14 DAY TRIAL // The music game industry has seen a massive increase in the past year in terms of sales and popularity, as the top two franchises, Guitar Hero and Rock Band, did extremely well and were purchased by a lot of gamers. Now, as the hype is slowly beginning to fade away from the latest iterations in both series, their developers, Activision and Harmonix respectively, are hard at work on new titles.
While Harmonix is making a completely new game for the legendary Beatles band, it seems that Activision is quite content with creating a special edition version of its latest Guitar Hero: World Tour game, dedicated to famous rock band Metallica. The game, dubbed Guitar Hero: Metallica obviously, will have a rich portfolio of songs from the band, plus a few other groups like Slayer, Queen or Judas Priest, with the full tracklist being available here.
Now, the lead designer of the game, Alan Flores, has talked with MTV Multiplayer about some of the more sensitive issues the team at Activision has encountered during the development of the game. Flores went on to tackle the subject of former Metallica bassist Cliff Burton, who died in a tragic bus accident in 1986, and how his bass lines would appear in the game, saying that players would feel him “in spirit” in the title.
“That was actually kind of sensitive thing with the guys in Metallica. We asked them about that and they never said no. They just went, “Ehhh.” They didn’t want to make current bassist Rob Trujillo feel like he wasn’t as important a part of the band as he is. So there’s no Cliff Burton in the game, but there’s Cliff Burton in spirit. You get to play his basslines. We talk about him in the Metalli-facts trivia as well.”
It seems that the development team at Activision has really done a great job and the game will be a definite must-have for any true Metallica and video game fan. Look forward to it as it is slated to hit store shelves at the end of March.