It's a Guitar Hero Game! With 52 included songs!

It's got metric tons of Metallica! 31 hard rockin' tunes!

But I'm having a hard time recommending this tile.

For those of you who have played Guitar Hero: World Tour, the gameplay is almost identical. For those of you who have never played a Guitar Hero game before, here's the gist. You and up to three of your buddies play through various hard rockin' tunes in a game play that's similar to Dance Dance Revolution, only instead of putting your feet on different tiles in time to the music, you're moving your fingers to press different buttons on a guitar-like controller while you "strum" with the other hand. (deep breath) That covers guitar and bass playing. With Guitar Hero: World Tour, the ability to play on a drum set controller and sing with a USB microphone was included. So, now you have a whole band. You can play with people in your living room, or use the Wii's Wi-Fi connection to create a virtual band of people playing online. That's right, you could be playing Guitar Hero with the neighbors, or with someone in Poughkeepsie. Like other Wii titles, you can add friends to a friends list, and invite them to your virtual jam. I should point out that for local play in your living room, each player will need their own Wii controller in addition to the Guitar Hero controller. Wii controllers plug into the drum set and guitar controllers, and the singer will need their own even though the microphone plugs directly into the Wii system.

GH:M adds support for a second bass pedal, allowing you to up the difficulty on your drummer to almost mind-blowing levels. (And really, who doesn't like torturing the drummer?) Also, when playing GH:M, a meter in the lower right hand corner shows you what star rating your score is currently up to. (Star ratings range from 0-5, with 0 usually meaning that you've played so badly that the crowd has booed you off the stage before the end of the song.)

Now, the current generation of Guitar Hero games have great gameplay, and are one of the ways that I've introduced my own daughter to some of the music I used to listen to and enjoy. I enjoy playing them. Having said that, I have some real issues with GH:M for the Wii.

First, parental advisories apply, and then some. This is hard rock. More to the point, this is Metallica. The complete list of tracks for the game is only a google search away, and from there, several sites will let you peruse the lyrics to any of the included songs. While I could justify earlier games on the basis that lyrics can be hard to understand, the current crop of Guitar Hero games features you singing. As a result, lyrics are placed on the screen for you to sing along to. If you don't want your kids really knowing the words to "Mercyful Fate" (count me as one of those parents), then be aware that they're included. Moreover, as an extra, you can access the lyrics to songs as an extra. I suppose that's so you won't embarrass yourself trying to sing "Creeping Death" in front of the kids. Moreover, costumes can be risque. One of the things my daughter did when we first booted up GH:WT was to go through the list of characters and place them in more modest outfits. That works for the characters, but when playing with anything less than four players, the game fills in the rest of the band with random characters, and those outfits can be a bit risqué.

If that wasn't enough of a problem, the sad truth is that Guitar Hero: Metallica for the Wii does not allow you to use any of the extra downloadble songs for Guitar Hero: World Tour. Sadly, this means that you can't play Rick Springfield's Jessie's Girl in this title, and as far as I'm concerned, that dog won't hunt. Nor does this game allow you to purchase downloadable content.

Who would like this game? People who really, really, really like Guitar Hero games, and people who like Metallica. People who fit into both categories already own it. Also, people who have it in for their drummers.

But if this would be your first title, I'd recommend you give this a pass, and pick up Guitar Hero: World Tour instead. The gameplay is nearly identical, and with the addition of downloadable songs (200 Nintendo Wii points apiece), World Tour is clearly the superior game.