Ever since the first Guitar Hero blew us away in 2005, the world has been inundated with countless Guitar Hero titles. After the release of three direct sequels, countless spins-offs, and even a number of portable versions, the franchise has built up quite a bit of a song catalogue for itself. With Guitar Hero: Smash Hits, Activision was looking to cash in on that song catalogue, but unfortunately, that’s about all the game feels like.
Guitar Hero: Smash Hits might actually be a cash-in, but on the surface, it isn’t the worst deal imaginable. There are 48 songs taken from Guitar Hero, Guitar Hero II, Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock and Guitar Hero Encore: Rocks the 80s. All of the songs included are master recordings and all of them add in the ability to have a full band experience, adding both drum and vocal support. While there are enough songs included in the game to be considered a decent value proposition, that will depend on your musical tastes, what songs have defined the Guitar Hero franchise to you, and if being able to sing and drum along to these tracks are worth it. For me, the game didn’t live up to its “Smash Hits” title — only a handful of the songs struck me as both being hallmarks of the Guitar Hero franchise, as well as being personally enjoyable to play. Undoubtedly, some of this has to do with me having played almost every Guitar Hero game released — save the DS versions and the Aerosmith and Metallica spin-offs.
Even for new comers, paying full price for Smash Hits isn’t the greatest value proposition. The only real value-added addition to the game is drum and vocal support — otherwise, purchasing all of the games that Guitar Hero: Smash Hits takes from would actually be cheaper than buying Smash Hits and would net you all of the songs from those games.
However, after all of the potential reasons you could cook up on why the game isn’t a good deal, Smash Hits does deliver the same Guitar Hero goodness that has garnered the franchise such acclaim and financial success. Nothing has been changed in this edition, nor has anything been added from a mode or feature set perspective. It is simply a Guitar Hero game through and through.
Even though the Guitar Hero formula is great, only adding in drum and vocal support to songs that have already been covered, and then charging full price for the game? It’s a real, real tough pill to swallow. Activision would have probably been a whole lot better off releasing these titles through Guitar Hero: World Tour, where new comers could have picked the songs from the past that they wanted to experience and not be forced to swap discs between World Tour and Smash Hits. Instead, those that want full band support for these songs will have to shell out full price and deal with the hassle of disc swapping.
Smash Hits is competent and fun in general, but paying full price for this game is simply not recommendable. Activision does aggressively drop the prices of their games, so picking up a copy of Smash Hits when it reaches a more reasonable price point is the way to go.
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