Finally You Can Play Your Favorite '80s Metal Songs (Except, Obviously, Any Song by Metallica).

I have no problem with saying that the Guitar Hero series has potential to be the greatest Music video game series of all time. There is really no flaw to the design. It gives those who cannot play guitar the experience of playing, and those who are experienced guitar players will also have a blast playing it. The games have a great style to them and are perfect for playing alone and when playing with friends, the game exceeds perfection!

Story:

Let’s just say that story is really the only thing that is lacking on Guitar Hero II for the 360. Even though the series has made the leap to next gen, they haven’t made the leap to adding a story. Truth is, the game doesn’t really need a story. The story mode gives you the choice between around twelve stereotypical guitar players that all look like they are from different generations of rock. With that guitarist, you start off at the bottom of the barrel and work your way up by playing a series of random songs to get to the top of the charts and become the Guitar Hero.



Gameplay:

The gameplay hasn’t really undergone any major transformation with that of the Playstation 2 version of Guitar Hero II, in fact, the game doesn’t show much difference than the original Guitar Hero that came out last year. The premise is still the same, with the included guitar you must play the songs that play on your screen. To play these songs, you must hits the notes that fall down on the screen. These notes are color coded. As the color hits a line at the bottom of the screen, you have to hit that note and strum on the “strings” at the exact time to play that note. If you do well, your rock meter will go up and you’ll get the crowd pumped. If you miss a bunch of notes, the audience will start booing you and you’ll have to walk off of the stage. If you hit certain streams of notes you gain star power, which you can release to boost up your rock meter or to gain points. Quite surprisingly, with the few notes that the game has, the game emulates the feeling of playing a guitar very well. On the easy difficulty, the game generally just has you hit one color at a time and only focuses on getting you to hit the first three of the five colors on the guitar for you to get used to the feel. Medium throws in the fourth color that you are going to have to strum on and you will often have to press two notes at the same time for chords. To add insult to injury, the notes move much faster than easy. On hard they throw in the fifth and final button to press and sometimes you’ll have to press three buttons at once to play a chord! Expert mode is generally absolutely crazy. The notes move so fast that solos will seem nearly impossible. Expect to have to press all three buttons for notes often. The games difficulty is definitely a boost over the original. I could dominate pretty much every song on the first one on expert, and on this one, it’s a challenge to get past certain levels on hard!

It is rare that I find myself sweating in video games when my environment isn’t hot. Guitar Hero II is one of those few games. Guitar Hero II gets extremely intense, and now with the added leaderboard, you’ll find it to be even more intense than ever before. The leaderboard only focuses on how many points you earn. It shows the players with the largest amount of points on certain songs, and then shows your friend’s top scores for that song and your score and your world rank. If you can find another friend who forked out $90 for Guitar Hero 2, which isn’t that hard to find, you’re likely to have an awesome battle of bragging rights.



The main difference between Guitar Hero II on the 360 and Guitar Hero II on the PS2 is a few added songs, and some bonus downloadable content. My main problem with Guitar Hero II on the Playstation 2 was that the song selection wasn’t nearly as good as the original. Coming right out of the box, this game still has a worse song selection than the original, but it’s much better. The first one had its own unique style as it consisted of a ton of 1980s metal songs. Guitar Hero II tries to make the song selection a little more diverse, which most fans of the series really won’t like. While the track list may have “War Pigs” by Black Sabbath, “Billion Dollar Babies” by Alice Cooper, “The Trooper” by Iron Maiden, and “Shout at the Devil” by the Motley Crue, it also has many obscure songs that really don’t feel like they should even be in the same room as a Guitar Hero game. Songs like “Cherrie Pie” by Warrant, “Girlfriend” by Matthew Sweet, “Dead” by My Chemical Romance. There are plenty of other Guitar Heroesque rock songs on the game, but honestly, a lot of them just aren’t very good. The good thing about the 360 version is that they are starting to add downloadable content through the Xbox Live Marketplace. The downloads give you new songs and they already have a bunch up. Most of the songs that they are adding are songs from the first game, which is good for those who don’t own the game, but those who do will feel a little cheated. So just so many of the songs may not be so good in my opinion, they are still generally always fun to play. One of the funniest moments in video gaming lies within this game! Harmonix actually threw in Strongbad’s Trogdor song for you to play!

