Guitar Hero is your packaged social life

By Justin Myers

Published Nov. 14, 2006

There's something special about Guitar Hero that you don't find with most other video games. Whether they're good at it or not, people always seem to flock to it when they hear someone playing. It should come as no surprise, then, that fans were eagerly awaiting the release of Guitar Hero II. As freshman Elliott Williams said, "[The game's release] was so exciting, it was like Christmas for a little kid."

As far as music-based games go, I've always been a Dance Dance Revolution kind of guy, so starting out with Guitar Hero was quite an adjustment. The trick to learning is to be playing with a bunch of other people who know what they're doing. There are tutorials in the game, but they're a bit cheesy and poorly organized.

Even if you have no social life at all, this game comes packaged with opportunities to make friends. Find someone who knows how to play and have him or her teach you. Seriously, who needs an entire tutorial on how to tilt the controller to get Star Power? The "Advanced Techniques" tutorial only covered hammer-ons and pull-offs, which was also a bit disappointing.

While we're on that subject, developers listened to frustrated fans and made hammer-ons and pull-offs easier to hit. The game also includes three-note chords, which scareS the hell out of players who've never seen them before.

The game also includes a new practice mode, in which players can go through songs at slower speeds — handy for ridiculously fast songs like Dick Dale's "Misirlou" — or go over dfficult parts.

The career mode is rather straightforward — players start off in a high school battle of the bands and work up to playing at such venues as Stonehenge and the Vans Warped Tour. After playing three or four songs, depending on progress and difficulty level, the fans scream for an encore. You don't have to give it to them, but who can turn down more money to buy more songs?

Oh, the songs. Guitar Hero II's set list seems a bit heavier than that of the first, but don't worry — even among such selections as Primus' "John the Fisherman" and Black Sabbath's "War Pigs" the game still includes lighter songs like the Stray Cats' "Rock This Town" and classics like Van Halen's cover of "You Really Got Me." Most of the songs are sung by a decent cover band, though some of the covers, like that of Rage Against the Machine's "Killing in the Name," could have used some more work. The cover of Strong Bad's "Trogdor," though, was actually pretty good given the source material.

The game's most popular component, though, is the multiplayer aspect. In addition to the original game's Versus mode, Guitar Hero II brings a Co-op mode, in which one player takes a song's guitar part and the other takes the bass line, and a Pro Face-Off mode, in which both players play every note instead of trading off parts as they do in the normal Versus.

Games are becoming more and more social, and Guitar Hero II's no exception. The groups that come together to play this game are simply amazing to watch — and even more exciting to join. It may be expensive, but this game's well worth it.