Shenanigans! Shenanigans I cry! How do you have a game about playing the guitar and you don’t even have Detroit Rock City by KISS from the Alive III album! Sure, it wasn’t the Star Man himself Ace Frehley rocking out on that blasting solo, but Bruce Kulick rocked! But in all honesty, I just wanted to throw out a negative out there, because there isn’t going to be much other than praise from here on out. Yes, Guitar Hero 2 is just that good. So let us pound this review out – I got a whammy bar calling my name!

THE STORY SO FAR
You want story! You ain’t getting no story. You want a story then here is a story for you. You want to play guitar, you can’t, so the next best thing is you run down to your local gaming store, pick up Guitar Hero 2, and live the dream you aren’t good enough to succeed at in the real world. Hey, if you want, go ahead and practice those cords and licks for hours upon hours during the week. Me? Well, I’m going to be rocking out at Stonehenge while the audience cries out “Freebird” and an alien spaceship comes down to get me because I just rocked so dang hard! You think I’m joking don’t you? Think again my friend.

Okay, so the game has given me illusions of grandeur, but I wasn’t kidding about the “Freebird” yelling and aliens.

Truth be told, there isn’t a story mode, but rather a Career mode, which has you starting out at a school battle of the bands competition and then moving to bigger and better venues as you complete songs on the required set list. But then again, you didn’t come for the story, you came to rock…and for those about to rock we salute you! Yes, that was an obligatory AC/DC reference.

SINGLE PLAYER: GAMEPLAY
The bulk of Guitar Hero 2 is built around the single player experience, as most of the time you’ll be playing simply to unlock all the songs and content, and then you’ll go back to try and master the entire game and get the best scores possible for each song; this need and drive to continue forward and be the best is what drives the gameplay of Guitar Hero 2.

As said, the Career mode is the driving force of the game, in which you’ll go to different venues, play different songs, and try to advance through the entire list of songs. You’ll start things out by naming your band, picking your guitarist (male and female choices are available), picking your guitar, and then off you go to rock and roll. But first, you’ll also need to pick which of the difficulties you are going to start with, and if you are a noob, please, please, please hear me when I say do the tutorials and play on Easy first – cause even on Easy, you will probably suck some.

To break the difficulties down and tell you what you can expect from each one: Easy (you’ll only use the first three buttons – green, red, yellow); Medium (you’ll only use the first four buttons – green, red, yellow, and blue); Hard (you’ll use all the buttons and the song moves faster); and finally Expert (you’ll use all buttons, more complicated notes, and the song is at its fastest). You’ll also find yourself playing more notes and more of the riffs the higher up in the difficulty you go up. Trust me in that if you can rock out on Expert without breaking a sweat, thou truly are a Guitar Hero – nay – God!

The idea of the gameplay is as simple as could be, as all you have to do is watch the telegraphed guitar notes slide down the neck of your guitar in the game, press whatever the colored keys are when they get to your strum line, and then when they do flick the strum bar on your guitar to play the note. Tadda – simple as pie. But single notes aren’t the sole notes, as you’ll also have power chords that require you to push more than one key down at a time. You’ve also got long notes that require you to keep the keys held down until the complete note has finished (however, these longs notes are your chance to break out the whammy and make the song your own).

However, though things start off simple, then you add more keys in and suddenly it is a different game as you struggle to remember what finger represents what color and catching up if you fall behind. Everything doesn’t come in a slow and steady beat either, as you’ll have notes come in all sorts of measure in time, meaning you really need to be paying attention to the screen and not your fingering (fingering needs to come naturally). You’ll also need to learn more complicated finger moves as well, such as hammer-ons and pull-downs which allows you to play closely positioned notes without having to strum for each one.

Should you fall behind on the Rock Meter (green is you’re doing good, yellow is okay, red is bad, and flashing red means you are about to lose) you can always use your built up Star Power, which you get from successfully playing all the star notes that come along as you are playing the song; to activate Star Power all you need to do is crank the guitar upwards and then get playing (Star Power will auto stop after you’ve expended your meter).

You’ve also got an excellent Practice Mode, which you’ll probably need to utilize sometime through your Guitar Hero 2 experience, as you can play songs that are kicking your butt, slow them down, see how you need to move your hands and hit the notes, and you can choose to only practice certain sections if you want instead of just the whole song. You can even practice the bass of the song, which comes into play later on the multiplayer side of things.

As for a few of my favorite songs to play in the game (to give you a taste of what you can expect): Surrender, Possum Kingdom, Heart-Shaped Box, Strutter, Mother, Life Wasted, Cherry Pie, Woman, Carry on Wayward Son, Message in a Bottle, Billion Dollar Babies, War Pigs, Monkey Wrench, Sweet Child O’Mine, Crazy on You, Trippin’ on a Hole in a Paper Heart, The Trooper, and of course Freebird!

The game also has a bunch of unlockables, which you buy from the store using money you get from doing good in the top three difficulty modes. With the money you’ll be able to buy new characters, new costumes, new guitars, new finishes, and new songs.

The game is also going to feature downloadable content, where you can download new songs so you never have to stop rocking!

MULTIPLAYER: GAMEPLAY
Though the single player game is where the heart is, there is also a pretty sweet multiplayer as well, which seems to be where the foundation of the new Rock Band game came from.

In the multiplayer portion of the game, you can choose to head out to Xbox Live if you want, and either play Face-Off (compete against another player while you alternately play the same song – each player can adjust their skill); Pro Face-Off (like Face-Off only you have same difficulty and play at same time); and Cooperation (you play with another person with one of you playing Lead Guitar and the other player either doing Rhythm Guitar or either Bass Guitar. Now, I’m usually all for battling it out with someone else, but when it comes to music, I’m all into the making love and not war, because the Cooperative mode is just more fun, as it sounds like you are really in another band with another person, making mistakes or rocking out together (depending on how good or bad you both are).

Also, online Leaderboards means you’ll always be heading out to see who is the best at any given song in the game. You think you can play “Thunderhorse” better than anyone else…now you can look it up and see who really is the best.

GRAPHICS
I’ll cut the game some leeway in that it doesn’t have to look amazing, because you’ll be so focused on those notes coming down the guitar you won’t care if the game looks pretty or not outside that. However, what is there does indeed look pretty nice, with large crowds jumping up and down, cute yet cool cartoonish looking characters, and the environments feature some cool animations, like paper airplanes flying around in the school battle of the bands or beer bottles being thrown at the stage in the bar.

SOUND
Umm…can I just say awesome here? Okay, it’s awesome. There is bound to be a song you’ll like here (as long as you love the history of rock) and it’ll sound great coming from your television speakers.

IN CONCLUSION
At $90 bucks, yeah, Guitar Hero 2 for the Xbox 360 is a steep price and one that might have you dancing like you are waiting in line for the bathroom, because you just don’t know if you should buy it or not. Listen up – buy it! Of course, this is coming from the raving mouth of someone already addicted to the game in only a short time, because I’ve spent so much time playing this game as of recent that I don’t really want to do work. You know what I want to do? If you said “rock” congratulations, you’ve learned well young grasshopper. Now, throw those horns in the air, bob your head up and down, and then go out and pick this game up.

RATING:
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