*I have attached a song list at the bottom of the review.

Other than the added songs and leaderboards, there really isn’t much of anything that is significantly better than the PS2 version of the game. They brought back the practice mode where you can practice all of the songs at different speeds, but you probably won’t be using that often. One of the bigger changes is the new X-plorer guitar. It’s big, it’s white, and it looks much cooler than the old one. So how is the guitar? Well… I personally don’t like it. The shape and all is cool, but those who have grown used to pressing the select button on the guitar to activate Star Power, (like everyone I know) will have to use the guitar’s motion sensing to activate it because the select button is at an extremely difficult place to reach while playing. To activate Star Power you have to jerk the guitar up quickly. Very rarely will this method work. You’ll jerk it up and down and it just never seems to activate and then it will activate when you don’t do any jerking. On top of the poor motion sensing, if it does work, it generally always screws you up because it’s hard to jerk the guitar and keep on playing your song.

As for multiplayer, unfortunately you cannot play it online. Fortunately, you can purchase another guitar for $59.99 and play this game against a friend via split screen, which means that if you want to buy this game and play multiplayer, you will have to spend about $150. The multiplayer modes are very fun, but I’m not sure if they are worth an extra $59.99. There are two multiplayer modes, the co-op mode and the vs. mode. In co-op, you and a friend play through songs assuming different roles. You can play standard electric guitar, rhythm guitar, or bass guitar, but sadly, since rhythm and bass are generally always pretty repetitive, the only one that’s really fun for co-op is the standard electric. In the vs. mode, which in my opinion is more fun, you and a friend play against each other and whoever has the most amount of points at the end wins.

The replay value in the game is probably higher than any other game out on the 360. You are going to want to increase difficulty on certain songs and play songs over and over again to try to get a better score for the leaderboards. So while it may not take more than five to six hours to beat the first time, you are likely going to clock in at least triple that of that amount if you are just somewhat dedicated to the game.

With 74 songs, the game does have quite a bit of content, and downloadable content leaves room for even more potential fun. The game is a ton of fun, especially with friends. This is a terrific chance for those who haven’t had a chance to experience the Guitar Hero series. If you don’t already have it for the PS2, go out and buy it this instant, this is one series that shouldn’t be missed. If you’re like me and already have it for the PS2, don’t make the same mistake that I did. It really isn’t worth spending an extra $90 just for some extra songs.



Graphics:

The graphics achieve perfectly what they are trying to do, an extremely smooth looking version of a cartoony looking band, but the graphics really haven’t suffered a giant boost over the PS2 version. The game boasts cheesy pyrotechnics, extremely stereotypical looking rock bands, and extremely corny cardboard stage props that will remind you of every rock concert you’ve been to. The game looks exactly like it should, but all in all, the graphics don’t really play a huge part of this game because you’re going to be too busy looking at the bottom of the screen hitting the notes to even notice the graphics. The game tries to make itself look like a concert video by switching to several different views of the guitarist and the audience. The graphics may not be amazing, but they’re definitely good. Fortunately, some of the frame rate issues that made it into the PS2 versions have been eliminated from the 360 version and the game runs at a very smooth pace.


Sound

The game sounds awesome. They make the guitar the loudest part of the song. Everything sounds crisp and clear and the game sounds awesome with surround sound. The guitar makes excellent use of the whammy bar and its awesome to distort the guitar riffs on songs that you’ve heard a million times. While most of the songs don’t use the singer’s original voices, they usually sound pretty similar, but there are a few that definitely stand out as sounding absolutely nothing like the originals.



Suitability for kids

The game is rated Teen for lyrics but the language really isn’t all that bad in the game. Some songs are obviously going to have suggestible content though, such as Shout at the Devil by Motley Crue.



