Guitar Hero: Greatest Hits (Wii) Review

Greatest Hits has been released to plug some kind of gap in the market that seems to dictate that we're not allowed to go without a Guitar Hero game for more than a quarter of a year without foaming at the mouth and having withdrawal symptoms. The premise is that the soundtrack is made up of a selection of the best songs from the games before drumming and singing was integrated into the mix - Guitar Hero, Guitar Hero II, Guitar Hero III: Legends Of Rock, Guitar Hero Encore: Rocks The 80s, Guitar Hero: Aerosmith - all revamped to take advantage of the full band set.

As you would hope, then, the soundtrack is pretty good. In fact, there are some absolutely brilliant songs in there: Carry On Wayward Son (Kansas), Smoke On The Water (Deep Purple), More Than A Feeling (Boston) and Killer Queen (Queen) to name but a few, and there's a great variety in terms of time period, from 70s songs right up to the 2000s. To me, though, as somebody who keeps up to date with both Guitar Hero and Rock Band, some of the choices are actually disappointing and quite predictable - more and more the series' cumulative soundtracks, when downloadable content is factored in, are becoming converged. They need to be going in separate directions now if both are going to remain worthwhile as franchises.

The second problem with the tracklist is the exclusion of some noteworthy, close to essential, songs from past games. If tracks were picked based upon the worth in transferring them into full band experiences, what's the excuse for missing out songs such as Sweet Child O' Mine (Guns 'N' Roses), Ace Of Spades (Motorhead), Ziggy Stardust (David Bowie), Girlfriend (Matthew Sweet), Anarchy In The UK (Sex Pistols) or Knights Of Cydonia (Muse), for a start? Licence issues, perhaps? Still, at least you can play Through The Fire and Flames (Dragonforce) with a full band - one of the most unexpected pleasures of Guitar Hero III so long as you're not insane enough to attempt it on anything above medium difficulty.

If you've played World Tour, you pretty much know what to expect in terms of gameplay, as it's near identical. Players can select from guitar, bass, drums and vocals and progress through a career mode, though thankfully developers Beenox have made the excellent decision to unlock every song in quick play mode from the very beginning - it's just what the game needs, as now that a full band set up is the emphasis Guitar Hero is very much a multiplayer experience more than any other. Forcing players to go through the solo career to unlock songs no longer makes any sense. Things get a little cramped up on screen when playing a full four player game, and the interface is ever-so-slightly worse than that of World Tour (the score window is less easy to read), but it's more than usable.

For all it does well, though, there is the feeling that this is an unnecessary entry into the Guitar Hero series, especially since Guitar Hero 5 has now launched just a few months later. However, it does earn some worth in the disc export feature; by paying a few hundred Nintendo Points, owners of Guitar Hero 5 (and Band Hero in the future) can export some of the songs onto an SD card and play them within their new game. The number of exportable tracks is limited right now, but there is the possibility of more being made available at a later date. For the list of those exportable, check out this handy chart.