A honest review from someone who played the game from the day it came out to the day GH3 came out.
When this game came out I was very very excited because the day before I got this game I had beat the first Guitar Hero and right after I could go on to the next game. When I got this game I noticed many many new improvements to the gameplay. First of all I noticed that hammer on pull offs actually worked and were easy to use and benefitted you if you used them. Second I saw that added 3 chord notes. I know that this made the game harder (for some) but it added to the realness of the Guitar Hero series. So in sum I enjoyed the new gameplay of this Guitar Hero better than the first games.
Now when I first turned on the game and played the first song I saw that they made some adjustments to the graphics of the game. Although the graphics hadn't changed to an extent you could say a HUGE improvement but they were better. The singers mouth movements looked more realistic (not really realistic though) than before and the guitarist and drummers actions were a little more smooth. The notes still looked the same though. But overall I would say this games graphics were as good as they needed to be to make this game perfect.
After playing all the songs and buying and playing the bonus songs I was a LITTLE dissapointed. Even though the songs included classics such as " Sweet Child O' Mine", " Carry On My Wayward Son", " You Really Got Me", and "Free Bird" the songs weren't as good as the first games. The set songs were very fun but the bonus songs lacked that. The bonus songs did have a few fun songs, better than the first games bonus songs, but most songs were boring and unpleasant such as " Yes We Can", "Jordan", and "Trogdor". Even if you liked those songs I still wish they added more popular songs.
When I got this game I bought it with two controllers. Now here is an area with a big improvement. The original game's multiplayer was....just down right bad. But with Guitar Hero 2 came Pro-Face-Off Mode which made multiplayer....multiplayer. Now both players could play the whole song at the same time rather than just parts. Also this game added co-op which made it feel like you were making a rock band. You could play either lead or bass which made the bass players have to play new parts of the song which made the game longer lasting.
In this final note I would like to add some things I didn't add before. First of all this game added a feature which made this game stick out from the first...practice mode. If you were stuck on a song before you just have to keep playing the entire song up to the part your stuck on, but now you can go into training and pick the part of the song that troubles you and you can practice it as long as you want and to make it better you can practice on different speeds to get your fingers used to the part. Second this game added a little thing called Hyper-Speed. Im not going to go on a say its a cheat or not a cheap but it sure is helpful. So now to the end of the review. Guitar Hero 2 offers many new features to the series. If you liked the first Guitar Hero than you will love this one and want to play it all the time. And if you have never played Guitar Hero than I would suggest going and renting this game to see if it fits you and then go and buy it. So go out and get this game.