Guitar Hero 2 has recognizable songs, good graphics, but also a bit too pressured on the length.
I absolutely adore very lengthy stories, which probably make me a fan of RPGs. This game, can be cool to play for a bit, but seriously, to play ALL the songs in the game? I can play hard on Guitar Hero II, but the main thing about Guitar Hero III was, that they usually had 3 good songs, and one sucky song in each category. That way, I could've skipped the bad song. Now, in Guitar Hero 2 I have to play all the songs. There are many songs better than many songs in Guitar Hero III, but many of them equally suck as songs in GH III.
The gameplay, it's pretty much the same as with Guitar Hero 1 and 3, and Rock Band's guitar part. I personally don't own Rock Band, because it costs over 300$ here, but Guitar Hero is pretty decent to buy. The graphics on the neck, the guitar's neck are definitely not better than Guitar Hero III. I, as a graphic designer liked the idea of when you whammy, then it's half invisible,the distortion that appears on your chord. But Guitar Hero II has too much of a plastic look to the guitar neck. Now, the other thing, the "Rock Meter". The Rock Meter definitely falls and rises much, much faster than in Guitar Hero III. Even if you play Dragonforce's, Through the Fire and Flames 100% on expert in Guitar Hero III, when you have to go somewhere for a second, want to go get a drink, ice cream, food or whatever, and you want to press the pause, then you may not find it, because it's too damn small. By the time you find it, on expert, there are so many notes, the Rock Meter may have fallen into the red section, or downright failed. And also, I don't know, who said Guitar Hero II is easier than Guitar Hero III? The songs in the beginning may be super easy for the hard difficulty. But when you travel from place to place, tour to tour you may notice, that the difficulty advances faster than in Guitar Hero III. So the 7th and 8th can be pretty hard, if you're as "n00b" as me.
Now, the store isn't as good also, it features 3 characters, very little guitar choice, some outfits, some finishes, but if you play Guitar Hero III, you may notice, that Guitar Hero II's store falls short.
The notes interface has been already discussed, but one thing I personally don't like, is that the menus. Well, the track list, where you choose your songs is on a paper. That may be cool, but again, me as a a graphic designer, I like more detailed and variable designs. And the menus, where you choose your difficulty, loading screen etc they're all filled with horrendous pictures with men with freakin enourmous pimples, eyes that are half-way out of their head, huge tongues hovering over their mouths, and usually a crowd or a group of monstrous humans. Many would agree, but I think that is ugly. Just plain ugly. But you choose.
The controller is pretty much the same, only it's colored white, it's modeled as a Gibson Xplorer, it has freakin small "pause" and "select" buttons, it has different stickers, and the worst, it's wired.
Okay, I don't have anything to add, so I recommend, if you don't live in America, go pick up this, if you do, atleast pick up this game guitar, and the rest of the Rock Band's gear. But even if you own Rock Band, and get tired of the drums or singing, play this. :)
Graphics - 8.5/10
Gameplay - 9.5/10
Add-ons (Guitar Controller) - 8.5/10
Sound - 9/10
Accessibility (all the songs, outfits etc) - 8/10
Replay Value 4/10
= 8,7
I calculated the score from an average of these ratings, but I didn't include replay value, as that is completely up to the player.