Air guitar fantasy becomes reality (Guitar Hero II (PS2))

Member Name: docpov

Product:	Guitar Hero II (PS2)
Date:	06/06/07 (342 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: great fun and a great idea

Disadvantages: You might not like it if you hate rock music

Have you ever played an air guitar, pretending to be a guitar hero? Ever fancied yourself playing that super fast riff or solo? If you have then now’s your chance, well sort of.

Guitar heroes II is a game that lets you live that dream and shows you how hard it is as well.

What you get.
As well as the disc and instruction booklet you get your guitar. This lightweight guitar comes with an adjustable strap and plugs into your Playstation. The neck of the guitar has five different coloured, large, square buttons and the body has a strumming button and a whammy bar so you can add twiddly bits to the longer notes.

The game.

The basic premise of the game is that moving coloured dots come down a runway on the screen and you have to hit the corresponding coloured notes on the guitar and press the strumming button at the same time to make the notes. You have to press the buttons when the moving dots reach coloured circles at the bottom of the screen, if you miss then there is a very unmusical thud and the note you should have played is missed out from the song.

Simple really isn’t it? Well it’s a simple idea for a game and one that is very effective and not a little addictive. But to actually get it right, that is not so simple, in fact it is very difficult as I will try to explain as we go through the various game modes.

Game modes.

Career.
This is where you should start the game as you need to complete songs to unlock more.
First off you have to choose a name for your band along with a graphical representation of your character and then choose your guitar from a selection of three.
Now you are set to go on the road and impress the punters with your amazing playing skills. There is a list of four songs to choose from, I would choose the first on the list, Shout at the devil, it is relatively short at 152 notes and I think is the easiest introduction to the game.
The song starts, on screen your band is limbering up and the runway starts. The first notes come down, red, green and yellow, short notes strum and let go, longer ones keep the button pushed as long as the note lasts. Add effect with the whammy bar to the long notes.
There are two meters on screen. One adds up your score and tells you what bonus level you are on X2 for hitting ten consecutive notes, X3 for the next and X4 for the next and until you miss a note or finish the song. If you do miss then your score level starts again. There are also some notes that have a blue halo, hit all of these in their sequence and your star power meter rises, get to either half way or fill it up and when you hit the button your star power is unleashed, doubling whichever score level you are on at the time until the star meter drains.
The star meter can also rescue you if you are in trouble on the other meter, the rock meter.
There are four levels to this, green and you are doing great, yellow and you are starting to miss a few notes. Red and its time to put a good string of notes together or flashing red, you have almost blown it and unless you hit all the notes you will soon fail the song.
If you are in the red, and you have available star power then it will help to rescue you.

Congratulations, you have completed your first song. A screen comes up at the end of the song telling you your score, the percentage of notes you hit and how long a streak you managed. More detailed analysis of your performance is available through a link. This is useful for seeing where you messed up and which bits you need to practice.

Having completed your first song its time to choose another. Once you have completed three of the four songs in the section another four are available to play and so on until you have revealed 28 songs.
Once you have completed the songs on easy you can move on to medium. This time you get paid for your efforts and can use the money you earn to buy extra songs, guitars or characters or bonus videos. Also as you complete sections you can unlock new songs by means of completing an encore.
Medium ups the anti with the addition of the blue note as well as extra notes of the other colours. The notes also come at you at a bit faster pace and there are more chords (two or more notes played at the same time) to contend with.
Moving on and probably a lot of sweat and tears later and you can try your hand at the hard level, the addition of the orange note, extra other colour notes at a quicker pace and many more chords will get your fingers moving quicker than you thought possible.
Expert level ups the pace as with the moves up from the other levels. The extreme, conquer this and I will call you a real guitar hero.
That’s it, that’s all there is too it, it is going to take a long time to get to the height of your career, I am sure of that. So that gives the game longevity although I do wonder if an option to create your own songs to perform would be a good idea, maybe in a later version perhaps.

