When the original Guitar Hero hit the PS2, it was clear that the music genre that we’d known for a while, dominated by the likes of Dance Dance Revolution, would be changed forever. Guitar Hero II was met with even more enthusiasm as people who’d played the first for hundreds of hours wanted more, and it indeed delivered.

And then Guitar Hero Encore: Rock the ’80s was released. And then Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock. And then Guitar Hero Aerosmith. And then Guitar Hero: World Tour. And then Guitar Hero: Metallica. And now we have Guitar Hero: Smash Hits, to be followed up later this year with Guitar Hero: Van Halen, Guitar Hero V and Band Hero. Oh, and then there’s the offshoot DJ Hero.

And let’s not forget about Rock Band. And Rock Band 2. And the forthcoming The Beatles: Rock Band. Or the three Guitar Hero DS games. Oh, and Rock Band Unplugged on the PSP.

I think you get my point. By my count, I’ve listed nearly 20 titles right there, and it looks like we’re only just getting started. Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you’ve probably played at least a couple of these games, and they’re probably starting to grow a little stale. Or if, like us, you’ve played them all, a lot stale.

So that brings us to the version, I’ll say, at hand, Guitar Hero: Smash Hits. The game is a compilation of some of the best tracks from Guitar Hero 1, 2, 3, Rock the ’80s and Aerosmith. The song list is great, to be sure, though there are certainly some we would drop in favor of others (where’s Clapton, for instance?). But on the whole, it’s a great setlist.

But, we’ve played all of these songs before. It’s possible that you’re relatively new to the franchise and in that case this will all be new to you. But whatever the case may be, it doesn’t change the fact that this is simply a rehash of existing songs with the only “new” thing being the ability to play them as a full band. While that’s cool and all, this really should have been DLC or even multiple track packs.

The game’s main feature set is largely the same as Guitar Hero World Tour, with a couple of the additions seen in Guitar Hero: Metallica tossed in, such as the Expert+ setting for drummers on select songs (roughly about half of them it seems). It forgoes the gig-based structure of World Tour and instead goes by the setlist-based setup of GH: Metallica, where you unlock the next handful of songs (and their corresponding venue) by accruing a certain number of stars. While the requirements in GH: Metallica were pretty low (I “beat” the game with only 40% complete), you’ll need much more to move on here, which I’m happy to see as it means you have to work harder to progress. But the result is the same where you can skip songs that you’re not good at (or don’t like) and still make it through the game, which is nice.

While the setlist is indeed great as a whole (featuring nearly 50 songs, all of which are master tracks, though two of them are live versions), there are three main problems that I have with the songs. Firstly, the note structure has changed on seemingly every track. If you’ve memorized these songs in other games, you’ll find that you have to play them differently here, and many times it’s not for the better. Note progressions sometimes don’t make sense when compared to how you’d play it on guitar, and things just generally feel “off” if you’ve played them before.

Secondly, the changes to the note structure sometimes introduce the purple lines/notes for using the touch pad on the newest guitar. You can play these notes without strumming, and unlike hammer-on/hammer-off notes, if you miss one, it doesn’t break your string (in other words, you can play a note just by tapping even if you missed the one before). In these cases, it makes these sections way easier than they were originally as you can just tap your way through a solo instead of having to pair proper strumming with the notes. Even in situations where the purple notes weren’t added in, many solos are now just giant runs of hammer-on notes, which make them a lot easier to hit.

The result here is that I’m now able to breeze through solos and sections of songs that I used to struggle with. While I had a hard time getting through the opening to “Through the Fire and Flames” on Expert, as the entire opening is now comprised of purple notes, I can tap my way through and usually come out still in the green. So it’s now no longer a question of, “Can you beat song X on Expert?”, but rather, “Can you beat song X on Expert in Game X?” because many of them are way easier here.

My third complaint is that some of the mixes sound off. Queens of the Stone Age’s “No One Knows” is a good example – the guitar is drowned out (even when you’re only playing guitar), the bass is cranked up and the whole thing sounds too boomy. I’ve heard similar complaints in the office about other bands that I’m not constantly running on my iPod, but it’s clear that something isn’t right here. When you’ve heard a song a hundred times and the mix is slightly different, you can tell immediately. When it’s way off like it is here, you don’t even want to play it. Now, that’s not to mean that the whole thing sounds bad – I didn’t notice a problem with most of the songs here. But if you’re thinking about buying the game for one or two songs in particular, buyer beware.

One odd thing that I found with regard to the Career mode is that when you start up the game for the first time, you create a logo and set your band name. However, you can’t do this separately when you’re playing as a band. The interface for this in World Tour was convoluted, but it worked. However, you don’t even get the option here. One problem with this is that you can’t have two active bands at a time, so if you like to play with different sets of friends separately, you can’t really do that. Granted, the progression is very simple and you’re not building up fans or anything of that nature (sadly), but still, you can’t have the reward of working through the tracks with more than one group of people at a time. I guess you could load up a different account/save and work from that (which is trickier on the Wii than the PS3 or 360), but that’s a back-door solution to this issue (though, admittedly, some people will never care about this).

One carryover from Guitar Hero: Metallica is that every song is immediately unlocked and available for play in the Quick Play mode. Love it or hate it, you can jump right into the hardest tracks right from the start.

