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Guitar Hero II Review: W1k3d!!!
NightGod:
Guitar Hero has become a recent obsession of mine (I never really played it until about two weeks ago, picked it up when I saw the wireless PS2 guitars at Gamestop for $40 each-was too good to pass up).
For those who don't follow the console scene closely, Guitar Hero 2, Encore: Rock the 80s (full of 80s hits, lots of hair band stuff) is coming out for PS2 exclusively in a few weeks. Guitar Hero 3 will be out for PS3 and X-box 360 in October and then the next step in the evolution of the genre, Rock Band (which allows for playing Lead, Bass, Drums and vocals (a'la Karaoke Revolution) drops in November. The bullet points there are (other than the obvious coolness of adding in drums), you get a new guitar, with narrower fret buttons near the body of the guitar that allow for non-strumming soloing for the really insanely fast parts of songs (seems likely that it will only work during the actual solos) and on-line play that will allow any combination of local and remote players to do songs together. $200 will get you the new guitar, the game, drums and the microphone-seems like an insane deal to me, my pre-order is already in.
brandon:
I just play GH for the first time this weekend.. GH2 to be exact. I've been playing guitar for about 15 years and when I first heard of GH I thought it was the most ridiculous thing I'd ever seen (2nd only to DDR) BUT after playing it this weekend I gotta admit its a very fun and addictive game! It is a little counter intuitive to somebody that already plays guitar though. I would suggest that if you play guitar you should sort of ignore the actually guitar track that you hear and focus on the on-screen action. I played GH2 and the song Possum Kingdom seemed to have the drum beat mapped to the guitar in a few cases. Maybe it was only on the lower difficult settings where it does that since the drum beat is simplistic... ??? either way its still fun, especially after a few drinks ;)
NightGod:
Funny you mention about thinking it was ridiculous at first-a friend of mine played it for the first time tonight and he started off laughing nervously and kinda making fun of the idea, but after his second run through "Hate Myself For Loving You", he was hooked. He was also curious about how someone who has played a real guitar felt about translating their skills to the game, now I can give him an example.
lanman31337:
Gentlemen, for those without a console, there's Frets on Fire for the pc!!!
http://fretsonfire.sourceforge.net/
pointdablame:
It seems to me that anyone who plays guitar or has a real musical ear actually has more trouble on Easy (and some Medium) songs than Hard or Expert.
You hit the nail on the head as to why NightGod. On the lower difficulty settings, the on screen playing will often change from guitar track to bass to drum to whatever is easiest at any given point in a song. They will also just completely ignore notes on solos so that you're there hitting "1....2.....3......4...." while a crazy solo is playing on your tv.
It's very odd for anyone who can really notice what is going on. Myself, I don't play guitar and play bass guitar VERY POORLY, but it still really annoys me. It's not that you won't be able to play the songs, but you will definitely do double takes if you are trying to follow the rhythm. It gets a lot better (but not perfect) on Hard and Expert.