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Guitar Hero II the remix. Guitar Hero II, with its crazy rock bands and even crazier guitar peripheral became of one of the best selling games last year. Exclusively available on the PS2, other gamers watched in envy as their friends rocked out. Although the release on the Xbox 360 is a little late, this version adds and enhances enough to be the definitive version to get.
Guitar Hero II includes a practice mode, quick play, and a career mode. If you’re new to the series, you want to start in practice mode. This lets you learn the basics in the game and lets you experiment with different styles without t being told that you’re failing a song. The practice mode is especially cool because it lets you play any section of a song you want to practice, tell the game where to begin and end the song, and even how fast the notes should come up. The other two modes do have the rock meter—but I’ll talk about that more below. In Career mode, you’ll be playing progressively difficult songs as a way to unlock additional songs and earn cash. You can then use the cash to purchase additional songs or unlock guitars, guitar finishes, characters and costumes.
The gameplay in Guitar Hero II, essentially, has you hitting notes as they appear onscreen. The game includes a bundled guitar with five different colored fret buttons as well as a strumming button. These different color notes will appear onscreen and you have to hit that note at the correct time while making sure you hit the strumming button. Additionally, for bonus points, you can use the whammy bar for long notes. Hitting notes in successive order builds up your multiplier—letting you rack up points and five-star performances. Playing really well will unlock star power (which you activate by tilting the guitar vertically) which doubles the multiplayer you currently have. It sounds like a lotth but you’ll get the hang of it pretty easily (at least for the easy difficulty setting). The easy difficulty setting requires the least number of notes and few chords (multiple notes at the same time), but as you ramp up the difficulty setting the game requires a lot more from you. The Xbox 360 version of the game includes a brand-new guitar based on the Gibson X-Plorer, which feels more solid and reliable than the PS2 guitar.
One of the game’s key strengths is the songlist, which reads like a who’s who of rock. Incorporating everything from classic 1970s rock to current stuff, you’ll find artists like Rage Against the Machine, the Rolling Stones, Nirvana, Guns ‘N Roses and Aerosmith. All in all, the game includes 74 licensed songs, 48 of which come from big-name bands (compared to 64 and 40, respectively, in the PS2 game). Xbox 360 exclusive tracks include “Dead” by My Chemical Romance and “Life Wasted” by Pearl Jam. Like the first game, most of the licensed music comes from cover bands and not the original bands. It’s usually very hard to tell that you’re listening to a cover band, though, and even when you can it doesn’t noticeably detract from the overall experience. The technical sound quality in the game is perfect, too. Additionally, the Xbox 360 version includes support for downloadable songs although none are currently available.
Guitar Hero II includes both competitive and cooperative multiplayer modes. The competitive mode has you and a friend playing through an entire song together or alternating at sections. In the cooperative mode, one of you plays as lead guitar and the other plays as bass or rhythm guitar. When you play this mode, you realize that the game merges both guitars together during the singleplayer. The rhythm guitar sections can be quite challenging and are quite fun to play. There are some fun bass sections, as well, but there are fewer since by its nature the bass is a repetitive instrument. When playing in cooperative mode, both players share a single combo multiplayer and rock meter to make both of you feel important to the overall process. Don’t worry about playing with a less experienced player, since the game lets you set different difficulty modes for both players.
Technically, the graphics in Guitar Hero II won’t compare to your average Xbox 360 game, but they have been improved over the PS2 version. The game has a great rock-and-roll art style that works extremely well. The character models are fairly detailed but they all have very unique personalities whether you’re looking at a 60s era rocker, a punk rocker, or a hardcore metalhead. The sets look pretty good with plenty of props and some fancy lighting effects in the form of pyrotechnics. The effects and models are more detailed and boast sharper textures on the Xbox 360 and the game also runs in HD.
Guitar Hero II on the Xbox 360 is easily one of the most fun games on the platform. When compared to the PS2 version, the Xbox 360 game boasts additional songs, improved graphics, better flow of songs in career more and online leaderboards. While it may be enough to shell out $90 for all but the most hardcore Guitar Hero fans if you’ve already picked up the game on PS2, if you haven’t there is absolutely no reason not to get this game. -- Jose Liz, PGNx Media
---- Apr 9, 2007
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