Guitar Hero II Review

As you may already know, Guitar Hero has become a phenomenon like many other music games before it…of course the main music game before it was DDR. But that is beside the point. In its short lifespan, Guitar Hero captured the hearts of many PlayStation 2 owners with its guitar controller and addictive gameplay. Now making the jump to the Xbox 360 five months after the release of Guitar Hero 2 on the PS2, new gamers will be able to pick this title up and see just what the sensation is all about.

Compared to the PS2 version of Guitar Hero 2, the visuals look rather impressive, especially in HD. Everything has just that extra amount of detail that you would expect from a port to a next-gen console, even though you know the console is capable of much more. However, you really won’t be taking in a lot of the sights since your eyes have to stay on the notes you are playing rather than the band on stage. The menus have stayed the same for the most part, except for the addition of online leader boards and downloadable content.

The soundtrack to Guitar Hero 2 has many different words to describe it. Fantastic, amazing, astounding, scary. Really, I am not kidding. There are many songs on here that will tickle your fancy in some way or another. With songs like War Pigs, Free Bird, Madhouse, Strutter, and Sweet Child of Mine, you will find something you are sure to enjoy if you are a rock fan. New additions to the game from My Chemical Romance and Pearl Jam just add to your enjoyment as they will surely be fan favorite songs. Most of the unlockable songs, however, have you wondering just why they were put into the game in the first place. They are odd and just plain impossible to play for the average gamer.

The gameplay has not changed at all from the PS2 version of Guitar Hero 2. You do get a new sleeker guitar controller in the Xbox 360 package that is smaller and much more durable than the PS2 guitar. The controller takes a few songs to get used to if you were used to the old guitar, but it will bring fans right back home soon enough. Ranging four different difficulty levels, there is surely a place where you can jump in and play without too much trouble. Each level adds a new difficulty for gamers that make some easy songs nearly impossible for most players. I personally play on Hard and can 4 star about half the songs there when I have 5 starred all the songs on Easy and Medium. Expert is only for the gamers who truly have the hand eye coordination to move as fast as it does.

The achievements in Guitar Hero 2 are both fun and amusing. You can gain points from beating a difficulty setting, to buying all the guitars in the game, or even to refuse playing an encore for your fans. Even if you can’t play on some of the higher difficulties, you can still rack up about 500 gamer points without really trying. Soon there will be downloadable songs to keep your play list fresh. New songs will constantly be available for download, adding to the replay value of Guitar Hero 2. You can play alone, team up in co-op with a friend, or battle head-to-head. So grab a guitar, grab a friend, sit down and enjoy. Even for a $90 price tag, Guitar Hero is well worth it for Xbox 360 owners as long as they do not own the PlayStation 2 version of the game.