Review by: Todd Brakke

Guitar Hero: Smash Hits is pretty much what it says it is. It combines, in somewhat debatable fashion, what the designers feel are the best songs from Guitar Hero, Guitar Hero II, Guitar Hero Encore: Rocks the 80s, Guitar Hero III and Guitar Hero: Aerosmith (one track) into a single, full-priced, package.

Is a rehash of previously released content worth $60? Maybe. There’s no doubt a lot of people never got to play the stellar first game or the regrettable 80s edition, which were PS2 exclusives. If you’re one of them, there’s a lot of good stuff here that’s well worth playing. But for the rest of us? No, not when Guitar Hero II, Guitar Hero III, etc. are all available on the 360 at around half the price.

As a stand alone game, Smash Hits does still have its benefits. There’s a lot of great tracks here and most of them are fun to play. (You can find a full list at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guitar_Hero_Smash_Hits . .) Although, you have to wonder how a track like Cherry Pie gets in the list ahead of, say, Crossroads. In what sane universe is that possible? What is new about these tracks is that they’re now all master tracks (most tracks were not in Guitar Hero I and II) and they all now have full band treatment, so you can play the guitar parts, drums or sing vocals. These additions will make the game a worthwhile purchase for some, but if you were hoping there would be any evolution of the game’s play mechanics to justify the $60 cost, you’ll be left waiting for another game. This is pretty much the same grouping of songs by venue (and difficulty) format that’s been in place since the very first game. I would say it’s getting stale, but frankly, it was starting to get stale when Activision released Guitar Hero III. At this point it’s getting flat out moldy.

It’s also something of a mystery why all this content wasn’t made available as downloadable additions for Guitar Hero: World Tour or at least made portable into that game. Let’s face it, as much as some of us might want to be able to play Bark at the Moon again, most would rather play it in World Tour than have to slip in a separate disc. Is Activision just not paying attention to what their competition is doing or do they just not care about offering better value to their customers?

Don’t answer that.

Then there’s the ever-important note charting. I continue to lament the way the games in this franchise handle their guitar note charts as the difficulty ramps up. True, at the end of the day the guitar system is entirely made up, so it’s hard to talk about what is “accurate” or not, but on Expert difficulty –where the charts are dominated by 3-button cords and constant back and forth between the most distant buttons on the guitar neck- it continues to feel like the focus was purely on making the note charting difficult with not enough consideration given to how all those colored dots actually represent the song.