The rise of the Guitar Hero franchise is one of the best success stories in modern gaming. The work of a small, relatively unknown development team with a resume full of cult hits, the game required an expensive peripheral to play properly and didn’t boast the most impressive presentation values. Regardless, the game became a mainstream sensation and has done more for the expansion of the videogame market than any motion controller or downloadable service simply by providing people who love music the chance to experience it in a new way. After a year and half of serving as Sony’s most valuable exclusive property Guitar Hero II has finally joined the multiplatform club and Xbox 360 gamers finally have their chance to rock out.


Gameplay

The Guitar Hero games follow the same general design as Dance Dance Revolution and other rhythm & music games: a musical track plays and the player must react appropriately to on-screen indicators that light up in time with the music. In this case the indicators on-screen are combinations five color-coded circles, each of which corresponds to one of five buttons arranged along the neck of the game’s special guitar-shaped controller. Players have to press the correct buttons on the neck of the guitar and hit the strum button in time with the music to actually play the chord properly – miss-time it, and the note comes off as a discordant screech.

Chaining together strings of perfectly-timed chords will rack up points and point multipliers, and players can quadruple their multipliers by tilting back the guitar and activating ‘star power.’ The challenge comes by way of the speed, rhythm and complexity of the chords involved with each track. Each of the four difficulty modes adds an additional layer of complexity to the songs – gaps between key chords are filled with increasing numbers of faster off-beat notes and sustained notes are complemented by shifting harmonious chords. If the player fails to play enough of the chords correctly then the performance will be cancelled outright amidst the boos of the in-game audience, but most players will have to try to get kicked off stage on the first two difficulty settings, especially since Harmonix has adjusted some of the tracks to smooth the difficulty curve. Hard and Expert modes on the other hand provide a great deal of challenge. As players progress through the campaign mode they’ll unlock new tracks and earn money that can be spent on new equipment, clothing and characters.

A game like Guitar Hero II lives and dies by its song list, and for the most part Harmonix did a fine job with the selections. The heavy metal, hard rock and alternative genres (or ‘the important genres’ as we call them) are all accounted for, but some of the choices seem a little odd. ‘Heart Shaped Box’ for example is a great song, but it’s a song that sounds great without relying heavily on exciting guitar work. Kurt Cobain’s voice provided most of the passion and energy in that song, leaving the player to deal with a fairly simplistic guitar melody. Harmonix obviously got the go ahead to use Nirvana material, so why not include ‘Smells like Teen Spirit’ which is built on one of the most instant-recognizable, catchy, and energetic guitar riffs ever created? Thankfully those out-of-place tracks are counter-balanced by the likes of ‘Sweet Child of Mine’, ‘War Pigs’, ‘Mother’ and ‘Hanger 18’. Hell, even the cheesiest glam rock tunes are enjoyable when you’re the one hammering out the chorus.





Xbox 360 version also includes ten new songs from artists like Pearl Jam, Alice Cooper, Deep Purple, Rick Derringer, and My Chemical Romance among others, some of which stand out as some of the best tracks in the game. As great as bonus content is, nothing makes Xbox 360 owners as giddy as the prospect of downloadable content. Harmonix has confirmed that the entire tracklist from the first Guitar Hero will eventually be available for download, but there’s still no official ETA or inventory for the first DLC delivery. It’s also plausible that the Xbox 360 version will receive even more exclusive tracks by way of the marketplace. The revelation that the 360 version of GH2 would not feature online co-operative or competitive play was a crippling disappointment for many, but the developer has tried to dull the sting with detailed leaderboards that track stats for the entire career and specific songs, in addition to top-notch implementation of achievements. The drive to beat the top score and snag each and every achievement point should keep players’ minds of the fact that they can’t play online, at least for awhile.