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Guitar Hero: Metallica

Development

Guitar Hero: Metallica was revealed to be in production when an analyst for Wedbush Morgan Securities discovered mention of the game in Activition’s 2008 SEC filings, slated to be released in “fiscal 2009”, which ends on March 31, 2009 for Activision. Two posts made to Metallica’s website in June 2008 also referred to the “not so top secret GH thing”, and that Guitar Hero players could expect “a pile of ’Tallica songs”. Lars Ulrich, when asked about the game during an interview with MTV, stated that “the people at ‘Guitar Hero’ and Activision are rapidly becoming our best new friends in the world. You can put the rest of it together yourself.” Ulrich stated that the idea for the Metallica-themed Guitar Hero game came from the influence the original Guitar Hero games had on Ulrich and James Hetfield’s children, learning about music and older bands such as Deep Purple and Black Sabbath.

The game was officially announced at the 2008 E3 conference during Microsoft’s presentation, along with the announcement that Metallica’s newest album, Death Magnetic, would be made as content for download for both Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock and Guitar Hero World Tour. A trailer for the game is included as an extra feature in Guitar Hero World Tour with “Master of Puppets” playing in the background and “Ride the Lightning” as the tagline.

As with Guitar Hero: Aerosmith, members of Metallica, including Kirk Hammett, Lars Ulrich, James Hetfield and Robert Trujillo performed six songs and band and audience chatter for motion capture for their in-game avatars; it is unknown whether an avatar of the late Cliff Burton will be part of the game. The game will include DVD-style content such as photos, videos, and behind-the-scenes footage, as well as Pop-up Video trivia played on certain tracks. The music creation mode from World Tour will also be presented, giving the player the option of using tones from Hetfields’ ESP Truckster guitar and Slayer’s Tom Araya’s ESP Bass in addition to Metallica drum sounds.¹⁰ Lars Ulrich in an interview with Game Informer noted that the band stood up for the inclusion of the band Slayer against Microsoft’s concerns on the explicit lyrical content of the group’s songs.

Gameplay

Members of Metallica performed motion capture for their in-game avatars in Guitar Hero: Metallica.See also: Common gameplay elements in the Guitar Hero series and Gameplay in Guitar Hero World Tour
Guitar Hero: Metallica will be based on the band approach presented in Guitar Hero World Tour, and will feature parts of lead and bass guitar, drums, and vocals. Lead developer Alan Flores has stated that the difficulty of the game is much harder than previous games and is designed to challenge the hard-core player. To meet the “ferocity” of Metallica’s songs, the game will feature an “Expert Plus” mode for drummers that allows them to add a second bass drum pedal, though results of this mode will not be tracked through online modes. Similar to Guitar Hero: Aerosmith, Metallica will present songs from Metallica’s history roughly in chronological order but the game is not focused on much on the band’s history and more on the group today. The game’s story will be based on a band that wants to follow in Metallica’s footsteps, and the group accepting them as leading acts for them on a tour; as such, they are better able to order the songs in difficulty comparable to other Guitar Hero games, as Metallica’s earlier works frustrate the player enough to “throw the controller against the wall and stop playing”. Real-life venues will be used for the game, including The Stone nightclub in San Francisco, the Hammersmith Odeon, Tushino Airfield, and The Forum in Los Angeles, and one final venue representing the pinnacle of Metallica’s success.

The Battle mode of the game, based on that from Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock has been slightly altered to add Metallica influences; for example, a power-up named “Fade to Black” will completely black out the note tracks for the opposing player, “Trapped Under Ice,” which freezes the whammy bar, and an electrical attack called “Ride The Lightning” (based on the “Amp Overload” attack from Guitar Hero III) is added.

Soundtrack
Game Informer’s preview stated that the final game will have 45 songs, 28 being by Metallica, and the other 17 songs being bands that are “their personal favorites and influences from over the years”, includes those that appeared on their Garage Inc. album. While other downloadable content from Guitar Hero III or Guitar Hero World Tour will not be usable in Guitar Hero: Metallica, the game will detect and incorporate the songs from the Death Magnetic downloadable content into the game’s setlist.

Game Informer revealed a partial list of the songs:

Song title Artist
“Armed and Ready” Michael Schenker Group
“Black River” The Sword
“Blood and Thunder” Mastodon
“Demon Cleaner” Kyuss
“Enter Sandman” Metallica
“For Whom the Bell Tolls” Metallica
“Fuel” Metallica
“Hell Bent for Leather” Judas Priest
“Hit the Lights” Metallica
“King Nothing” Metallica
“Master of Puppets” Metallica
“Mother of Mercy” Samhain
“No Excuses” Alice in Chains
“No Leaf Clover” Metallica
“Nothing Else Matters” Metallica
“Sad but True” Metallica
“Tuesday’s Gone” Lynyrd Skynyrd
“Turn the Page” Bob Seger
“Unforgiven The Unforgiven” Metallica
“Wherever I May Roam” Metallica

In addition to the tracks above, the Foo Fighters, Slayer, Machine Head and Queen have also been said to have a track included in the game, as well.