We know “Guitar Hero: Metallica” is coming. “Guitar Hero” publisher Activision announced the game in a financial filing (odd, we know) a couple of months ago.

That didn’t stop Metallica co-founder Lars Ulrich from getting a bit secretive about it when one of our MTV News reporters asked him about it recently.

“Let’s put it this way,” he told MTV News. “[Our next album] Death Magnetic comes out in September, and the day it comes out, it will be available in the ‘Guitar Hero 3‘ format, which we’re obviously super-psyched about. As I’ve born witness to in my house, its all about the next generation. My kids play ‘Guitar Hero’ every day, and to be able to get the Metallica record the day it comes out, that’s super cool.

“There’s an Aerosmith game out there that’s super successful, and if somebody’s gonna follow that up…we’re talking, and its exciting, and the people at ‘Guitar Hero’ and Activision are rapidly becoming our best new friends in the world. You can put the rest of it together yourself.”

Sounds like “Guitar Hero: Metallica” is indeed still in the works, no?

I came away from my first experience with Konami’s “Rock Revolution” a bit frustrated. The drums, while pleasantly complex, were daunting on the first go round.

E3 provided another opportunity to step up to the plate. Six buttons and a kick pedal or not, I wanted to slide up the difficulty settings and put the drum set to the test.

Last time, I played on easy. Piece of cake. This round, I picked Blink 182’s “All The Small Things,” ratcheted up the difficulty an unprecedented medium. How did I fare? Better, but I still ran into some of the same issues from before…

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I saw “Rock Band 2″ this morning. Both the new guitar and enhanced drums look great.

But I wanted to know their reaction to Activision’s announcement that “Rock Band”’s peripherals would be compatible with “Guitar Hero: World Tour.”

Unfortunately, they didn’t have much to say. “Rock Band”’s public relations representative told me they were “surprised” by the announcement. They didn’t know Activision was planning to incorporate compatibility.

That said, they were happy to hear the news (and so are we!). There should be an official statement from Harmonix soon.

At MTVNews.com today we have a report about “Rock Revolution” publisher Konami’s recent lawsuit against the makers of “Rock Band.” Konami alleges that MTV-owned development studio Harmonix has been infringing on three Konami patents.

In my report, MTV PR provides comment about the legal action:

“Konami’s actions are extremely surprising,” an MTV spokesperson said of the suit. “Unfortunately, successful products such as ‘Rock Band’ can often become targets for baseless litigation. We have substantial defenses to this claim and intend to vigorously defend it.”

Read the full story: ‘Rock Band’ Creators Sued By ‘Rock Revolution’ Publisher Konami

(Full disclosure: While “Rock Band” is published by MTV, we cover it at MTV News and MTV Multiplayer with same standards we cover all other video games.)

Not too long ago I was told how MTV Games‘ “Rock Band 2” would be different from the first “Rock Band.” I was among a group of games reporters in a small theater at the Los Angeles studios of Electronic Arts. The makers of “Rock Band 2″ were giving a demonstration. Later, they let us play the game, but I was feeling too sick to jump on the drums, wield the guitar and sing. (I did feel well enough to block the game with my head).

So, aside from the fact that “Rock Band 2″ will let gamers play World Tour mode online, this is how the new game is supposed to be different from the original…

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We won’t learn anything new about Tim Schafer’s Jack Black-starring rock action game, “Brutal Legend,” next week.

“Brutal Legend” will not be making an appearance at E3, Schafer told me over e-mail today. But “Psychonauts” fans need not worry; the game doesn’t appear in trouble.

“We’re not going to be showing at E3, but soon after that we hope,” said Schafer. “As soon as the dust settles from this whole [Activision Blizzard] merger thing we should be able to talk about the game a lot more.”

The last we heard of “Brutal Legend” was from Black himself at the MTV Movie Awards last month. The actor-comedian-musician was sporting a “Brutal Legend” t-shirt and told MTV News’ Kim Stolz thathis new game was “coming someday.”