One last, very important thing that I need to mention here is that the game is as standalone as it gets. It does not support any of the DLC from World Tour, nor even have the option for playing downloaded tracks at all. It does allow you to play stuff made in GH Tunes, but I think most people tried that a couple times and forgot about it. While all of this is par for the course on the PS2, it’s a crying shame that nothing you’ve downloaded for the other Guitar Hero titles can be played here, and this content can’t be moved over to any other game in the series. At this point in time, why would you pony up for songs (which we’ve played before) that you can only play on this one disc?

Closing Comments
Guitar Hero: Smash Hits is the definition of “milking”. Sure, the setlist is great, and if you’ve somehow never played these tracks before, they’re a ton of fun. Even if you have played them all, being able to sit down at the drums or try out your vocal abilities with them is great. However, there are a number of presentation issues that bother me (though they may not bother very casual players), and the fact that this wasn’t either DLC or released as multiple track packs is a big mistake.

The Ratings:

7/10 The Presentation: The progression works, but it’s very simple for this day and age. Why can’t you customize individual bands?

7.0 The Graphics: The animations are only passable, and while the visuals work well enough, they’re nothing to write home about.

8.0 The Sound: The song list is great, but some of the tracks have mixes that sound off and, in some cases, just downright bad.

7.0 The Gameplay: We’ve played these songs before, though tackling them as a band is nice. The note structures and easier level of difficulty is not good, however.

6.0 The Lasting Appeal: While it’s still a great party experience, I can’t score it higher here given that these tracks can’t carry over, nor does your existing DLC. Where’s the cross-game love?

7.0 Overall score

Again, before you buy Guitar Here Smash Hits, we recommend you sign up for the free Gamefly Trial Offer and rent this game for free before buying it. Sign up here: GameFly Trial

 Well, so I signed up for the 10 day trial. They send you 2 games out and the trial is for 10 days. I figured that would be more than enough time for me to test their service. So went ahead and I signed up. While they do ask for your credit card information, you wont get billed unless you decide to continue the service past the 10 day trial service. Cancelling it is easy so you wont have problems there.

Alright, so I got done filling out their form and what not and then I am able to login and browse the games they have. The searching capabilities are good for the site. It does feel a bit slow, however I think that has to do with me being on a wireless connection and being more than 100 feet away from base. So I’ll neglect the speed issue for now. OK so I login and I can quickly go and look for a game I am interested in. I browse for a bit and pick two games out. I picked out 2 XBOX 360 games since I also have XBOX 360 ( sorry no Wii games this time ) and it had been a while since I used it so I picked up Grand Theft Auto 4 and Gears of War 2. I thought that since these two games are very popular that they would probably be rented out and not in stock with many people checking them out.

Well, both games were available and I was able to get them. I ordered them on a Saturday and since mail doesn’t come Sunday, I had to wait until Monday to see if they would arrive then. Oh the agony of waiting!!! Anyway, come Monday, I was expecting the hot chick from their ads to deliver the games, but instead I got my normal mailman to bring them. There goes 1 point off their reputation! Just kidding. OK, so they arrived Monday, I have a feeling if mail was delivered on Sunday, they would have arrived then. I applaud them for their quick delivery.

I get two packages, well, CD mailer packages. They are quite sturdy and are inside a plastic wrapper. So I tear the plastic packaging open and booya! I am presented with a sturdy cardboard type holder. I open it and yes there are my games. One in each of the packages. The sturdy cardboard thing can be reversed and is a prepaid return package. That way you don’t have to spend money on return postage. That I wasn’t expecting. So that’s a good thing. Upon inspection of the games there are minor scratches on them. Like swirly type scratches. But they are very minor and I somewhat expected this from rental games. So I popped GTA 4 in my XBOX 360 and right away it worked. I setup the game and off I started playing. It never skipped, the sound never faltered. It was perfect. Alright, so after playing it for a few minutes, I decided to play Gears of War 2 for a bit. I popped it in and also right away I was playing without problems. I have XBOX Live so I went online only to have my butt kicked by daily players.

Alright, so I held onto the games until day 10. I decided to see if it would be alright to cancel then. I did not want to cancel but I figured I’d test that part out as well. So I dialed the phone number listed in the insert that came with the game. There is a couple of prompts where you have to push X number to get to customer service. Once I get a live person, which was under 1 minute since I made the call, I ask to have my account cancelled and that I would like to return the games now. I figured this is where they would ambush me with offers and try to do anything to keep me in their grips. Wrong! They only asked me if there was anything I disliked about their service. I said no and just didn’t want to continue it. (Lies! I wanted to continue it so bad!) Alright, so they said, OK, no problem. They ask my full name and address and a minute or two later, I am told my trial is over, I wont get charged to continue the service and I can return the games at my convenience.

I was surprised to hear that as other places would charge you until they received the game back. Not with GameFly. Alright, so I send the games back and that was that. I waited like a week or two before giving in and signing up for their $8.95 offer. The $8.95 a month offer is for one game out, you can have 2 games out for $12.95 a month. I usually just play one game non stop until I get tired of it. So I figured the $8.95 was just right for me. I went back to GameFly.com and logged into the account I originally made and simply activated my subscription and picked a game I wanted, Super Smash Bros. and the next day the game arrived in the mail. Talk about fast service.

So yeah, I think GameFly is a great service and easy to use. I recommend it to anyone who likes to rent games instead of buying them. I also recommend it if you would like to rent a game before buying it. They have new games in stock and make sure to have enough games for everyone. It has been 2 years since I’ve had the service and I have zero complaints about it. However, don’t take my word for it, sign up for their 10 day trial offer here: GameFly Free Trial Offer