2009 is a year that I often look back on fondly. For my 11-year-old self, I made a lot of great memories that year, and as a wide-eyed young preteen excited for almost anything you threw at him, games and movies were always exciting to me. 2009 was also the peak year of me being a "Guitar Hero" and "Rock Band" fanatic, and getting so many games that year was honestly very exciting for me. For the rest of the world, though, it was tiring: so many games were coming out in one year that the brand was being devalued, and even if they weren't bad, they just felt repetitive when a new game was coming out every month. The milking wasn't helped by "Guitar Hero: Smash Hits," which was a game consisting entirely of songs from previous "Guitar Hero" games, recreated to fit the full band gameplay style started with "Guitar Hero World Tour." It's almost like they were self-aware that they were milking the market dry. Even so, as unnecessary as this game was...I actually liked it.
Perhaps my enjoyment of "Guitar Hero Smash Hits" comes from my general enjoyment of the series, but even if it's just a repackaging of older songs, they certainly picked a lot of good choices. Mixing entries from "Guitar Hero," "Guitar Hero II," "Guitar Hero Encore: Rocks the 80s" and "Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock" (as well as a random song from "Guitar Hero: Aerosmith"), the setlist is pretty varied and features some of the most noteworthy songs from the originals. Being able to hear the master recordings of them is also a bit of a blessing, and the new versions of the charts are plenty of fun. Not only that, but the ability to play these songs in a full band with the addition of Expert+ drums is definitely pretty awesome.
Now, as much as I've defended the game so far, that's not to say it's not a flawed experience. As I mentioned, it is literally the definition of milking the market: while the game is crafted very well and features a lot of great things, it is literally just "Guitar Hero World Tour" featuring older songs. There are no changes to the gameplay whatsoever, and it's a strange decision from Activision to have released this as a full-price standalone game when they very simply could've released it either as a cheap, downloadable title or as downloadable content for "Guitar Hero World Tour." This game didn't need to exist: Activision was clearly just greedily trying to milk every cent out of the market as possible, and there's no other reason it couldn't have been a downloadable expansion to the previous mainline entry.
And yet, as greedy of a ploy as it is...I actually enjoy it. Maybe it's the fact that Neversoft picked the right songs, maybe it's that the charts are insanely fun, or maybe it's that the game features band play for these classic songs, but it's absolutely a blast to play. I suppose it's just that I'm not too fond of Activision having forced customers to pay full price for it, instead of just releasing the songs as downloadable content. Still, it's definitely an enjoyable time, and if you can find it for a cheap price, go ahead a give it a whirl. As greedy as it is, the "Guitar Hero" series has done far worse than this.
Final rating: 7 out of 10 "Good"