All metal heads rejoice, place your devil horns in the air, and mosh to Metallica! Is Activision, the master of puppets, pulling your strings? or is it some kind of (ROCK) monster?

Unlike Guitar Hero: Aerosmith, this isn’t the story of the band's career from start, as a band playing in the basement, through to the present, i.e. Super bowel gig—it is however something much more fan oriented and something much more fitting with the features that were added to the series with GH: World Tour (GH4).

The game unlike any of the previous Guitar Hero games, starts you immediately playing as Metallica—once the first song ends, you're left to choose a few other songs to play, by the band, with the goal of collecting enough stars to continue the story. Once you’ve got enough stars to continue, the story begins to unfold: You've been inspired by Metallica's work, leading you to create a band which later becomes Metallica’s support band, this is an intersting way for the game to ask you to create a band member(s) depending how many of you are playing. And as a Metallica fan myself, it's a cool idea just a shame that you never play the Metallica songs with your band but rather play as every other band.

But now this is where the gameplay gets interesting… and is also a bit of a let down. When playing Metallica songs you play as the band, but when you play other band's songs (like Foo Fighters, System of a Down, Motorhead, etc.), you play as your custom band, causing it to lose the feel of this is a Metallica game, not just another Guitar Hero.

This takes away from some of the game's appeal, but whenever you play as Metallica it will bring a massive smile to your face, esspically if you're on the drums taking the seat of Lars Ulrich, and you just hit those big notes of certain songs and you'll feel like your the best damn drummer in the world, if not the best... until reality comes crashing back down, when you're playing as other bands.. especially if you don't know the songs.

It’s nice to see what other bands that Metallica like or was inspired by, but when you’re playing every last Metallica song ever, nothing else matters... Sorry, I had to do that.

Every instrument makes you feel like you’re playing as the band, especially the drums. World Tour’s band feature is included in the game, and to make things even better, you can also use the Rock Band gear to play if you already own it. However, we recommend you get the World Tour kit for the best experience, as it has a better drum set than Rock Band.

If you purchased the DLC album: Death Magnetic, which can be used with GH3 and WT, then you can play the DLC within GH: Metallica.

6.9 Graphics Although the graphics are standard Guitar Hero graphics, similar to those in World Tour, character models and animation are quite impressive. With the realistic look of each member, it makes you feel that you're watching an actual Metallica performance. 9.9 Sound If you love Metallica, you'll be glad to know that nearly every one of their songs is in the game, in addition to some from other bands as well. 9.9 Gameplay The gameplay is pretty unique at the moment, because although it's a spin off title, it packs all the same features as World Tour. Yes, you can play as the entire band and even use the Rock Band instrustments if you want. 7.9 Replay Value Although replayability in a GH game has always been rather poor, Guitar Hero Metallica has alot of features that fans will love, which all come down to how many stars you get for each song, so it has a bit more value than the other games. 8.2 Overall For any massive Metallica fan, GH: Metallica is worth getting. However, for the casual audience or regular GH fans, it may not be worth it as the game is full of features and trivia, which mainly appeal to fans of the band.