Guitar Hero 2 Is A Fantastic Game With Few Flaws

Author's Rating:

Pros: Good songs
Gamplay
Accessable
Good store selection

Cons: Some bonus tracks
Basic graphics
Weird song organization
Lots of cover songs

The Bottom Line: 
Guitar Hero 2 is one of the best in the series. It has an excellent song selection and the gameplay is unrivaled in terms of fun.

Author's Review
Guitar Hero 2 is one of my favorite music games, if not my all time favorite. It's full of great songs and it is reasonably difficult for seasoned gamers like myself. Why is it my favorite music game? Well, you can find out below:

Gameplay

Mostly all gamers are familiar with the Guitar Hero franchise and how the game is played, but if you don't, here's the rundown. In Guitar Hero, you wield a plastic guitar with a strum bar and 5 different colored fret buttons. In the game, different colored notes will scroll down the screen and the player must strum when the note hits the bottom of the screen and push down the corresponding fret button to play the note. You can also deploy star power, which will double the amount of points you earn on each correctly played note. The more notes that are hit, the better the performance will be. If you keep missing notes, eventually you will fail the song and have to retry it again.  It has a relatively small learning curve, and pretty much anyone will be able to pick up a guitar and play. This is truly an enjoyable play method, and the fact that it has been left unchanged even in later Guitar Hero games proves this.

There are a few different game modes to choose from in Guitar Hero 2. The main one is called Career Mode, where you create a fictional band that tours around the U.S. In Career, you will get a set of about 5 songs and once you complete them, you will move onto the next set. It's linear, but that doesn't take away from the fun. Another mode is quickplay, which simply allows you to play any song on any level without following any sort of story. There is also Training mode, which allows you to view tutorials and practice difficult songs by slowing them down so you can learn to play them better (I can't tell you how many times this comes in handy). There is a multiplayer option available that allows players to either play Face-Off (2 players play the same song and see who does better) or Co-Op, which allows two players to team up on a song and earn a higher score. I haven't used the multiplayer mode, so I can't really give my opinion on it. The only other mode is Options, which allows you to adjust sound, fix lag, view the credits, etc.

There are 4 difficulties to choose from which are Easy, Medium, Hard, and Expert, so anyone from a hardcore gamer to your grandmother can start playing this game almost immediately (although I don't think grandma will be playing Expert from the get-go). The variety of difficulties is great because once you have fully beaten one difficulty level, you can simply move onto the next one until you've mastered the game. The system is somewhat repetitive, but this game has enjoyable songs, so replaying them isn't a chore by any means.

Song Selection

Anybody who has played a Guitar Hero game will tell you that the song selection will make or break the game. Thankfully, Guitar Hero 2 makes the cut. There is a wide variety of songs and artists from different genres such as punk, classic rock, metal, and even a tiny bit of techno, which means that pretty much anyone will find songs they enjoy on this game. Also, Guitar Hero 2 is home to many fan favorite songs such as old-time classic Free Bird by Lynyrd Skynyrd and the notorious face-melter Jordan by Buckethead.

The songs on Career Mode are good for the most part. Notable tracks include Sweet Child O' Mine, Carry On Wayward Son, Cherry Pie, War Pigs, etc. There are a few tracks that I personally didn't like such as Crazy On You, Killing In The Name, Freya, etc. but that's probably more of my personal taste. One thing that could be better is the way the songs are organized. In Career, songs are grouped together by relative difficulty, so the easiest ones are played first and then they get harder as you progress through the mode. However, there are some songs that are placed oddly, particularly in the middle of Career Mode. For example, there will be a song in the 4th group that's really hard, and then once you reach the 6th group, there will be a song that is considerably easier than it. It's a weird way to organize them, and it can be a little bit frustrating, especially if you get stuck on a song for a long time. Other than this, the Career mode is solid.

The bonus songs in Guitar Hero 2 are hit and miss. There are some standouts such as Jordan (mentioned above), Trogdor (from the online cartoon series Homestarrunner), and Thunderhorse (from the Adult Swim cartoon, Metalocalypse). Besides these, the rest of the bonus tracks are either decent or awful. There's some really bizarre ones on here like Yes We Can by Made In Mexico or Less Talk More Rokk by Freezepop. I'm thankful that tracks like these weren't tossed into career mode because I'd be upset if I was forced to play songs like these :/.

One thing I didn't like is that a large majority of the songs on Guitar Hero 2 are covers and the original versions aren't in the game. This probably won't make much of a difference to people who aren't super familiar with the songs on this game (like me). But on the contrary, players who are familiar with these songs will probably be really disappointed. Some of these songs sound almost exactly like the original while others sound vastly different (Sweet Child O' Mine and Beast and the Harlot are prime examples). This wasn't a huge deal to me, but for other gamers, it could be largely disappointing.

Graphics

The graphics in Guitar Hero 2 really aren't that great. The notes and other parts directly involved with song-playing (score meter, multiplier, etc.) look alright, but the animations by your fictional band mates for example, aren't that great. The people look pretty basic and have standard animations. The animations of your guitarist obviously have more variety because that's the central focus of the game. Graphics really aren't that big of a deal in this game though. Most players are too busy rawking out to notice them anyway ;).

The Store

One of the exciting features of Guitar Hero 2 is the store. In the store, you can purchase songs, guitars, finishes, characters, outfits, etc. with the cash that you earn from career performances (the better you do, the more money you make). This system works well because it will motivate you to try to redo previous songs to earn more money to purchase game items in the store. The store has a pretty extensive collection of things like guitars and finishes, but the selection of unlockable characters and outfits is limited. Not only can you purchase things with in-game money, but you can also spend Xbox Live points on downloadable songs. There's a good 20 or so downloadable songs, which is plenty for players that are hungry for more tunes.