Metallica . . . Guitar Hero . . . It's Official!

[echoes]

eh? it has been known for a long time that the game has been in development. maybe that is what you mean by worst kept secret?

[metalmike]

As previously reported, GUITAR HERO: METALLICA will be released in the first half of 2009. Songs to appear on the game include: Metallica songs: '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'. Other songs: 'No Excuses' by ALICE IN CHAINS 'Turn The Page' by BOB SEGER 'Hell Bent For Leather' by JUDAS PRIEST 'Demon Cleaner' by KYUSS 'Tuesdays Gone' by LYNYRD SKYNYRD 'Blood and Thunder' by MASTODON 'Armed and Ready' by MICHAEL SCHENKER GROUP 'Mother of Mercy' by SAMHAIN 'Black River' by THE SWORD. Additional songs from FOO FIGHTERS, QUEEN and SLAYER. According to Game Informer, the Metallica-branded rhythm game follows the Guitar Hero World Tour paradigm, allowing players to take up guitar, drums, bass, or vocals. Also - like Guitar Hero: Aerosmith before it - this game's roughly 45-song tracklist will be comprised of more than just Metallica songs, including other bands that have been influential throughout the metal group's nearly 30-year history.

[anonymous0]

wicked - going to see them again in Paris in april!

rock on.

[metalmike]

wicked - going to see them again in Paris in april!

rock on.

Next up on the Guitar Hero stage … enter Metallica.
The legendary hard rockers are providing the latest riff on Guitar Hero, with a game based on their music expected in stores during the first half of 2009 for Xbox 360, Wii, PlayStation 3 and PS2. No price or rating has been set, but past GH games have sold for $40 to $50 and have been rated T for ages 13-up.
Us being a pretty guitar-oriented band, I think we were pretty much destined to do something with Guitar Hero," says guitarist Kirk Hammett. "It's a natural sort of relationship. We jumped at the chance."

Guitar Hero: Metallica plays out differently from Guitar Hero: Aerosmith, the first GH game based on one band (released in June). "There's a historical element involving some memorable gigs we have played, but it's not something that follows a chronological timeline to a T," says drummer Lars Ulrich. "We kind of wanted it to be a little bit more about who we are now than a who-we-were-in-1986 type of thing."
After an opening set of two Metallica songs — complete with the 3-D animated band on-screen — players take the role of a fledgling group of rockers inspired to create their own band. The story line, Ulrich says, "is about helping out a bunch of young dudes to put a band together to come on the road with us."

Metallica is one of the few bands worthy of a solo title, says Luke Plunkett of game news site Kotaku.com, "because they're one of the few popular enough — and with a large enough back catalog — to make it a worthwhile endeavor. A lot of their biggest songs are built on fast drums, fast guitars and epic solos, which should make them more enjoyable to play."

Band members Hammett, Ulrich, singer James Hetfield and bassist Robert Trujillo had a motion-capture performance session to bring their 3-D characters to life. About 40% of the 45-plus songs will be from artists that influenced Metallica, played concerts with them or appeared on 1998 covers album Garage Inc. Among them: Queen, the Foo Fighters, Alice in Chains, Lynyrd Skynyrd, Bob Seger, Kyuss and Samhain.

"That is another cool facet of Guitar Hero," Hammett says. "Younger kids are exposed to all this great rock and heavy metal they'd never be exposed to otherwise."

You can play solo or with up to four — two guitarists, singer and drums — using current game controllers. You also can add a second pedal (sold separately) to propel double bass drums as Ulrich does. The game takes its cue from Metallica's ferocity. "It's a couple grades harder than Guitar Hero World Tour," says lead designer Alan Flores.

[metalmike]

In the three years since Guitar Hero stole the video game stage, fast-fingered consumers have bought more than 22 million units. Now, Activision and developer Neversoft are looking to kick the franchise up a notch with Guitar Hero: Metallica, due early in 2009.
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."

The time is right for a Metallica game. The band is back atop the heavy metal world. Its latest album, Death Magnetic, has gone platinum after premiering at No. 1 on Billboard's Top 200 chart — its fifth consecutive album to do so. It also received four Grammy nominations — best rock album, best recording package, rock instrumental (Suicide and Redemption) and best metal performance (My Apocalypse) — and the band is a 2009 Rock and Roll Hall of Fame nominee.

USA TODAY talked with Metallica drummer Lars Ulrich and guitarist Kirk Hammett, as well as Flores, about the upcoming game

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.

