PS2 Guitar Hero II is a music video game you feel cool playing with as it makes you feel like a rock superstar when you grip your guitar and shred along with Black Sabbath, Red Hot Chili Peppers, and Audioslave.
Franchise Guitar Hero easily put itself in the company of the best rhythm video games of all time upon its release in 2005. Now a sequel has arrived in Guitar Hero II. A collaboration between developer Harmonix and publisher RedOctane, video game Guitar Hero II has a diverse track list, amazingly accurate controls, and quality peripheral. Track list may be bigger, but it's not quite as good as the first video game; difficulty doesn't scale as masterfully this time around; some of the cooperative parts are highly dull, even on expert.
The guitar controller features a strumming button, as well as five color-coded fret buttons on the neck of the guitar. Onscreen, notes are color coded the same way as the fret buttons travel down the screen; 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. Nevertheless, you'll gain "star power" by aiming at 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.
Guitar Hero II ups the ante by including quite a few more songs than the original video 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. You'll often run into two notes together, or ones that need to be held for an extended period of time. Playing Guitar Hero II isn't noticeably different from playing Guitar Hero, at least not in the first couple of difficulty levels.
Graphically, this is on par with Karaoke Revolution -- meaning it has nice, over-the-top character models and detailed venues. You'll be too busy to notice them, however. What you will enjoy seeing is the way notes float in on a 3D plane. This is preferred to the bottom/top scroll of DDR, because you can keep your eyes focused in the center and peripherally see every chord coming up.
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