I have found it very addictive and the need to perfect a song grows stronger within me the more I play. At first it feels like an achievement to just get through a song but as I play more I want to not only beat the high score, especially if it is one my daughter set but I want to play the song better, just to play the song better. I have got 100% once and that gave me a real sense of achievement. The next mode will help I think.

Practice mode.
Got a problem with a tricky solo that you just can’t nail? Then practice mode is there to help. It lets you either practice whole songs or just the section you want or the one you are struggling with. You can play it at real pace or three slower paces, letting you get the fingering right and gradually build up the pace.

Quick play.
This mode lets you play any song you have earned or unlocked in any of the difficulty levels.

Multiplayer.
Possibly the best fun mode in the game. Two players can play in any of three modes.

Cooperative.
Both of you play the same song together with both your note streaks and scores adding to one total, also a missed note by either of you ends the bonus for both. Although both of you are playing the same song one of you plays the lead and the other plays either the base or rhythm section depending on the song You can play any song you have unlocked or earned in the career mode.

Face off.
Play against your playing partner this time. You play the song together, alternating the sections of the song you play, highest score wins and its fun to see who got the best note streak and note percentage too.
Again you can play any song you have unlocked plus you can choose your difficulty level. This can be different to your playing partner is you so wish.

Pro face off.
As with face off you play against your partner but this time both play exactly the same notes. Battle against both your opposition and yourself as you strive for that elusive perfect performance. This mode has to be unlocked to gain access.

If you only have one guitar available you can use your normal controller to play. In fact should you wish you could use your controller to play single player too. Using the controller you use the same press and release, press and hold system for the notes as you do on the guitar apart from you only have to push one button per note.
If your mate has a guitar then you can use two guitars to battle it out.

The songs.

The songs included in the game are of course guitar classics. The songs include tracks by The Police, Kiss, Guns and Roses Nirvana and the Rolling Stones to name but a few. If you love your rock music, you will know and love a lot of the tracks you will get to perform. If you don’t then you are going to be converted as you play them I am sure.

I guess you are wondering how an aging rock dude like me gets on with it, well I have to say that I am better with the controller than I am with the guitar and I have struggled a bit with the harder levels. My poor old fingers just don’t seem to move fast enough to hit the multiple quick notes.
In contrast, my fourteen year old daughter is much better and her fingers are a lot more agile than mine. Of course it helps that she is a viola player and has an excellent ear for music, but she certainly seems to have got to grips with it very well indeed.
Even my four year old enjoys a go, taking the yellow and blue notes on the controller while I play red and green, she manages to hit several too so although the game is rated as 12+ youngsters enjoy it too.

A word on the graphics.

The band graphics that accompany you playing the songs are great, not that you will see them too much when you are concentrating on the notes coming down but if you are watching someone else play they are very good indeed.
The stadia you play get bigger and better as you progress in your career. You start in a battle of the bands and then move on to an underground club. As you unlock more you progress to proper venues and then to stadiums. Your crowds of adoring fans get correspondingly larger and all in all the graphics are very well done.

Sound.
As well as the music of course there is background crowd noise, cheering if you are doing well, louder if you get a great riff or you have hit the star power button. Hit a few bum notes on the other hand and the crowd start to get restless and the odd boo will come your way, hit lots of bum notes and you will be booed off stage.

Options.
There are the usual sound and video options including a video option to sort out lag if you are using an HD TV.


Overall.
We have found this game to be great fun and have had hours on it between us. Even now there are loads that we haven’t unlocked yet so we will be playing for some time. If you are a rock music fan you may enjoy this more than if you hate that sort of music, but hey, you might be converted to loving great music.



We bought ours from Argos where it was on offer for £49.99 for the game and the guitar. Amazon currently has it for £44.98.
The game is available without the guitar for £29.99.
The game is also available for the Xbox.


Rock on

© Docpov may 2007.

Summary: Rock on.