With its easy-to-learn, tough-to-master gameplay that deftly simulated the act of playing guitar like a rock-and-roll god, and its incredibly good soundtrack, Guitar Hero easily put itself in the company of the best rhythm games of all time upon its release last year. Now a sequel has arrived in Guitar Hero II. If you think about the features you wished that the original Guitar Hero had, Guitar Hero II probably delivers on the bulk of them. New mode additions like cooperative play (with rhythm guitar and bass tracks to play), as well as a fantastic practice mode to help you break down and learn some of the toughest solos in the game, give the game a great deal of longevity past its lengthy and addictive career mode. On top of everything else, the game is a whole lot harder than its predecessor, with a greater emphasis on speedier songs and thicker, more ludicrous solos. This does ultimately make Guitar Hero II less immediately accessible to newcomers, but odds are that even a steeper level of challenge won't stop novices or veterans from getting their rock on.

Hellish rock death returns to the PlayStation 2 in Guitar Hero II.

Just in case you missed out on Guitar Hero, here's a quick primer on how it plays. The guitar controller features a strumming button, as well as five color-coded fret buttons on the neck of the guitar. Onscreen, notes color coded the same way as the fret buttons travel down the screen, and you need get your fingers on the correct fret buttons while strumming in time with the notes. Each hit note scores you points, and creating lengthy combos ups a score multiplier. Your progress is tracked by a "rock meter," and if you miss too many notes, you'll eventually hit the red and fail the song. Furthermore, every now and again you'll gain "star power" by perfectly hitting a section of notes. This star power feeds into a meter, and by tilting the guitar at an opportune time, star power will deploy, giving you twice as many points per note as you'd normally get. Oh, and there's a whammy bar.

That's a fairly technical explanation of what basically boils down to hitting the notes and making with the rock. As mechanically excellent as Guitar Hero was, a bigger factor in its appeal was its song selection, namely the fantastic emphasis on really memorable riffs. Guitar Hero II ups the ante by including quite a few more songs than the original game. There are 64 in all, with 40 of those being licensed tracks from major artists and the remaining 24 being unlockable bonus songs from lesser-known bands. The song list travels through several eras and genres of rock, from classic '70s to modern black metal. Just to name a few, songs by Aerosmith, Cheap Trick, the Rolling Stones, Nirvana, Guns 'N Roses, Rage Against the Machine, The Police, Megadeth, and Lynyrd Skynyrd all make an appearance.

While the song list might be bigger, it's not necessarily as memorable as the first game's was. There are some legitimate classics here to be sure, like every metal head's favorite love song, "Sweet Child O' Mine," or the Southern rock anthem "Free Bird." But there are a few odd choices here and there, as well. If you're going to get Aerosmith in your game, why would you pick a song like "Last Child" over any of their numerous bigger, just as solo-heavy hits? And is "You Really Got Me" really the best Van Halen song that could be dug up? Of course, even the oddball choices are usually still quite fun to play, and there are a number of fantastically fun songs that you probably never would have thought of on your own, like The Pretenders' "Tattooed Love Boys" or The Police's "Message in a Bottle." You also probably won't be able to shake the feeling that you'd rather be playing just about any other Van Halen song, though.

Save for a couple of original master tracks (Primus' "John the Fisherman" and Jane's Addiction's "Stop"), all the major licensed tracks are covers, just like in the last game. Guitar Hero's covers were occasionally a bit off, but largely fantastic renditions of the chosen songs. Guitar Hero II delivers a similar level of quality. Some of the covers in the game are legitimately tough to pick out as covers, such as the fantastically produced "Carry on Wayward Son" by Kansas and "Woman" by Wolfmother. Others are a bit more scattershot in quality. Some of the vocalists in particular don't come off much like the real-life singers. The fake Ozzy Osbourne and Dave Mustaine in GH II don't sound nearly as spot-on as the ones in the first game, and the guy portraying Zach De La Rocha in Rage Against the Machine's "Killing in the Name" comes off like a bad rap-rock karaoke performance. Still, these less-than-stellar examples are more aberrations than the norm, and the vast bulk of the songs are excellent renditions, especially in the guitar parts; and in a game about playing the guitar, ultimately that matters most.

Playing Guitar Hero II isn't noticeably different from playing Guitar Hero, at least not in the first couple of difficulty levels. Easy and medium are comparably designed to the level of difficulty found in the first game, but once you switch to hard, you'll immediately realize that the cakewalk is over. For lack of a better term, there is no "I Love Rock N' Roll" in GH II--no song that is the perfect initiation into a new difficulty level. The first song in the game is "Shout at the Devil" by Motley Crue, and while it's far from the toughest you'll ever play, going from that song on medium to the hard version, or even hard to the expert version, is a noticeable jump. Experienced Guitar Hero players probably won't care and will likely blow through to the expert mode without much trouble. Newer players, however, may find the jumps a bit steep at times. There are a lot of songs in this game that are as tough on hard difficulty as many of the songs on expert in the first game were.

The solos come fast and furious, especially with the later songs.

The newer, tougher difficulty seems to come from an overlying desire to emphasize speed and crazy solos in Guitar Hero II, as opposed to the greater emphasis on classic riffs found in the first game. That's not necessarily a bad choice--just a different one. Players that revel in speedy guitar playing and solos that look like they could kill a man will squeal with glee at the game's guitar-shredding insanity. Those who like their guitar playing a bit more tempered and focused on technique won't be left in the cold, as there are several classically noodly songs like the Allman Brothers' "Jessica" and the Stones' "Can't You Hear Me Knocking." But the vast bulk of the songs are geared toward rocking fast and hard. Very, very hard.

Speed is one thing, but the developers also decided to trip up experienced players a bit by throwing in three-button chords. The idea of having to hold down three buttons instead of the usual two for chord sections might not sound too hard, but when they start flying at you fast and furious and alternate with two button chords and short, single-note sections, even the most experienced players may find themselves a bit flustered initially by how crazy these new chords tend to make certain songs. On the flip side, one area that has been improved a bit to make the game easier is hammer-ons and pull-offs. These would be the techniques used to quickly play short, fast progressions of single notes, usually within solos. The timing with this technique was a little broken in Guitar Hero, but here it's relaxed some, giving you a bit more leeway. However, even with these adjusted techniques, you're still going to have a heck of a time getting through some of the game's borderline psychotic solos.