The Guitar Hero franchise seems to be ever rolling, churning out more than one title a year these days. Fortunately for metal fans, this year's "side project" is Guitar Hero: Metallica, which brings with it a ton of promise and hype. After all, Metallica is the band that has convinced countless souls to pick up a guitar (myself included), and their music seems to be a perfect fit for the formula. 

Luckily, the game delivers in many of the ways that we had hoped for. The track list is stellar, the presentation is top-notch, the band is very well represented, and, perhaps most surprising of all, there's a ton of stuff for fans of the band to check out. While the game isn't as immense as the franchise's yearly big update, and while it generally sticks to the same tried and true formula of past releases, there's just a feeling of care taken with the experience that makes it a must-play for fans of the band and metal in general.  

  

The title is a full-band game, just like Guitar Hero World Tour, so guitar, bass, drums and vocals are all part of the mix. Rather than the gig-based progression from World Tour, you'll find something much closer to the original two titles where it's a tier-based system, but instead of having to beat each song in a tier to progress, you need only meet a total star requirement. I actually "finished" the game after having only beaten 40% of the songs, so there's a ton of leeway in allowing you to move on if you get stuck on something. Obviously there are incentives to go back and play everything else in the name of unlockables and so forth (including the band's instruments), not to mention fun, but it's unlikely that you'll get stuck unless you choose a difficulty that's way over your head.