Schafer’s comment comes on the same day the Activision Blizzard merger was approved by Activision shareholders. Blizzard and Vivendi, the game’s original publisher, will soon be a subsidiary of Activision.

Downloadable content has become one of the most important features this generation. Companies have found the best way to support games after launch is new levels, modes — or songs.

Both “Rock Band” and “Guitar Hero” have embraced this concept completely. Both “Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock” and “Rock Band” have attacked the downloadable content space harder than any other games before it.

But what happens after you buy it? MTV Games announced “Rock Band 2″ yesterday and “Guitar Hero: World Tour” has been public for a little while now. What happens to all that extra music you bough? Does it just disappear?

In some cases, it does.

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MTV Games announced this morning that “Rock Band 2” will be debuting on the Xbox 360 this September. The Associated Press added that the game will be hitting PS2, PS3 and the Wii by the end of the year. The big news, so far, is that the sequel will work more with its predecessor than many gamers may have expected.

From my MTV News story:

According to a press release from MTV Games, “Rock Band 2″ will initially be released exclusively on the Xbox 360 this September and will be fully compatible with the original instruments, as well as the more than 100 songs that were available to download for the first “Rock Band.” Like the first, the game will be developed by the MTV-owned Harmonix games studio.

This “Rock Band” sequel is a departure from recent music game sequels and spin-offs, including entries in the competing “Guitar Hero” franchise, which do not always sync up to the originals. For example, the new “Guitar Hero: Aerosmith” coming out this week does not work with downloadable content marked for “Guitar Hero III,” according to a report on gaming blog Joystiq.

“Rock Band 2″ comes from MTV Games, of course. But, no, that doesn’t mean that we already have a copy here at the MTV Multiplayer blog. The rest of my piece is at MTVNews.com.

If you read my column last week, you know I’ve spent this week on the road with my brother’s band, The Audition. They’re part of this summer’s Warped Tour.

Warped Tour’s bands are aimed at the same young demographic that MTV Games and Activision are counting on to buy new versions of “Rock Band” and “Guitar Hero” this fall.

“Rock Band” dominated the music games presence at Warped Tour. “Guitar Hero” was there; just not in a form you might expect.

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Sometimes a man’s got to juggle two blogs. And sometimes a man’s got to give in and post the same thing in both places. Patrick Klepek’s coverage of what we’re calling “The New Console War” spread beyond Multiplayer.

As I just noted on Kotaku as well, he’s given a comprehensive look at what is going to be a three-way (even four-way, depending on how you look at it) competition among major music games this fall. We’ll be on this story all year.

Klepek does, I think, a great job of setting up some of the main issues:

• Instrument Compatibility
• Band Exclusivity
• Price
• Consumer desire to buy more instruments
• Support for Downloadable Content

Read: ‘Rock Band’/ ‘Guitar Hero’ Rivalry Heats Up, Draws Third Competitor

The major music games of 2008 — “Rock Band,” “Guitar Hero,” “Rock Revolution” — are each taking a unique approach with their Wii version. Some have more features than others. As part of our continuing coverage of the heated competition between all these music games, we decided to break down the ways they do and don’t work with the most popular console out there, the Wii.

If you’re new to games because of the Wii, this is a very important decision. Let’s take a look at what we know about the Wii version of each game.

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Even if Konami did it first (see: “Drummania”), “Rock Band” introduced most people to video game drumming. It was no surprise “Guitar Hero” has added drums to their latest iteration and Konami’s “Rock Revolution” also includes it.

But each game’s approach to the drums is different from one another, different enough that it could make a difference to which game you end up buying.

To be fair, we don’t yet know what changes Harmonix and MTV Games will be making to their drum set for the next version of “Rock Band.” For now, however, we’ll have to base it on what we know and use the current drums as a template.

With that in mind, let’s take a look at what makes each drum set unique.

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