The thing that made the original Guitar Hero stand out was because it was played with a replica guitar controller and, unsurprisingly, the sequel is controlled exactly the same way. For those of you not familiar with how Guitar Hero plays, you’re presented on screen with a vertically scrolling bar filled with various coloured markers sliding down the screen. Each of these represents the different coloured fret buttons on the guitar. By holding the appropriate coloured fret button and hammering the strummer, you must time your playing with the on screen markers. Single notes are shown with just a solitary marker, while long notes have a trail behind them indicating that the button must be held for that length of time.
While initially simple, things soon get more complicated when chords are introduced and you have to hold two buttons at once. Miss these notes and the ‘Rock’ meter in the bottom right corner of the screen will go down. Go too far into the red and it is game over. On the flip side of that, hitting many notes in a row will start a combo. Every time you hit 10 notes in a row you will earn a multiplier to your score ranging from 2x to 4x score bonus. In addition to that, there are special star-shaped notes littered throughout each of the songs. Hit these sequences without missing, and you’ll fill up your ‘Star Power’ meter. Once this is filled enough you can activate it by holding your guitar vertically, and instantly double your multiplier to as much as 8 times its normal score. This is obviously the key to gaining the high scores, but can also come in handy for getting out of trouble during the more difficult moments.
Guitar Hero II features 4 varying difficulty levels. For beginners there is easy mode, where you only have the first 3 fret buttons to worry about mixed with simple song layouts at a very slow pace. Normal introduces a 4th button while the complexity of the notes and speed of the bar increase. Hard mode helps establish the final fret button into the game while the faster song layouts really start to test your fingers. The final setting is Expert, which was certainly no walk in the park in the original, but has really been turned up another level here.
Co-op mode is a superb addition.
Not only is Expert mode insanely fast and deliciously complex, 3 note chords often appear when you least expect them to add further complications into the mix. In fact, it could be argued that the difficulty is noticeably higher than it was in the first game once you hit Hard mode. Learning ‘hammer-ons’ and ‘pull-offs’, techniques where you can play a group of notes by combining a single strum with sequential button pressing/releasing, is even more vital this time around. Thankfully, they have been tweaked with more lenient timing and it is no longer necessary to hold down the preceding button whilst attempting them mean you can actually slide up and down the fret buttons giving the game a more authentic guitar playing experience.
The beauty of Guitar Hero is that there are settings suited for everyone. While more casual gamers who haven’t the time or perseverance to learn the game will find plenty of enjoyment in the Easy/Normal modes, many will spend a lot of their time on the Normal/Hard settings. Real dedicated players of course will lap up the Expert mode. Nothing is unfeasibly hard, it can all be beaten with practice and patience. Within a few weeks you’ll be flying through songs you deemed near impossible when you first attempted them, and it’s that sense of accomplishment that makes a great game.
So far the game sounds very much more of the same, and to a great extent it is, but there’s also a lot more here that goes a long way to justifying the game as being a full sequel rather than a glorified add-on pack. Arguably the best new addition is the inclusion of a Practice mode. In the original the Practice mode was little more than a training exercise that was completely detached from any of the actual songs. Here however, you can take a song, dissect it into separate pieces, slow it down and practice it however you want. Having trouble nailing the guitar solo in the middle of Lamb of God’s ‘Laid to Rest’? Go into practice mode, find that very section and perform it over and over to your hearts content into you’ve got it memorized into your fingers!
Another area where the game has seen a marked improvement is to the multiplayer side of things. As fun as the head to head ‘Face Off’ mode in the first game was, unless both players were of equal ability it could often be a very one sided event. The inclusion of co-op play is just what the doctor ordered as you can mix and match difficulty settings for both players as you play together at your level of ability with one of you on lead guitar and the other on bass. Some of the bass notes on a few of the songs lean on the dull side of things, but hearing the whole thing as a package is highly rewarding. Head to head still exists, along with a new ‘Pro Face Off’ that has you playing exactly the same notes at the same time which should end all those petty ‘you only won because got easier notes that me!’ arguments once and for all.
The stages really come alive this time around.
The amount of content in Guitar Hero II has certainly been upped from last years game. More characters, more guitars, more paintjobs and most importantly, more songs are jam packed everywhere you look. 40 standard songs with more than 20 extra unlockables. The tracklist, while not as varied, is of the same high standard as you would expect. There’s plenty of big names here too with the likes of Nirvana, Aerosmith, Guns & Roses and Foo Fighters all providing songs. If even you initially think that there’s a great deal here that you might not know, you have in fact probably heard many of the songs before. For example, ‘Misirlou’ by Dick Dale is the tune you would associate with Pulp Fiction, while Danzig’s ‘Mother’ and ‘Them Bones’ by Alice in Chains have both popped up on Grand Theft Auto soundtracks in recent years. Avenged Sevenfold’s ‘Beast and the Harlot’ was on Burnout Revenge too.
It’s clear that the presentation of the game has had a lot of work put into it. Menus are tidy and easy to navigate while the whole game has a unique scribbled notepad-like look about it. In game everything is clear and easy to understand with big, bright markers leaving the player with no confusion about what they are supposed to press. For a game of this type things like widescreen and progressive scan support really aren’t of high importance, but to much delight they’re both included here giving the vibrant colours, eccentric characters and imaginative stage designs a real chance to shine. The stage designs have actually been improved a great deal, especially as you progress to find sets packed with huge animated set pieces giving your show a high budget feel you would expect from a lot of the real bands featured in the game.
Guitar Hero II is pretty much everything you could hope it to be. It keeps everything that made it good and then improves on just about everything else. The soundtrack this time around is somewhat aimed more towards the hardcore player, not only in terms of the choice of tracks but also in the more complicated style of play they produce compared the slightly more laid-back vibe from a large handful of the original’s tracks. But the game doesn’t suffer as a result and what you have here is a selection of more interesting songs play. With more content in every area, a vastly improved multiplayer and an expert difficulty setting that’ll challenge you for months Guitar Hero II is every bit the essential purchase the first game was.
nah im kidding i just seriously dont no when im gonna get this.
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