Activision and developer Neversoft are looking to kick the Guitar Hero franchise up a notch with Guitar Hero: Metallica. Metallica has now confirmed that an all-Metallica Guitar Hero game will be released on March 29 2009 in North America for Xbox 360 and Sony Playstation 3.
Nintendo Wii and PS2 versions of Metallica Guitar Hero, and release date for countries outside North America, will follow on May 31st.
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USA Today has an interview and more details about the game. Guitar Hero Metallica allows you to play as Metallica in either single instrument or band career game modes in your choice of some famous settings or new venues with in the round staging.
Designed to challenge hard-core players, the game “is a lot harder, especially on drums. Well, it’s a lot harder all around, to tell the truth,” says lead designer Alan Flores. “Most of the songs have a higher level of difficulty, certainly at the end of the game when you are playing the old-school Metallica stuff where you play really, really fast and there’s lot of double bass (drum) playing, fast guitar playing and crazy leads.”
“Tushino is one of the biggest shows that has ever been played on the planet. It was a free show Metallica played with AC/DC and Pantera that some say 200,000 attended, others say 500,000. That really stood out in their mind as one of the craziest shows they ever played so we had to recreate that venue and put it in the game.”
“Metallica wanted to look like how they look now in game so we just modeled off their current appearance. But we did do some alternate versions of the band members that you will see at some point in the game as well.”
Metallica’s Lars Ulrich: “We’re proud that all our different records are represented and it’s not just one foot in nostalgia. It’s pretty rare you get a chance to do something that is cutting edge that’s kind of new and a new creative experience. So we have really enjoyed being part of that creative experience.”
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Included are 28 Metallica songs along with a few from some of Metallica buddies like as Alice in Chains, the Foo Fighters, Slayer, Machine Head and Queen.
Confirmed songs:
Alice In Chains: No Excuses
Bob Seger: Turn The Page
Judas Priest: Hell Bent For Leather
Kyuss: Demon Cleaner
Lynyrd Skynyrd: Tuesdays Gone
Mastodon: Blood and Thunder
Michael Schenker Group: Armed and Ready
Samhain: Mother of Mercy
The Sword: Black River
Confirmed artists are Foo Fighters, Queen, and Slayer
Confirmed Metallica tracks until now:
Enter Sandman
For Whom The Bell Tolls
Fuel
Hit The Lights
King Nothing
Master of Puppets
No Leaf Clover
Nothing Else Matters
Sad But True
The Unforgiven
Where I May Roam
Q: How did this game come about?
Flores: I think their interest in the project really fueled it. Both Lars’ and (singer) James (Hetfield’s) kids play Guitar Hero and they were really excited about it. They wanted to do it and, of course, we wanted to do it, so it made sense.
Ulrich: I think my kids decided for me. I was first introduced to Guitar Hero in my house about a year ago by my kids (sons Myles, 10, and Layne, 7; he also has a 1-year-old son, Bryce, with his girlfriend, actress Connie Nielsen). They became big fans of Deep Purple and Black Sabbath and all the bands I grew up on. It seemed like this was the first video game that really brought the family together.
We were all sitting there and we were all sharing it. It wasn’t something that was just about the person playing, it was about everybody. It became a collective thing. This thing on a worldwide basis was obviously turning into a phenomenon. There is a saying in Metallicaland: “This is what we call a no-brainer.”
Hammett: I don’t play video games very much, but I love what Guitar Hero does for young kids, actually kids of all ages.
Q: What is the story line?
Flores: It doesn’t play out chronologically. We couldn’t do that because then you would play something off of (the band’s first album from 1983) Kill ‘Em All and you would throw the controller against the wall and stop playing. We have to do it based on difficulty. (At the start) you play two songs as Metallica, and you are so inspired by Metallica that you decide to create your own band. Then you follow Metallica around to all these iconic venues they have played.
Ulrich: We wanted a little bit of a different slant. Basically, you start out and you play some songs and you get warmed up, and there’s a competition. We’re trying to pick a band to play with us and go on the road with us.
Hammett: There is one venue called The Stone, a nightclub in San Francisco that we would play regularly at the beginning of our career, and another in London, The Hammersmith Odeon (now called the Hammersmith Apollo) we would play in the late ’80s. It’s nice to be able to travel back to that point in your career and relive it in the game.
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Q: So is there a final reward at the end?
Flores: There is a particular venue that Metallica has played that they sort of view as the pinnacle of their success. It’s funny, out of all the venues they have played, there are so many huge ones, for them to really pick one out and single that out, it’s kind of interesting.
Q: And there are special Metallica-flavored touches?
Flores: We tried to put as much Metallica into the game as possible. In battle mode (where two players compete against each other), we have “amp overload” and “whammy bar lock,” and we took those and sort of themed them to Metallica. So we have one that is called “Fade to Black” that totally blacks out your opponent’s highway, which makes it devastating for them to play because they can’t see any notes. We have “Ride The Lightning,” which is the electrical attack, and we have “Trapped Under Ice,” which freezes your whammy bar.
Q: Any tales you can share about the motion-capture session (where Metallica “performed” while wearing sensor-laden skintight suits that relay motion data to computers)?
Ulrich: We were standing there with our tight rubber suits on and those wires coming out of every part of our bodies. It took us a little while to know our way around the whole process, but we figured it out.
Flores: They did six songs two different ways, in the standard stage and then the in-the-round setup. To help them get into it, we were all headbanging. At one point, James turned to Kirk and he goes, “Man, we are in a video game!” It was pretty funny, because we were sitting there saying, “Man, we are watching Metallica!”
Hammett: Not only did they scan us playing the songs, but they also scanned us talking to the audience and waving to the audience, all sorts of things to make it more lifelike. They also capped us for bands who had been an influence on us and put in those bands who had played with us in the past. So you are getting a lot of Metallica experience.
Q: What comes to mind when you think about people playing this game and songs you have done?
Hammett: It is kind of weird to know that people are going to have an experience that is going to be similar to my own experience playing and performing music. It’s going to open people up maybe to the prospect of taking the whole thing one step further and actually picking up an instrument. We might be rearing an entire culture of future musicians. That prospect is just super-cool.
Q: What do you think about video games as a music delivery system?
Hammett: I have a sneaking suspicion that the video game industry and the record industry are going to eventually just merge into one big thing. That’s cool in that it gives you a different sort of dynamic, a virtual aspect of the delivery of music rather than it just being one-dimensional. It’s enabling the artists to present the music in a very new and different and modern way.
Ulrich: It’s unfolding as we are watching. It is definitely the new frontier. We put out Death Magnetic the day it came out on downloadable format for the game, and it’s been through the roof and reception has been incredible.
Certainly, as I have seen with my kids, it is a way to get kids passionate and involved in music. … I just look forward to March when I can show that to my kids. In between arguing with them about homework and vegetables and whatever else, I can say, “Hey, look, maybe you are thinking Dad is a complete dork, but he’s got his own video game.” And at least that’s worth something.
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Want more of this? See these posts:
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Guitar Hero: Metallica is prepared to bring the thunder in a big way. It offers a ton of content and goodies for fans of the band. Get your Metallica Guitar Hero today!
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