Pop culture phenomenon

In the music world, every once in a while a star bursts onto the scene, burns bright for a few years and then quickly starts to fade away. Generally when the star is fading a package of their 'greatest' hits is pushed out onto the masses in an effort to cash-in one last time on the good will of the artist's name. If you were thinking I was talking about Britney Spears, you would only be half right. After all this is a gaming site, not a site devoted to pop music commentary. So how does all this tie into games? Well, Britney Spears and Activision's Guitar Hero franchise have quite a lot in common.

Britney and Guitar Hero both burst onto the scene to become a pop culture phenomenon. Both released successful follow-ups very close after one another; both experienced a slight backlash from their core supporters due to overextending themselves. And both, in an effort to rekindle some of what they once had, released a 'greatest' hits package.

Greatest Hits

To be fair Activision's latest Guitar Hero game is entitled Smash Hits and not Greatest Hits (as it once was during its production). But the implication that it is a greatest hits package and the fact that it very much plays like one would expect a greatest hits package for Guitar Hero to play do speak otherwise. Smash Hits is a collection of 48 songs previously released on the first five Guitar Hero titles, those being: Guitar Hero, Guitar Hero II, Guitar Hero: Rocks the 80s, Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock, and Guitar Hero: Aerosmith. It noticeably ignores the release of last year's Guitar Hero: World Tour and this year's Guitar Hero: Metallica which could bring one to question why these editions were ignored, especially considering it would have fleshed out the package a little bit more.

The song list, as always, is highly subjective and fans of the series are going to find plenty to nit-pick about it. Personally I found the exclusion of Welcome to the Jungle by Guns N' Roses and the inclusion of only one song from the band centric Aerosmith game as somewhat mind-boggling. But for the most part the set list is a fair representation of some of the best songs from the Guitar Hero franchise. If you have somehow managed to avoid the plastic instrument phenomenon up until now, Smash Hits provides a perfect jumping on point for new fans, while keeping franchise fans happy.

Nothing changed

The game plays just as one would expect a Guitar Hero game to play. Smash Hits does nothing to change up the formula, so if you have played either World Tour or Metallica you will be able to jump right in to your Smash Hits experience on guitar, bass, drums or vocals. The difficulty seems to have found a nice happy medium of being easy on the early songs and quite challenging on the later ones, although those that were able to play Guitar Hero: Metallica on expert will probably find most of Smash Hits to be a piece of cake for them.