Achievements:

The achievement points in the game are a ton of fun to get, but sadly, a good chunk of them require you to purchase another guitar to get. Many of them are cinchy, like “Refuse to play an encore” but many are near impossible like “Earn five stars on all songs in the Expert tour.”



Should you buy this?

If you don’t already have the PS2 version, don’t be afraid of the $90 price tag, this game is an absolute blast!




Game Design – 9.7

Visuals – 7.8

Audio – 9.4

Control - 10

Story - 4

Fun – 9.6

Value – 9.4

Style – 9.7

Overall: 9.2



*Song List:

"Surrender" - Cheap Trick

"Possum Kingdom" - Toadies

"Heart-Shaped Box" - Nirvana

"Salvation" - Rancid

"Strutter" - Kiss

"Shout at the Devil" - Motley Crue

"Mother" - Danzig

"Life Wasted" - Pearl Jam

"Cherry Pie" - Warrant

"Woman" - Wolfmother

"You Really Got Me" - Van Halen

"Tonight I'm Gonna Rock You Tonight" - Spınal Tap

"Carry on Wayward Son" - Kansas

"Search and Destroy" - Iggy Pop and the Stooges

"Message in a Bottle" - The Police

"Billion Dollar Babies" - Alice Cooper

"Them Bones" - Alice in Chains

"War Pigs" - Black Sabbath

"Monkey Wrench" - Foo Fighters

"Hush" - Deep Purple

"Girlfriend" - Matthew Sweet

"Who Was in My Room Last Night?" - Butthole Surfers

"Can't You Hear Me Knocking" - The Rolling Stones

"Sweet Child O'Mine" - Guns N' Roses

"Rock and Roll, Hoochie Koo" - Rick Derringer

"Tattooed Love Boys" - The Pretenders

"John the Fisherman" - Primus

"Jessica" - The Allman Brothers Band

"Bad Reputation" - Thin Lizzy

"Last Child" - Aerosmith

"Crazy on You" - Heart

"Trippin' On a Hole in a Paper Heart" - Stone Temple Pilots

"Dead!" - My Chemical Romance

"Killing in the Name" - Rage Against the Machine

"Freya" - The Sword

"Stop!" - Jane's Addiction

"Madhouse" - Anthrax

"The Trooper" - Iron Maiden

"Rock This Town" - Stray Cats

"Laid to Rest" - Lamb of God

"Psychobilly Freakout" - The Reverend Horton Heat

"YYZ" - Rush

"Beast and the Harlot" - Avenged Sevenfold

"Carry Me Home" - The Living End

"Institutionalized" - Suicidal Tendencies

"Misirlou" - Dick Dale

"Hangar 18" - Megadeth

"Free Bird" - Lynyrd Skynyrd

Bonus Tracks:

"Raw Dog" - The Last Vegas

"Arterial Black" - Drist

"Collide" - Anarchy Club

"Drink Up" - Ounce of Self

"Elephant Bones" - That Handsome Devil

"Fall of Pangea" - Valient Thorr

"FTK" - Vagiant

"Gemini" - Brian Kahanek

"Push Push (Lady Lightning)" - Bang Camaro

"Laughtrack" - The Acro-brats

"Less Talk More Rokk" - Freezepop

"Jordan" - Buckethead

"Kicked to the Curb" - Noble Rot

"Mr. Fix-it" - The Amazing Royal Crowns

"The New Black" - Every Time I Die

"One for the Road" - The Breaking Wheel

"Parasite" - The Neighborhoods

"Radium Eyes" - Count Zero

"Red Lottery" - Megasus

"Six" - All That Remains

"Soy Bomb" - Honest Bob and the Factory-to-Dealer Incentives

"The Light That Blinds" - Shadows Fall

"Thunderhorse" - Dethklok

"Trogdor" - Strong Bad

"X-Stream" - Voivod

"Yes We Can" - Made in Mexico