Articles
By Q Dog Sah
Published: Apr. 4, 2007 9:23 AM
Before I start the formal review process, for those who want a quick synopsis, I will simply say that Guitar Hero II is a game that everyone needs to own. Now, if you want further proof of this then please continue to read. Otherwise do whatever you can in order to get this game as soon as you possibly can. It really is that good.
The announcement that Guitar Hero II was to be released on the 360 was a happy day for me. Up until then, I had very nearly bought a PS2 just to get my hands on the original. There were several instances where I had gone into my local games store with money in hand to purchase a PS2 with Guitar Hero, only to chicken out at the last minute. Surely, I thought, this game would go multi-platform soon?
Guitar Hero II, obviously the follow-up to the insanely popular Guitar Hero of PS2 fame, is essentially another in the long line of rhythm games that have become popular over the last 5-7 years or so. The premise is one we’ve all seen before, press buttons on a guitar-shaped controller in time to on-screen visual cues set to music. So while the premise is simplistic in nature, it’s the execution of this premise in Guitar Hero II that sets it apart. It’s a game that really oozes atmosphere. It’ll teach you to play with icy stare and punk-rock hair and beatnik flair. Try as you might, it really is hard to not feel like a rock-god when you start pulling-off some of the harder solos in this game.
Now, a word about the controller. Xbox 360 owners get a slightly different version then their PS2 counter-parts. Rather then being based on Gibson’s SG model, 360 owners instead get one based on the Gibson Xplorer. Apart from the basic shape of the controller though, they’re virtually identical. It has five fret buttons plus a strum bar and a whammy bar, as well as the standard guide button, a d-pad and start/back buttons. The controller as a whole is a little small for my tastes, but you quickly get used to it. One nice feature is that it has motion detection built in, used for activating an in game feature called Star Mode (more on that later). We’re not talking about anything too flash here, this isn’t a Wii controller, but it is a nice feature and it feels great to use. I would have liked to see some form of rumble included to give a bit of feedback, but I guess we can’t have it all. It’s also incredibly cool just being able to use the controller to do normal Xbox things like check messages, watch DVDs etc.
The main gameplay interface for Guitar Hero II is a scrolling guitar fret-board displaying a sequence of 5 different notes that correspond to the five fret buttons on your guitar controller. As the notes pass the bottom of the screen, you have to press the corresponding button and use the strum bar to hit the notes in time. As you get further into the game, you will have to be able to hold two different notes at the same time, and perform series of notes in fast succession by using hammer-on and pull-off techniques. Successfully hitting notes earns you points, the idea being to score as many points as you can in any given song. As you string together more and more notes, you actually earn multipliers to increase your scoring rate. Nail a 10-note streak and suddenly all of your notes are worth double. Hit 40 notes in a row and you’ll be earning four times the points you would have been earning. Conversely, if you miss too many notes in a row the crowd will boo you off the stage and you’ll fail the song.
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