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

[metalmike]

Metallica . . . Guitar Hero . . . It's Official!



Neversoft has some big things planned for GUITAR HERO: METALLICA, including a higher difficulty level and the ability to play with double kick drums. The addition of bands that influenced Metallica is also bringing some big names to the game, and Metallica drummer Lars Ulrich claimed some of the additions brought some headaches due to content. The main offender? SLAYER. "I'm super psyched we got Slayer in there," Ulrich told Game Informer. "Slayer's got to be part of any heavy metal video game. There had been some issues with their lyrics. That gets into a whole slew of stuff like, 'Microsoft won't do it if this lyrical content is in there.' There's all this bullshit you have to deal with, but we stood up for Slayer, and we finally got Slayer cleared like a week ago."

[Caaz]

saw metallica at Reading festival...they were fucking awesome.
seeing mastodon on there also is going to be pretty sweet.

the song list sounds amazing too

[anonymous0]

i havn't seen teh track listing yet - saw them in Sheffield for the Load tour - couldn't hear for three days after that.

In top three gigs of all time!

[Aaron_IL]

Metallica can kiss my ass.

F'n Napster killers.......

[metalmike]

Metallica can kiss my ass.

F'n Napster killers.......

Limewire is better.

[azsapphire387]

Game demonstration from Activision's conference at CES 2009.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=osOgBS5tybk

Watch in high quality if you can, it makes a big difference.

[metalmike]

Guitar Hero . . . Worst Kept Secret, Part II
1/15/2009



Remember that "first half of 2009" stuff? Well, we actually have a real date for you now for the all 'Tallica Guitar Hero game . . . March 29 in North America for Xbox 360 and Sony Playstation 3, with our friends outside of North America seeing the game in early May. Nintendo Wii and PS2 will follow later in the Spring, also most likely in early May.

In case you missed the December news story, Guitar Hero Metallica allows you to play as us in either single instrument or band career game modes in your choice of some famous settings or new venues with in the round staging. Included are 28 Metallica songs along with a few from some of our favs like Alice in Chains, the Foo Fighters, Slayer, Machine Head and Queen. There is also an all new Expert+ difficulty setting featuring two bass drum kick pedals (!!!) along with all the gameplay modes from Guitar Hero World Tour.

We've got some fun stuff planned leading up to release, and of course more details and previews of the game, so stay tuned! And if you would like to check out the trailer again, click here.

[Caaz]

i hate the fact stuff is released like 2 months later outside of america...the wait being in england is a bitch.

[azsapphire387]

Guitar Hero . . . Worst Kept Secret, Part II
Remember that "first half of 2009" stuff? Well, we actually have a real date for you now for the all 'Tallica Guitar Hero game . . . March 29 in North America for Xbox 360 and Sony Playstation 3, with our friends outside of North America seeing the game in early May. Nintendo Wii and PS2 will follow later in the Spring, also most likely in early May.

I'm really tired of this crap. Guitar Hero III, Aerosmith, and World Tour have apparently all sold the best on the Wii. So now Wii owners get shafted for 1-2 months because we buy this crap? I mean Activision was just about done making it up to Wii owners by issuing replacement GH3 discs with Dolby ProLogic II support and then enabling DLC in GHWT. Even then, we still don't get all the DLC because "the songs are too long so the files are too big." Let us make that decision. If I run out of space because I downloaded too many long songs, I'll buy another SD card. I must really be a glutton for punishment.

I have a PS3 with Rock Band 1 and 2, but it never leaves my house (personal rule). The Wii goes with me to all of my friends' places, and I take all the GH stuff with me because we prefer it over Rock Band. I guess I could buy it for PS3 and have a guitar that I like using for Rock Band (also a 2nd guitar for multiplayer) and not have to wait out an extra delay, but I really wanted to keep all of my GH games on the Wii and all RB games on the PS3.

Also, I feel your pain, Caaz. Waiting for Sony of America (SCEA) to catch up with Sony of Europe (SCEE) is like Europe/Australia always being forced to wait for everything else sold in North America.

[Caaz]

had to wait an extra month and a half for world tour..was proper miffed.

i did however with my nintendo get a thing which changes the region which name completely avoids me for some reason for supersmashbrosbrawl, however was pissed when i went to update my console the next day it make the shitting thing not work at all.
with technology today im sure it shouldnt take that long to do the languages and code it to european consoles.

they said 1/4 2009, which march i guess is OK...but if its end of may, thats basically june - june is the summer (if only the weather in england would corralate to the bloody summer months ofc).