The Guitar Hero franchise would not be as strong if not for the assortment of songs driving the game and entreating players to button mash to the rhythm. The latest release in the franchise line, Guitar Hero Smash Hits, has decided that this iteration will be all about the music, tossing out superfluous cut scenes between venue loads that don’t even attempt to drive a meager story, and then just as quickly eliminating those cut scenes as though the dev team decided to go in another direction mid-stream.

Does it detract from the game? No. Did the cut scenes really offer anything of value? Not really. Will players miss them? Not likely. Why? Because this rhythm game is all about the music and that’s something that Smash Hits keys on.

And while the song list in Smash Hits is impressive in and of itself, these were songs that were voted on by GH fans and appeared in other GH releases. Basically, if you have bought every GH release, you have all the songs, and this release is a waste of your money. If you skipped several of the releases, then you are in for a treat with Smash Hits. Since this is really all about the songs, here is the song list:

Tracks from Guitar Hero:

• Blue Öyster Cult - "Godzilla"

• Boston - "More Than A Feeling"

• Deep Purple - "Smoke On The Water"

• Franz Ferdinand - "Take Me Out"

• Helmet - "Unsung (Live)"

• Incubus - "Stellar"

• Joan Jett & The Blackhearts - "I Love Rock N’ Roll"

• Ozzy Osbourne - "Bark At The Moon"

• Pantera - "Cowboys From Hell (Live)"

• Queen - "Killer Queen"

• Queens Of The Stone Age - "No One Knows"

• The Donnas - "Take It Off"

• The Exies - "Hey You"

• White Zombie - "Thunder Kiss ’65"

Tracks from Guitar Hero II:

• Alice In Chains - "Them Bones"

• Avenged Sevenfold - "Beast And The Harlot"

• Danzig - "Mother"

• Foo Fighters - "Monkey Wrench"

• Iron Maiden - "The Trooper"

• Jane’s Addiction - "Stop!"

• Kansas - "Carry On Wayward Son"

• Lamb Of God - "Laid To Rest"

• Lynyrd Skynyrd - "Free Bird"

• Mötley Crüe- "Shout At The Devil"

• Nirvana - "Heart-Shaped Box"

• Rage Against The Machine - "Killing In The Name"

• Reverend Horton Heat - "Psychobilly Freakout"

• Rush - "YYZ"

• Stone Temple Pilots - "Trippin’ On A Hole In A Paper Heart"

• The Police - "Message In A Bottle"

• The Sword - "Freya"

• Warrant - "Cherry Pie"

• Wolfmother - "Woman"

Tracks from Guitar Hero Encore: Rocks the 80s:

• Anthrax - "Caught In A Mosh"

• Extreme - "Play With Me"

• Judas Priest - "Electric Eye"

• Poison - "Nothin’ But A Good Time"

• Ratt - "Round and Round"

• Twisted Sister - "I Wanna Rock"

Tracks from Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock:

• AFI - "Miss Murder"

• DragonForce - "Through The Fire And Flames"

• Heart - "Barracuda"

• Kiss - "Rock And Roll All Nite"

• Living Colour - "Cult Of Personality"

• Pat Benatar - "Hit Me With Your Best Shot"

• Priestess - "Lay Down"

• Slayer - "Raining Blood"

Tracks from Guitar Hero: Aerosmith:

• Aerosmith - "Back In The Saddle

To the credit of the development team, this was not merely a copy and paste the code from one program to the Smash Hits program. Actually, the songs have been reconfigured for a band, not just a solo guitar. However, one should not enter even into the guitar parts lightly. After all, some of the rap against the earlier Guitar Hero songs was that they were tough to play even on the medium settings. Ramp that up to hard and you will be giving your fingers (and the fret board) a workout. That difficulty remains intact with this iteration – this is a song list that will definitely challenge on many fronts, incorporating the new guitar with the tap/slide board (which does help on some of the riffs, to be sure).

And there are still some of the new changes that make this a successor to the franchise, incorporating the Music Studio and songs created there.

For those who have never played a GH game, this is a rhythm based game with a simulated guitar neck (even when used for drums, the visual representation is the same) with notes streaming down from the top. As the notes hit the bottom of the neck, in the target zone, you are tasked with hitting the corresponding button of the neck – this is all color coded and there are five total buttons, and sometimes you have to hit more than one button – while using the strumming lever on the body of the guitar. There are appropriate variations for the drums, of course, but you will have five drum pads, plus a foot pedal (or foot pedals) to utilize as well.

Graphically the game is serviceable. Nothing much has changed. There are still a wealth of options for creating your own character, and as you progress through the career mode, you can unlock new costumes, new instrument pieces, new venues and the corresponding songs that come with them. The songs, though, are all unlocked when you go into Quick Play.

The songs are mostly master tracks, meaning that they are performed on the soundtrack by the original band. That is always a very good thing.

Smash Hits is certainly not for the die-hard GH fan that probably already has all the releases from which the song list was culled; however, for those who got their feet wet in World Tour, this is a great revisit to songs from earlier releases now configured for entire bands to play.

Gameplay: 8.0
Nothing new under the sun here – this is like taking the earlier GH releases and upgrading them to the World Tour status with full bands, more character customization and the Music Studio.  

Graphics: 7.8
Serviceable, but when your eyes are glued to the streaming notes, who really cares about the background animations. The game is bright and colorful and has a graphical element of fun.

Sound: 9.0
Master tracks really drive the soundtrack.

Difficulty: Easy/Hard

Concept: 7.5
The songs have all appeared in previous releases in the franchise. Fans voted on the set list and the songs from the earlier editions have been re-charted for a full band.

Multiplayer: N/A
The disk sent for this review was for the PlayStation PS3 test machine and online play was not available on that unit.

Overall: 7.6
At $60 (suggested retail price at the time this review was written), this is a bit spendy – especially for only 48 songs – but the song list is a solid representation of songs from past GH releases. If you were a GH fan and own the first several releases, this is a pass. If you came onboard with the World Tour release, and don’t mind spending the bucks for the older songs, this might be worth it. After all, even if you went back and bought those earlier versions, you would be getting songs only for guitar, whereas these are the tops songs from those releases (as voted on by GH fans) reconfigured for up to a four-piece band.