Guitar Hero 2 owns my life.
My god, who would allow me to have this game? When I went to EB on Tuesday to pick up my preordered copy of Guitar Hero 2, I was informed of a fuck up on the manufacturer/shipper's part. See, my EB was not shipped enough copies of GH2 to meet preorder demand. As I'd only had my preorder for a month and a half, I was told that my copy would be in Wednesday the 15th. This is the day after reading break ends, which sucks as I was intending to devote my long weekend to the glory that is Guitar Hero. What's a boy to do? Well, I played a lot of my GH2 demo while pining for the real thing, then went and saw Borat. Borat was fucking awesome, and everyone needs to see it. Not really relevant to this post. The relevance is that when I got back from the movie, there was a message on my machine. "Hey, this is *some dude* from EB Games. We had someone cancel a pre-order for Guitar Hero 2 and since you're next on the list, you can pick it up any time."

GLEE!!!!

So I now have Guitar Hero 2. And a new guitar for it as well. I think my plans for modding my guitar are going to fall flat now, as my original guitar has some sentimental value to it and the new one is just plain fucking awesome. It's cherry red, with black trim. So sexy. Well, as sexy as a little plastic guitar can get, at any rate. Also feels like it's better put together than the older model. Thicker guards at important points in the cord and a textured finish on the body instead of just smooth plastic. Very nice. What about the songs, you're asking in my head? Fucking amazing. I've heard people saying that the track list is not as good as the first Guitar Hero. That is a matter of opinion, and should not affect review scores in the way that it has. My opinion on the tracklist: If you don't like it, you can just go fuck yourself. It's awesome, so fuck off and leave it alone. The only thing that could have made it better was the Blue Oyster Cult's "Godzilla," but that song was in the first game anyway, so it doesn't matter. Damn is it ever hard though. Much harder than Guitar Hero was. I was able to get 5 stars on expert for all but the last 3 songs in GH. In GH2, I started playing on expert mode, and am still doing so, but I've been repeatedly raped through the pants by many a song. It took me a hell of a long time to get through "Psychobilly Freakout," and then there was the total mental anguish that was "Miserlou." Now I'm stuck on Megadeth's "Hangar 18" which is the last song before unlocking the final encore song, "Free Bird. Of course, in order to unlock "Free Bird" for quick play and cooperative modes, I've gone back and played through the entire game on Hard mode as well. Gotta have a full tracklist for co-op.

Co-op, you ask? Why yes, and it's fucking great! Especially if, like me, you're surrounded by people who don't ever really get into rhythm games but want to play with the shiny guitar. If you're someone who's really into the genre, and thus quite good at the games, you're often going to end up having to either trade off with someone over and over switching difficulty levels with each movement of the controller, or you'll have to play at a level that's nothing resembling a challenge to you and is frankly just boring. This brings us to GH2's co-operative mode. The genius of it is that each player selects their own difficulty level. So while I'm playing on Expert, my companion will be accompanying me on Medium or Hard. In some cases, Easy, but I won't name names and embarass folks. One player takes on the role of lead guitar, and the second plays either bass or rhythm guitar, depending on the song. Bass can be really easy compared to guitar. I've played bass quite a few times now and bass on Expert is about equal to Guitar on either a difficult Medium or a simple Hard song. It's not a really big challenge (with a couple of exceptions. "YYZ" has some brutal bass solos, for example.) but if you've got a good song it's a lot of fun and gives the other player a chance to feel like they're playing the blistering solos. Plus, the fact that the two of you are actually playing together and that you're sharing a scorebar is a really cool thing.


Guitar Hero 2, final verdict. If you're only playing for the single player, grab GH1 first if you haven't already, and then get a stand along disc copy of GH2 to go with it. It's cheaper, since you only need the one guitar, and you'll end up with the full tracklist of about 150 songs (including the unlockables of course) to jam along to. If you have friends though, get the bundle pack for Guitar Hero 2 so you have a second guitar. The multiplay is the main improvement in this version, and it is really damned good. Great as GH1 was, it must be admitted that the multiplayer mode sucked balls. Big, sweaty, smelling vaguely of cheese, hairy balls. Now the multiplayer mode is as awesome as the rest of the game. If you have 2 guitars, a playstation 2 and a copy of Guitar Hero 2, I fully believe that you may be set for gaming for the next 8 months at least. I know I played the original almost every night for a year, up until I lost posession of my disk in August, and that was just the single player mode. Now that it's got competent multiplay I may never need another game. 'Course, I'll buy more games, and play them too. The point is that I could very well just play Guitar Hero for a year and not notice that that was it. God help me next year when Guitar Hero comes to the Xbox 360 and goes online. I'll be playing with people from everywhere, downloading new songs to play. Hell, if they keep up a steady stream of good downloadable songs on Xbox Live, I may just never leave the house again.



So yeah. Get the game. Play the game. Love the game. I order it.



EDIT: Oh yeah. Explaining my two week hiatus. I had a fuckton of exams and was getting about 2 hours of sleep a night. Didn't really feel like writing in that situation. Now it's reading week, and I have 2 whole days of nothing, (school or work!) so I'm actually writing things again. Now you know.