GAME DESCRIPTION: The Guitar Hero 2 Bundle is a hard-rockin’ follow-up to the critically acclaimed rhythm game. Prove you’re worthy of rock stardom by covering classic rock, “hair metal”, heavy metal, modern rock and alt-rock hits. The new multiplayer co-op mode lets you team up with friends — you play lead guitar and get a friend to handle rhythm and bass. Guitar Hero II features more than 55 songs and includes the Guitar Hero SG controller.
Song List:
Kiss – Strutter
Nirvana – Heart-Shaped Box
Police – Message in a Bottle
Van Halen – You Really Got Me
Kansas – Carry on Wayward Son
Foo Fighters – Monkey Wrench
Alice in Chains – Them Bones
Iggy Pop and the Stooges – Search and Destroy
Pretenders – Tattooed Love Boys
Black Sabbath – War Pigs
Warrant – Cherry Pie
Butthole Surfers – Who Was in My Room Last Night
Mathew Sweet – Girlfriend
Rolling Stones – Can’t You Hear Me Knockin’
Guns N’ Roses – Sweet Child O’ Mine
Rage Against the Machine – Killing in the Name Of
Primus – John the Fisherman
Sword – Freya Thin Lizzy – Bad Reputation
Aerosmith – Last Child Heart – Crazy on You
Stone Temple Pilots – Tripping on a Hole in a Paper Heart
Stray Cats – Rock This Town
Allman Brothers – Jessica Jane’s Addiction – Stop
Anthrax – Madhouse
Living End – Carry Me Home Lamb of God – Laid to Rest
Reverend Horton Heat – Psychobilly Freakout
Rush – YYZ A
venged Sevenfold – Beast and the Harlot
Suicidal Tendencies – Institutionalized
Dick Dale – Misirlou
Megadeth – Hangar 18
Lynyrd Skynyrd – Free Bird
* Dual Guitar Shredding: Guitar Hero II™ takes the guitar rock experience to new volumes by allowing players to play 3 different guitar tracks: Rhythm, Bass, and Lead.
* Follow up to an Award Winning Soundtrack: Guitar Hero II™ follows up on the award winning soundtrack of Guitar Hero™ with over 55 new tracks.
* New Modes: Guitar Hero II™ introduces all new multiplayer modes like: cooperative, pro-face off, and face off, letting 2 Guitar Heroes conduct their own symphonies of destruction.
* Shred School: Guitar Hero II™ features an all new practice mode, allowing Guitar Zeroes to become Guitar Heroes with enough practice.
PLAY: We could wait to rip the guitar and game out of the box. We were all over Guitar Hero 2 like kids running down to the Christmas tree on Christmas morning.
The second incarnation of Guitar Hero is far superior to the first. The track listing is massive, the practice mode is great, and those who own the first guitar can use it with Guitar Hero 2.
We couldn’t wait to rock as Eddie Van Halen or get a little crazy as Slash. But our favorite was “Free Bird” by Skynyrd. That’s true stadium rock. A little Hendrix, Jimmy Page, or Pink Floyd would have made this a classic setup. There are some duds—what’s up with Matthew Sweet? Or why not give us a better Stone Temple Pilots song than “Trippin’ On A Hole in a Paper Heart”? “Heart-Shaped Box” is a good choice for Nirvana even though something that rocked straight through would have made us even happier.
GUITAR HERO 2
But then again there is something about coming into a solo and feeling your forehead sweat from anticipation. Your fingers start to tremble as you try to keep up with the overabundance of notes and tones. It’s priceless. Flex those fingers because it might only be five buttons but its madness. It’s not easy even with only five buttons. It looks easier than Dance Revolution but that is a misnomer.
It helps a lot if you’ve taken the time to go through the practice mode. Even with practice mode there are more than a few instances when we found it extremely hard to pull through a song. There are definitely cool inclusions such as performing hammer-ons. It adds some relative interesting changes in the notes and extending those notes in an attempt to copy real guitar techniques.
We love to face-off against friends. You go head-to-head and if you get far enough you can even play as dueling guitar Gods. It makes you feel like you are playing as Slash and Izzy out on stage—all you need is a guy with big red hair and a bandana and you’d be ready to turn your living room into hair band heaven.
GRAPHICS: Luckily you won’t care too much about the animation or design. This isn’t the best PS2 game we’ve ever seen but its on par with Dance Revolution and that is all that is necessary.
SOUND: These are cover versions of the original songs and for the most part they sound spot on. We couldn’t be happier that RedOctane put together such an insane amount of awesome tracks.
FRANKLY: When the original Guitar Hero was released we didn’t think it could get any better than that—and then we get Guitar Hero II. Everything that seemed to be missing or held back from the original seems to have been amped up in the second version. We can’t imagine what we might get with version 3!
+ Richie Wright
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