I had the opportunity to play the original Guitar Hero several months before it came out. Trying to explain the concept to someone who hadn’t seen it was never easy, often boiling down to DDR with a plastic guitar, but when it finally arrived it clicked with a lot of people and has kept growing since. Gamers and non-gamers alike love the rock and roll fantasy, and every one of us has a song or two that we desperately want to play. There have been seven console Guitar Hero’s, two or three handhelds, two Rock Bands, and hundreds of downloadable tracks across both brands, and still there are tracks that I want to play along to with the aid of descending colored blocks. There is still no Stairway to Heaven, mostly because Jimmy Page is a douchebag. While I am not going to go as far as removing Lars Ulrich’s douchebag status, at least he is an ass who loves money because Guitar Hero: Metallica has more good tracks in one place than any other game. Add to that the full band aspect of World Tour and a few final bits stolen from Rock Band 2 and this is the best Guitar Hero to date.

There have been Metallica tracks available in the past, both as downloadable content and on a disc, and they were epic in both length and difficulty. It’s not enough that the tracks have finger wrecking solos, but they take five minutes to get there and the solos are several minutes long. None of this has changed in Guitar Hero: Metallica, but Neversoft has taken positive changes from World Tour and put them to good use. Many of the solo sections are still completely ridiculous, but they have been moved from HOPO sections to finger taps, which makes them at least feasible for normal humans with five fingers per hand. One on expert still was an instant fail when the meadlies kick in, but on hard it was just difficult enough to be fun. The difficulty level in general is more finely tuned; if anything the jump from Hard to Expert has been increased. I ran through the entire game with the guitar on hard with little problem; failing out on a song in hard feels like it takes more missed notes than it used to. In contrast, expert is merciless, angry, and waiting to eat your knuckles for lunch. Expert is fucking metal, and I haven’t even gotten to the drums yet.

Never content with abusing the player in one way only, Neversoft has given the truly hardcore the option of using double base for drums. I just got one leg to play nice with my arms, getting the second to work will be the equivalent of me growing wings, but at least the option is there. Even without the second bass pedal, the drum charts are more difficult than most of World Tour, so be prepared. It hurts, but like the guitar it is a good hurt. The Rock Band drums still work, but being short one tom leads to some awkward charting, and setting off star power is more difficult than it needs to be. It may be time to sneak another set of plastic drums into the house if you don’t have one yet. Bass rounds out the band nicely, with the open note making a welcome return, adding some much needed difficulty to the part that is usually given to whoever happens to be the drunkest.

This is not the first attempt at a Guitar Hero game centered on one artist. Guitar Hero: Aerosmith had the right songs, but it was nothing more than a re-skinned Guitar Hero 3. Metallica has managed to one up World Tour in almost every way. In a final bit of Harmonix thievery, stars are now updated real time during a song; now you don’t have to wait until the end of a track before finding out how much you suck, you can suck in real time. The game is loaded with Metallica-based extras: videos, history, VH1 inspired Metallifacts for every song, plus the song editor from World Tour. It is a complete package even without the excellent track list. Add that in and it is easily the best Guitar Hero game since Neversoft took over, maybe even better than Guitar Hero 2. My track wishlist is getting smaller. Maybe Jimmy Page and Lars Ulrich should get together and compare selling out notes. Then Hetfield can beat both their asses with a big stick for making us wait this long.