. When you play Guitar Hero a lot it’s difficult to find songs that challenge you, and some of the best times I’ve had on Guitar Hero games is when you get stuck on a song, get really frustrated, and then finally complete it. In my opinion this is best possible feeling of accomplishment seen in any game so it was cool to see that Raining Blood had been made even harder and I had to work hard to pass it again.

I’m quite pleased with the set list, and it’s great to see that the songs that were covers in previous games have now been converted to master tracks. But a few songs are missing, and I guess it’s all just a case of opinion if you like the set list or not. The songs I enjoyed in previous games might not be the ones that you enjoyed. The set list is the only thing that makes this game worth buying so I would strongly recommend checking it out before giving it a purchase.

Longevity:

There is not real lifespan to this game, once you complete the career there is little incentive to replay songs other than to achieve high scores and earn some achievements. The online modes have all been seen before and if you’ve played previous games you’ll already know they get a little bit tedious. This really is only a play once and trade in affair, or even just a rental. Once you’ve played the songs and enjoyed that little bit of nostalgia the gimmick quickly diminishes, and when you know there will be no DLC released for the game it’s not really worth keeping.

Overall:

This game really is the same old song and dance. It’s nothing more than an exaggerated track pack, but saying that, it’s a very good one and still a heap of fun. But this isn’t worth buying because of the poor lifespan, it’s definitely more of a rental. If you’re new to the Guitar Hero games or maybe haven’t played any of the previous games this may be a good route to take to play some of the classics, but if I was in the position I would rather purchase the originals and play all of the songs. Nothing new has been added and all you’re getting is a port of World Tour with some different songs, rent this, don’t buy!