Guitar Hero: Smash Hits

Smash Hits is often tagged as the worst Guitar Hero game which, in fairness, most of the Guitar Hero games it’s going up against are pretty damn good. But it has its upsides, and it looks like I’m going to have to go to bat for it anyways. Despite the simple premise, I feel that Smash Hits is misunderstood in some regards.

For starters, most of the complaints I see come from the ‘marketer’ perspective. It’s not difficult to see why, though. The game was worth $60 when it came out, and it’s still one of the most expensive Guitar Hero games to buy today. As much as I like Smash Hits, this is certainly no premium product. This is made even worse when considering that it was released in the same year as 4 other Guitar Hero games, with at least three of those being MILES better than this one. But I want to put the overly demanding price aside for now. I don’t want to drag Beenox’s efforts down for a marketing decision that was out of their hands completely. They made a budget release and Activision priced it like a mainline game.

What Smash Hits is at its core is a game aimed at Guitar Hero nerds specifically. Even if you like those early Guitar Hero games a lot, there’s no denying that those early engines (GH1/2) and charts were difficult to get a handle on. Nearly all of these songs were cover versions in the original games as well. Not that there’s anything wrong with some charming cover versions! But Smash Hits is offering these tracks in their original forms for maximum authenticity, with a couple small exceptions (live version of Unsung, re-recorded Kiss stems, etc).

The engine is, unfortunately, probably the most scuffed aspect of this game. Similar to World Tour, a lot of frustration comes from finicky slider notes and janky hit windows. This isn’t a massive problem if you’re playing through the game casually, but like I said before, this game is meant for Guitar Hero nerds. If you’re coming here from Guitar Hero 2 or 3, this engine is going to feel significantly cruddier. On top of that, the animations and venues, although not hugely downgraded, feel weak compared to the fully mo-capped contents of Guitar Hero: Metallica that was released right before this.

Still though, the game has a lot of customization, similar to World Tour. As someone who always spends a lot of time trying to make my band look as ridiculous as possible, I appreciate that Guitar Hero is never slacking on the variety here. It’s too bad that this tracklist is so short, then. Despite running on an engine nearly identical to the World Tour engine, you can’t play any of your World Tour DLC songs on this. You’re stuck with a 48 song tracklist, making it one of the smallest right next to the first Guitar Hero game.

You get some good variety, regardless. The short tracklist covers most of the corners of metal and rock and roll that were in those early games. Yet, I feel like there were many missed opportunities. Only eight tracks come from Guitar Hero III, NONE of these tracks stem from the Guitar Hero 2 or 3 DLC, and there’s only ONE bonus track included from any of these games (Dragonforce). I would have loved to see a full band GH chart for Every Time I Die or All That Remains or In Flames or The Fall of Troy… you get the idea.

But here’s the one part of the game that really holds it up: The charts, and I mean that for every instrument (except vocals I suppose, GH vox engine is ROUGH). Obviously the engine itself is scuffed, but if you stick these charts in Clone Hero or YARG or whatever, you can definitely see where Beenox is coming from for a lot of these charts. From my experience, I had few problems with Smash Hits drum charts, whereas World Tour (understandably) has a lot of jank across its setlist, including DLC. You get some strange moments, like the ending of ‘Message in a Bottle’, but most of the charting I’ve seen is fair.

The same can be said for the guitar charts. Don’t even pretend these charts are anywhere near bad if you’ve put up with Guitar Hero III and its DLC before! Once again I have to stress that much of the blame comes from the slide tap engine itself, but I’ve always seen these charts getting bad rep for seemingly no reason. Like yeah, I know about the epic Raining Blood chord, but for gosh sakes, let the charters have some fun every once in a while! It’s like trying to explain In the Groove charts to DDR purists. You just can’t. There’s an art to it, and a sense of what’s comfortable and what’s not, what follows the music and what doesn’t, what’s creative and what isn’t. And I think Beenox had a decent sense of what works. You could only expect so much considering the engine they were working with.

And whatever, if I end up coming back to this game and thinking the guitar charts are Bad Actually after playing the later games, I’ll come back and update this review. It’s mostly just cool to see some decently fun charts and full band animations for this handful of older Guitar Hero tracklist material.

A complete cash-grab of a game, the soundtrack features some inspired choices from the back catalog but mostly a lot of really obvious repeats, too-soon crossovers with RB for a redundant setlist, or songs that are the complete opposite of Smash Hits like Hey You. Did not come out with the price tag it ought to have released with, either.