Guitar Hero II

[VOP2288]

Guitar Hero II

I figured with the recent talks in the CM about Guitar Hero and Rock Band it was time for at least one of these franchises to get it's own reviews. Thus I've picked both Guitar Hero II, and later Guitar Hero III, to review (b/c I don't have Rock Band)...

The Guitar Hero franchise first started back in 2005 with the release of the first game on the PS2. Developed by Harmonix Music Systems, creators of the highly popular and highly successful Dance Dance Revolution, PaRappa the Rapper, and Karaoke Revolution games, and published by RedOctane (In the Groove), the game was the first ever to successfully take the guitar simulation concept (established by Konami's Japanese arcade hit GuitarFreaks) and turn it into an at home, console franchise - complete with a guitar shaped controller.

Guitar Hero II is the second installment in the franchise, originally released on the PS2 in November of 2006, but it was followed by an Xbox 360 release in April 2007. Bringing with it a new controller design (Gibson X-Plorer) along with a few new songs and downloadable content. Overall this sequel didn't disappoint the critics or the fans, the Metacritic score for GHII is actually higher than the original game's score.

Review:

Graphics:
Graphically, GHII isn't that impressive. This is reasonable however considering that the game is a port from a sixth generation console (PS2) to a seventh gen console (Xbox 360). In a way this is forgivable seeing as how the most you'll be looking at for long periods of time during play is the little green, red, yellow, blue, and orange circles which represent different notes. Let's be real here, with a game like this the point isn't exactly to look pretty, instead there should be more of a weight on things like audio effects and clarity and gameplay.

Don't take this to mean that GHII's graphics are bad, by all means they're very nice to look at and easy on the eyes plus I think they did improve some aspects of the 360's version. Yet this is no Call of Duty 4 or Mass Effect...but at the end of the day it's not expected to be.

Graphics = 8/10

Gameplay:
Obviously, gameplay is the most important part of any of the Guitar Hero titles. Like most of Harmonix's games the point is to fully drag the player into the game and keep them there as long as possible, and then when they're done, to keep them coming back again and again. Guitar Hero II doesn't fail to do this on any note.

This second installment includes 98 playable tracks (48 career, 26 unlockable, 24 downloadable) on the 360 version which is more than double the number of songs on the original game. Also, while every song on the original game was a cover, GHII features four master tracks ("Possum Kingdom", "John the Fisherman", "Dead!", and "Stop!"). The sequel also features all of the original characters (Johnny Napalm, Axel Steel, Judy Nails, Pandora, Izzy Sparks, and the Grim Ripper) plus an additional three (Lars Umlaut, Eddie Knox, and Casey Lynch) from the beginning and 2 more available to purchase in the store (Xavier Stone and Clive Winston).

Like the original, GHII features a career mode but this time it's 8 venues long (featuring six songs each) instead of 5 venues. Yet, just like the original the player has to complete the venues in order to unlock songs to play in the Quick Play feature and the multiplayer feature Face-Off. Speaking of multiplayer, the game features a total of three different kinds: the original Face-Off where two players play alternating pieces of the same song, Cooperative where two players play the same song with each one playing either Lead Guitar and Rhythm Guitar or Guitar and Bass, and finally Pro Face-Off where each player attempts to play the same song, on the same difficulty, to see who gets a higher score.

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Another new feature to GHII is the inclusion of a Practice Mode where players having trouble nailing certain parts of songs or whole songs can go and practice certain pieces of songs and also have the option of slowing the timing down for more help. This is an especially helpful tool for the game, I've used it plenty of times in order to hone my skills in the Hard and Expert difficulty versions of tracks.

Just like with the original, the game features four very different levels of play: Easy, Medium, Hard, and Expert. It's important to know that expertise at each level should be achieved before moving onto the next, b/c when I say that each one is very different from the other I'm not joking. The Easy level simply uses the first three fret buttons (green, red, and yellow) and the speed is fairly slow. With Medium the blue fret button is added and the speed is set a little higher. On Hard all five fret buttons are game but the speed doesn't pick up too much, it moves along briskly but nothing insane. Finally on Expert you can bet on playing more notes in a shorter space of time, hitting 3 fret chords, and moving at a very fast speed.

Finally one of the biggest things about GHII is its buy-able/unlockable content. By achieving certain goals in the game you can unlock things like guitars that aren't available already for purchase in the store. Speaking of the store, by playing through your career games, depending on how well you do, you will be given a certain amount of $. You can then take that money over to the store and buy a bunch of different things. These things range from more guitars, outfits for your characters, unlockable characters, and bonus songs. You can also buy videos of the making of the game and such things like that. Yet, with the exception of the bonus tracks and behind the scenes footage most of the things you can buy are just aesthetic pleasures.

Gameplay = 10/10

Audio:
The audio is quite possibly the most important aspect of this game and the entire franchise. Luckily it doesn't fail to impress. The audio is all about the songs that you can play in the game. As previously mentioned though there are only four tracks that actually feature the real artists performing the real songs, all the others are merely covers.

While to some degree this doesn't wholly affect the fun of the game it does somewhat take something away from the experience when you hear say...Lamb of God's "Laid to Rest" being whisper-screamed by someone who sounds absolutely nothing like Randy Blythe. Other times it's not so obvious so it's not that big of a deal, for instance the singers for Nirvana's "Heart Shaped Box" and Black Sabbath's "War Pigs" aren't too far off from sounding like Kurt Cobain and Ozzy Osbourne (with exception to some unique vocal traits here and there).

Overall the songs are good on the game. They manage to get rock songs from all corners of genre-world from classic to hard rock to death metal and everything in between and no artist appears more than once on the game.

Audio = 5/5

Replay Value:
If you like the game then there's no doubt you'll keep picking up the guitar shaped controller and trying your hand at your favorite songs until you perfect them on Expert (which is a long, slow moving road for me). You also might find yourself going to back grab perfect scores on lesser difficulty levels in order to unlock more guitars and such. Or you might be replaying careers over and over again in order to earn enough money to buy everything there is in the shop. All of these reasons plus the unexpected joy that comes out of playing a song on bass with your friend playing the lead guitar add to an overall perfect replay value rating.

Replay Value = 5/5

Story/Plot:
Just like with my review of Team Fortress II, I will not be giving or taking away any points for the story/plot portion seeing as how the game doesn't have nor does it need one...

Conclusion:

Just like with all of Harmonix's other musical titles players will either love the game or hate it...and I mean hate it...there are a few members here at TWC that would seriously love to see the creators burn in the hot place for ever making this game. But people who hate it seem to either be terrible at the game, or have never tried it and claim it to be nothing more than something that makes kids think they can play the guitar instead of actually learning how.

Either way for those who enjoy the franchise it's easy to see why GHII scored so high with the critics. From the original, the game added over double the amount of songs, added five new characters, two new multiplayer modes, made the career three venues longer, and threw in tons of unlockable and buy-able items in the game shop. If making the game better means adding more stuff than GHII definitely is an improvement over the original title.

Final Score = 28/30 or 93%

[The10thLegion]

i agree completely.