10 Cruel Difficulty Modes You Can't Handle

During the Guitar Hero craze that swept the mid-2000s, completing the likes of Through The Fire And The Flames and Raining Blood on Expert would be coveted badge of honour. But Guitar Hero: Metallica dialled up the difficulty even more with the addition of an Expert+ difficulty for drums.

Only available on a selection of the game’s tracks, players would need to be drumming virtuosos or Lars Ulrich himself to make it to the end of any of these songs.

The blistering tempo of metal anthems like Master Of Puppets and One already make them exceedingly tricky to play on standard higher difficulties, but Expert+ made things far more technically demanding by introducing extra bass drum hits.

Whereas regular Expert difficulty would simplify more demanding parts by ignoring every other hit that was a 16th note or smaller (that's when there's four hits or more within a single beat), Expert+ mode includes every single hit. The bass drum is so fast that players were recommended to use a second kick pedal for this mode.

The use of ghost notes (quieter hits) only added to the technicality required to play these drum parts. After mastering Expert+, players will have mastered the drums.