Impressions: Guitar Hero 2
It’s been a while since I’ve played a game until my fingers ached. But I’ve been so enraptured by Guitar Hero 2 that I just keep on banging out those riffs until I can barely hold the plastic PlayStation 2 guitar controller anymore.
For those who haven’t experienced the Guitar Hero franchise before, it’s like air guitar karaoke. Instead of a microphone and an assortment of Beyonce tracks, Guitar Hero 2 puts a guitar in your hands and gets you to play along with bands like Guns N’ Roses and Black Sabbath. It’s every rock pig’s gaming fantasy, and is incredibly well implemented.
Gameplay consists of matching button presses and strumming on the guitar while notes scroll towards you on an onscreen representation of the fret. To hit a note you hold down the appropriate button on the neck and tap the strum bar on the guitar’s body. At the easiest level this involves basic three chord progressions, but this gets more and more complex until expert mode with five chords and some intense fretwork are needed.
I hadn’t had a chance to play the original Guitar Hero — when the review copy arrived in the office it was pounced upon by too many of my colleagues for me to have a go. But I’ve been able to spend some time now with the sequel and the subtle charms of what is quite a simple game are becoming apparent.
In part it helps that there are so many familiar songs to come to grips with, which helps the learning curve a lot. The game is also set up to scale quite well, with easy mode getting you used to the basic game mechanics, while still offering up a challenge for the noobish. I’d been feeling pretty good until I hit ‘Who was in your room last night?’ by The Butthole Surfers, and the sudden appearance of simple multi-button chords threw my hand eye coordination completely. As you progress through difficulty levels the dexterity required gets more and more intense, the game culminating with some truly brain destroying tracks (check out this amazing video of someone playing the hardest song in the game, Lynard Skynard’s Freebird, on Expert setting)
Career mode in Guitar Hero 2 involves unlocking a series of ‘gigs’, each featuring different songs to choose from. Complete the songs to a satisfactory level and unlock the next gig and its songs. There’s also the ability to unlock new songs as ‘encores’ if you perform well enough, and other tracks that can be bought with money earned from gigs.
You don’t have to nail every note in a song to complete it, but you do get a score based upon how well you pull it off. However the real joy in the game comes from nailing a track perfectly, your inner rocker punching the air and screaming as you blast the last power chord on a flawless run through the song.
I haven’t had a chance to play around with the coop multiplayer yet, but the game gives the ability for two guitarists to play together. Either as lead and rhythm guitar, or lead and bass guitar. One great thing about this is that players can set their difficulty levels independently — meaning someone can still be learning on easy mode, while their more experienced friend does the lead guitar on expert. It’s a small touch, but a nice way to make for a fun experience without both people being air guitar gods.
On the down side for some, the tracks in the game are definitely skewed to the metal/thrash/rockabilly side of the guitar equation, with more poppy songs like Message In a Bottle by the Police or Girlfriend by Matthew Sweet being exceptions rather than rules. The good news is that of the heavier tracks, there are some really iconic numbers to play like Killing in The Name Of by Rage Against The Machine (without the swearing), Heart Shaped Box by Nirvana and even Sweet Child O Mine by Guns N’ Roses. For extra special geek cred the game even includes Trogdor, the song about burninating made famous by the website Homestar runner.
Guitar Hero 2 is one of the most enjoyable games I’ve played on PS2 in a long time. Standing there in the living room, guitar strap slung round my neck as I rock out makes me feel like I’m a teenager in the bedroom strumming a tennis racket — but this time I’m actually ‘making’ music rather than being a passive participant. It’s a game made to nurture the inner guitar god in all of us.
