Guitar Hero II is an amazing experience that sucks you in and refuses to let go.

User Rating: 9.3 | Guitar Hero II (Game only) X360
Harmonix's Guitar Hero originated on the PS2 back in 2005/2006 and quickly gained attention, critical praise, and mention as one of the best games ever. Just one year later, Harmonix followed up with a sequel, Guitar Hero II. Only now, 360 owners can experience Guitar Hero II. And what an experience it is!

If you're like me, this is how your Guitar Hero experience goes:

1. Hearing about its existance and that it is good.
2. Seeing a guy play the game on Expert without looking.
3. Playing the game yourself, being unable to play the colored notes, and thinking your controller is busted.
4. Figuring out that you have to hit the "Strum" button on the controller as well as the colored buttons.
5. Trying it again and liking it.
6. Buying the game with the X-Plorer controller.

When you start out playing Guitar Hero, it's a bit of a challenge. You have to play a few songs on Easy before you can really nail it. After getting five stars on Easy, you are not satisfied and want to try it on Medium. But even after getting five stars on Medium, you think that that was too easy. "How did this game get such critical praise? It's easy... and kinda boring."

Once you start getting good at Hard mode, the game really gets you rocking out. You'll want to play each song again and again in order to get five stars on every song. It's a challenging experience, but it's also a truly, truly awesome one.

The only way they could have made this better is if the game had online multiplayer, which it doesn't. It's the only reason I still can't get any co-op achievements. I hear that Guitar Hero III is getting online multiplayer, so I guess I'll just wait for three.

Graphically, the game is just fine for the 360. The characters succeed at looking cartoonish, and the guitars succeed at looking like guitars. The entire game also looks like it had a neat coat of polish on top of everything, adding to the cartoony effect.

You earn money by playing songs on Medium or higher. Using this money, you can buy guitars, finishes, songs, characters, outfits, and videos. However, only the songs are worth getting because they give you something more to play. All the other items, except for the videos, only exist to have something cosmetic to unlock. Thankfully, you get achievements for buying all of them, which is a good enough reason to buy them.

To sum it up, if you haven't played Guitar Hero II yet, you should. It is an amazing experience which should not be missed by anyone.