Guitar Hero II Reviews

man!! this games is FREAKY COOL!! MAN this game i would play it all the time
and everyday!! my cousin has this game and i am at expert.
i give this game a 5 star until i play the 3rd one!!!!!

I love this one just like the first but there are differences that I like. The gameplay is obviously the same. The graphics got a little bit better. More songs are in this one. And they changed the way Multiplayer is played instead of having both people play the same difficulty both players can choose whatever difficulty they want to play, how cool is that. Also songs have gotten harder and faster. They also added a few new characters other than the original character roster(which is Axel Steel, Judy Nails, Johnny Napalm, Xavier Stone, Pandora, Izzy Sparks, Clive Winston, and Grim Ripper) they added 3 new people Lars Ümlaüt, Eddie Knox, and Casey Lynch.

Songs I think were awesome in this game:
"Bad Reputation"
"Carry On Wayward Son"
"Cherry Pie"
"Free Bird"
"Message in a Bottle"
"Mother"
"Psychobilly Freakout"
"Shout at the Devil"
"Sweet Child O' Mine"
"Woman"
"YYZ"
"Mr. Fix It"
"Less Talk More Rokk"

Songs I think they shouldn't have put in this game:
"Can't You Hear Me Knockin'"
"Girlfriend"
"Tonight I'm Gonna Rock You Tonight"
"You Really Got Me"
"Fall of Pangea"
"Laughtrack"
"Yes We Can"

RedOctane was bought out shortly after the release of their first game, Guitar Hero - something to be grateful of since Harmonix, the ones who created Frequency and Amplitude among many others were the ones who did it. With this in mind, you can expect the game to be even better.

The new Cherry Gibson SG guitar controller is much, much better and easier to use than the original; unlike the first all-plastic controller, this one has resin on it that makes hitting the notes easier. Also, the note buttons, whammy bar, and strummer work better than before. And who can pass up the Cherry color?

Like the controller, the gameplay is much improved on as well. Hammer-ons and pull-offs are easier this time around; where you had to have nearly perfect timing before, this one gives you much more lenience when hitting them - avid guitarists might frown upon this, because you can just touch the notes to play them. Easy mode is still easy, but expert mode has you playing every single note. The user interface is improved, showing you a statistics screen including how many notes you hit, your average multiplier, and the percentage of notes you hit correctly in each section. And FINALLY, you have a Practice mode! There are more songs, and a wider variety of them too, including death metal and techno.

It still has flaws. One of the more noticeable flaws occurs when you start a game on another difficulty. When you switch difficulties, your guitar stays the same. This means that when you unlock the Grim Ripper in Hard and go to your game on Easy, your character will have the Scythe guitar. Or when you pick the Cherry Gibson for Expert, your Grim Ripper on Hard will be using the Cherry Gibson, even though he's not allowed to change guitars. Yes, this is a minor flaw, to say the least, but I have to bring it down a few pegs.

Despite this, it's still a great game. Go buy it. Go play Free Bird.

This game fixes a lot of the problems of the first Guitar Hero game: mixed difficulties makes the 2 player game actually fun this time, and the co-op mode is exactly the way the game was meant to be played. The "practice" mode is useful for those of us who have trouble with four-note hammer-ons and means that you can actually improve at this game without having to sweat blood.

Unfortunately, this all comes at a price: the choice of songs is truly, truly awful. Barring a few standout tracks (Sweet Child O' Mine, for example), there are songs in here that are just no fun to play meaning that when you get into the harder difficulties, entire sections of the game become tedious, unrewarding slogs.

Which means that this game, in spite of its gameplay improvements, is actually worse than the original. Which is a shame. Perhaps the Xbox 360 version will have downloadable content - songs people actually want to play.