Note: This review is of the Xbox 360 version of the game.  If you know of any significant difference between this version and the PS3 edition, please leave a note in the comments.

I'm a music game newbie.  Prior to my very recent purchase of the original Rock Band kit, my rhythmic tapping experiences has been limited to the lowrider minigame in Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas, the demo of PaRappa the Rapper that came with my PS1, and my knocking on any van I happen to see a-rocking.  Truthfully, I just never saw anything in Guitar Hero or Rock Band that appealed to me.  I've been fumbling with an actual guitar off and on for years now, and I can still barely play the riff to Smoke on the Water.  So I figured banging around on plastic "instruments" might just feed a delusion that I'm a capable musician and pull me away from the pursuit of my art.

But fuck all that now.  I'm hooked.  When Pearl Jam, one of my favorite bands of all time and the only one still in existence with enough of a rock pedigree to pull off a cover of Baba O'Riley, released their first album as Rock Band DLC, I was finally intrigued.  I'd been chin-bouncing to the rhythm of those songs since the early '90s, and I wanted to know what it would be like to follow a genuine Jeff Ament bass line.  When GameStop listed the full band kit on sale for $60, I pounced.

So yeah, I'm hooked.  Far from living up to the music game genre's most common criticism ("It ruins the purity of the music, man!"), playing songs in Rock Band has actually increased my musical appreciation.  It's hard these days to find time to just sit and listen to a song or an album like I used to.  Music is background noise for most of us.  Something to drown out traffic or the conversations of other people when we're waiting on an oil change.  Outside of going to concerts, I couldn't tell you how long it had been since I took more than a few minutes out of the day to focus all my attention on listening to music.

But with music games, you have to listen.  Depending on which instrument you choose, you even have to dissect a song.  Instead of dampening my appreciation of music, playing Rock Band has actually made me admire music I used to hate.  I'd rip out my ears and feed them to a homeless Emilio Estevez before putting Bon Jovi's Wanted Dead or Alive on my iPod, but I'll be damned if I don't enjoy the hell out of playing its drum line.

Yes, this is a review of Guitar Hero Smash Hits (Guitar Hero Greatest Hits, for those of you in Europe and down under).  But I thought it was important to give you a little background.  I have no prior experience with this bloated franchise and can only compare it to my time with Rock Band.  But since GameStop sold out of the band kits almost as soon as they went on sale, so I'm sure there are a fair number of you in the same situation as me.  So how does Guitar Hero Smash Hits stand up?

Not well, actually.  First, the good: There's a decent selection of classic rock tracks on this disc that aren't available in Rock Band.  Whereas Harmonix has focused on bringing out a few classic staples amongst a flood of contemporary songs, Smash Hits pulls the best tracks from Guitar Hero I, II, and III.  This means plenty of well-known standards like I Love Rock and Roll, Hit me with Your Best Shot, and Carry on My Wayward Son.  This is great for playing in a group, as there's a good chance you'll find a playlist with something for everyone.  On the downside, there's not a lot of chance for discovery here.

And the downsides just keep piling on after that.  First and most notable: these songs sound like crap.  Before Guitar Hero World Tour, Activision's franchise didn't support a full band, so the games that originally featured these tracks used studio mixes.  But in order to split the tracks into their drum, guitar, bass, and vocal components, the original masters had to be used.  This should make for a richer experience, but the problem is in the mix.  My 360 is hooked up to a 5.1 surround system, and no matter the setting, Guitar Hero Smash Hits just came out muted and flat.  Vocals may overpower every part of one song and be drowned out by the guitar in another.  All of the separate instrument streams are put together well and can be a blast to play, but the overall audio package is shoddy.

Almost as bad, there's no support for Guitar Hero World Tour DLC.  Even though Smash Hits is supposed to continue World Tour's full band experience, you're stuck with the tracks that come on the disc and whatever amateur chiptunes you might want to download from the user-generated community (some of which, in all fairness, are pretty entertaining recreations of classic video game music).  This is an especially ridiculous omission when both Rock Band 1 and 2 share the same music store.  It's not like you can't play World Tour downloadable tracks in Smash Hits, so it seems either lazy or greedy of Activision to not give Smash Hits players access to them as well.

This actually speaks to a larger point with Activision in general.  They've surpassed EA as the largest video game publisher in the world, and they seem to want to use that leverage to bleed consumers dry.  The Guitar Hero franchise is a perfect example.  Instead of releasing new tracks as downloads, they seem hell-bent on creating superfluous retail releases on an almost monthly basis.  Just in the last year, we've seen Guitar Hero World Tour, Guitar Hero Metallica, Guitar Hero Aerosmith, and now Smash Hits.  That's not including the handheld releases, though those don't really count.  The Nintendo DS' Guitar Hero On Tour can't be expected to share the same online music store as the others, but there's no reason for the console releases not to.  It really seems like Smash Hits is meant to lure people into spending full price for World Tour instead of providing another access point to the platform like Rock Band's releases have done.  It makes sense to have exclusive tracks on each disc, but not having cross-support for DLC will eventually alienate a lot of potential players.  Between this nonsense and Activision's seeming desire to make every game come with a $100+ accessory, the publisher's public opinion isn't looking very rosy.

(On the other hand, Activision has been very nice in sending review copies of games to this website.  If you happen to work for the publisher's PR, ignore the rest of this review and know that I think Guitar Hero Smash Hits is better than a blowjob.)

Anyway, Guitar Hero Smash Hits kind of sucks.  As a franchise newbie, I'm happy to have access to these songs, but there's nothing much here for Guitar Hero veterans.  It's nice to play these classic tracks with a full band, but you'd be better served if you were allowed to pick and choose what you wanted via DLC.  And I know how you've been saving your pennies so you can drop half a grand on the upcoming DJ Hero and Tony Hawk: Ride games.  Now with even more plastic accessories!