Ah, Guitar Hero. Now here is a game that should really get you excited about the expanding possibilities of what videogames are capable of. While naysayer's of the Guitar Hero franchise have been quick to point out that all these games get you to do is to prance around your living room with a plastic guitar while pretending that you can actually play music and have some talent, I'm here to tell those people that...they're right. Yes, they're right. If you buy this game you will find yourself playing a plastic guitar by pressing buttons to pre-recorded music while "proper" musicians sneer at you from behind their actual guitars and your loved ones begin to exhibit serious concern about your lack of exposure to the world outside the 3 meter radius of your television. Which is completely irrelevant because it's worth every damn minute of it.

   That's the genius of Guitar Hero: almost anyone can pick it up without spending years of training, and have incredible amounts of fun playing some of their favorite songs and actually feeling like they're part of a band. I've been playing games for a long time, and if someone had told me when I was young that one day I would be able to play a rhythm game using an actual guitar of sorts, to songs by famous artists such as Guns N Roses, Black Sabbath and The Rolling Stones, I would have laughed at them and gone back to watching Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (we all have our dark secrets, people). And while the Guitar Hero games have been awesome, things are about to get even better with Guitar Hero 3 and a little explosion of awesomeness called Rock Band due to be released soon. With huge names such as Metallica, The Who and Radiohead signing on to provide music, more peripherals with basses, drums, and a mike being playable with Rock Band, and whole freaking albums made available to download, the future is looking good indeed...... But I'm getting ahead of myself again. For now we have Guitar Hero 2, which is still legendary in its own right, so lets take a closer look.

Rock school is in session.

   If you've never played a Guitar Hero game, the basics are that you get a fret board on-screen which has notes coming at you. By holding the corresponding colored button (the fret) on your guitar, and then "strumming" the lower switch, you will play that note if your timing is right. You get five different frets, which can be combined to play chords, and if you hit many notes without missing any, you'll get a score multiplier of up to x8. It's that simple. Some notes have stars on them: hit all these notes in a row and you get star power, which, when used, will make your character do something impressive (read: impossible; read again: musically impossible) with their guitar, and you'll double your score. Star Power is most useful when you're about to fail at a song - yes, if you screw up enough you can actually wreck your performance to the point of no return - and this, of course, is where the challenge comes in. It's not all pink beer and headless groupies after all, my star-dazzled friend.

   There are four modes of difficulty, so if you're no good at rhythm games, the easy level will take pity on you by having you playing just the top three frets, while in medium you'll get the use of four frets, and in hard and expert you get to use all five of them. Now multiply that by the almost ridiculous number of songs to play: the PS2 version started with 64 (with 40 of them being licensed tracks, while the other 24 are indie, or "bonus" tracks), with that number growing even higher for the 360 version being reviewed here, with 10 more exclusive tracks being thrown into the mix. Needless to say, there is something here to break your teeth on even for the most hardcore music candy lovers. This being a review for the 360 version, I'll be focusing specifically on the new exclusive content and will completely and utterly ignore the original 64 tunes that shipped for the PS2.

Still want a review for the original songs? "They're awesome." Feel cheated? Deal with it!

Emo, emo, emo!

   In a download that only became available for the 360 very recently, you can now purchase the "Chemical Romance Pack" from the XBL Marketplace for 500 points. Which is a great thing if you're a fan of Chemical Romance, but obviously is not so good if you hate the band. Should their new album even be classified as "emo"? I know they dress the part, but at the same time when I hear the whine-a-thon of songs such as Simple Plan's "How could this happen to me", it sounds about a million times more emo to me. In the end, it's up to you to decide. The three songs in the pack are "Teenagers", "Famous Last Words" and "This Is How I Disappear", and while they're okay, good sounding songs, they tend to be a bit too chord repetitive to be classics. "Teenagers" is a blast to play on Expert, however.

   The last welcome change for the game, song-wise, is that some of the songs have been moved into different tiers. I always thought it was ridiculous in the PS2 version of the game that "Strutter", which is probably the easiest song in the game to play, was for some reason in the 2nd tier. It's now in the 1st tier where it belongs, and, conversely, Wolfmother's "Woman", far too hard for where it was, has moved up to the 2nd tier instead. A lot of other songs have been moved as well; it's a very small change, but it also makes more sense, and it gives you a warm and fuzzy to know that the development team is paying attention to small details such as this.

Hey Kids! Like Guitar Hero? Then you'll love Cowbell Hero!

   The last extras in the 360 version the game are the leaderboards and the Achievements. The leaderboards are a great incentive for you to improve on your scores even more, since you can now see if you're actually good at the game compared to the rest of the world. (Reportedly, some versions of GH2 even shipped with a complementary pack of Kleenex to help you cry about it.) The Achievements range from beating the game on all of the difficulty levels, scoring highly in a song, not missing any notes, and so on. And as some sort of sick joke, one of the Achievements is "beat Jordan on Expert". Haha, funny sh*t, Harmonix. Comedy gold, really... ya gloating bastards... ahem. I mean, that is one song that went from "challenging" to "oh god the whole damn screen is full of notes flying at me" on Expert.

   Of course you also get a new guitar peripheral for the 360 version: a white, angular thing that looks better than the guitar for the PS2, and plays just as well. The only problem I had with it is that the whammy bar is so loose that if tapped accidentally it can swivel out of the way, or - what's worse - into the way of your strumming hand. Say, that's not a bad name for a band.

You always knew this day would come. Are you ready to play Free Bird?

   All up, these additions make the 360 version of Guitar Hero 2 the definitive version to own. Going back to the question "Is it worth buying if I already have the PS2 version?" I'd have to say that if you truly love Guitar Hero, then yes. Sure you have to buy the game again, but with 13 new songs, Achievements, a graphical upgrade, and leaderboards, I'd venture to say it's worth it. However, if your PS2 version is keeping you plenty happy and the 13 added songs aren't all that important for you, just wait for Guitar Hero 3, which should be out near the end of the year. Whatever you do though, make sure to jump on board this franchise soon, because unless you just hate rhythm games, music, and life itself, you should find something to like here. Playing it is not as impressive as playing an actual musical instrument, but look at it like this: after I first started playing these games I decided to go out and get myself an actual guitar. So maybe videogames are good for something after all. You know, like supporting the world economy by hoaxing people into unrealistic dreams of stardom.

       ... Travis Whipps