Guitar Hero II is a fantastic PS2-to-Xbox 360 conversion and succeeds in making you feel like a rock star.
The guitar controller that is packaged with each game is based on the Gibson X-Plorer model. Five colour-coded fret buttons sit on the guitar neck and a strummer is placed in the middle of the body. As notes scroll towards you on-screen (which are colour-coded to match the frets), you hold down on the matching fret and press the strummer to play the note. The controller also features a whammy bar to distort notes and extract star power (more on this later). The controller is responsive and accurate and is a key part of making you feel like a rock star. It also features a guide button, d-pad, and start and select buttons to make menu navigation more user-friendly. The fact that the X-Plorer is wired via USB is disappointing, but the cable is long and can be lengthened with a USB extension. It has a break-away wire (similar to the original Xbox controllers) which will reduce the risk of your console getting knocked over if you rock too hard.
The HUD consists of your score, multiplier, rock meter and star power gauge. Playing notes will add to your score and consecutively hitting notes will increase your score multiplier. Every time you miss a note or play the wrong note, your multiplier breaks. In the bottom right corner of the screen is the rock meter, which tells you how well you’re playing. It’s green when you’re playing great, yellow when you’re okay, and red when you’re playing badly and close to failing the song. The HUD’s final component is your star power gauge; certain note strings are star shaped and hitting all the notes in a string will gain you some star power. When the meter is full, you can tilt the guitar vertically to activate star power, doubling your current multiplier. It only lasts for a while so you need to save it for sections with lots of notes.
Career mode is the place where you’ll be doing most of your rocking. You’ll start off by playing in a dingy school gym, working your way up to bigger and better venues such as Stonehenge. The whole career is split up into eight levels. Each level contains six songs and you need to clear each song to advance to the next stage. The quality and variety of music is excellent, and includes heavy metal (“The Trooper” by Iron Maiden), progressive rock (“YYZ” by Rush), and thrash metal (“Hangar 18” by Megadeth). Although they are covers (the exceptions being "Stop", "Dead!", "Possum Kingdom" and "John the Fisherman"), the quality of vocals and music is very good with a few exceptions (the vocals from “Laid to Rest” by Lamb of God for example).
As you progress through career mode you’ll be awarded with cash for your performances, which can be spent in the Guitar Hero store. You can buy characters, outfits, guitars, and most notably, bonus songs. These tracks are all original recordings and provide a nice alternative to the regular set list. Although it’s very superficial, kitting your rocker out with new threads and a killer guitar is very enjoyable. You can also access Xbox Live Marketplace from the store, where you can download themes, gamer pictures and new songs for varying amounts of Microsoft Points.
If you just want to kick back and play your favourite songs, there is a quick play mode to get straight into the action. From here you can play any of the songs you’ve unlocked in career mode (including bonus songs) on any of the four difficulty levels. Each difficulty has four leaderboards for each song (one for each difficulty), but it’s the online leaderboards that are one of Guitar Hero II’s most impressive new features. Not only can you track your career score against friends or the world, but also your score for each individual song. Only your highest score on any given song will be displayed, regardless of difficulty, so those who succeed in the higher difficulties will be the ones who occupy the top spots.
If you want to make it to the lofty heights of the leaderboards, you’ll probably need to practise a lot. Thankfully, there is an extensive practise mode in which to do so. You can play any song on any difficulty, slowing down the speed to tackle tricky solos. Each song is divided up into sub-sections, so if a certain part of a song is giving you grief, you can practise just that part. It does miss some key features, such as the rock meter (to see if you would have failed or not) and star power strings (because they can be the difference between success and failure), but the practise mode is more than enough to help you become a top shredder.
For a game that requires you to concentrate on hitting notes, Guitar Hero II is visually quite impressive. The venues you play at are full of fans, and your on-avatar is extremely animated. Your character will actually strum accurately to the music, which is a very detailed touch. When you activate star power, expect to see some crazy shredding skills from your rocker. It’s a shame that these graphical touches go largely unnoticed due to the focus needed to hit the notes, but it’s nice that the developers went the extra mile anyway. The music selection has already been covered, but the sound quality is just as good. The guitar track will get even louder when star power is active, and gamers with good sound set-ups will really get the most out of it.
In addition to the excellent single player support, Guitar Hero II is a blast to play with a friend (sadly there is no Xbox Live multiplayer support). Each song is split into the guitar track and the bass or rhythm track, depending on the song. You can play co-operatively with one player playing lead and the other supporting with the bass or rhythm. There is a real dependency on your partner because you share the same multiplier and are contributing to the same score. There is a feeling that you are playing the song together. The supporting player tends to have a more repetitive note chart, but ultimately, it depends on which song you play. For the more competitive players out there, you can play one-on-one in either face-off or pro face-off. The former sees you playing alternating sections of the song, while the latter has both players playing every note. The lack of online multiplayer may be disappointing, but the local multiplayer’s excellent selection of game modes goes a long way to remedy this.
Guitar Hero II’s achievements have a mixture of fun and challenging goals. There are achievements for failing a song on easy, finishing a song in lefty flip mode (dubbed the “Hendrix Award”), and even for sitting through the credits! Each career difficulty has achievements associated with it for completing the career and attaining five stars on every song within that difficulty. It’s great, yet frustrating, to see that there are some truly challenging achievements tucked into the game. The most challenging include scoring a million points in co-op and clearing “Jordan” by Buckethead on expert (by far the hardest song on the game). These will be true badges of honour if you manage to achieve them.
If you’re looking for a game that will provide you with hours of fun, Guitar Hero II is the one. Regardless of how into music you are, there is plenty for everyone to enjoy contained within the set list. You’ll feel like a true rock star with the X-Plorer in your arms, tipping and tilting to activate star power and singing along to the tunes. These feelings are only amplified if you’re playing it with a friend. Ultimately, Guitar Hero II is a game that anyone can play and have fun with.