Gaming Trend

Gaming Trend Review

by Ron Burke

Guitar games have been successful in Japan, but very few companies have been brave enough to try them in the United States.  Despite the fact that everyone I know plays the air guitar, it wasn’t until this time last year that we got the chance to really rock out with a music simulator based on the guitar.  RedOctane, a company that got its start making 3rd party peripherals, got together with rhythm game veterans Harmonix (they made Frequency and Amplitude) to try to bring some heavy rocking guitar riffs to the public.  The game was Guitar Hero, and it was an instant success.  The game went platinum in less than a year, and the development duo was on fire!  The only thing they could do was put on an encore performance with a sequel. 

In April of this year, we got the announcement we were waiting for – Guitar Hero II would be shipping in November, and it would feature over 55 songs and would feature new play modes that would allow players to play rhythm, lead, or bass guitar.  Using the same Guitar Hero SG controller used in the original game, this title was ready to offer fans exactly what they wanted – more of the same, and then a bit more on top of that.  I have been to the Temple of the Rock Gods, and they are playing Guitar Hero II.  Put up the horns, it is time to rock out!

Guitar Hero didn’t skimp in the graphic department, offering a comic-style rock world for your Rock God to please his worshipers.  Guitar Hero II has taken this base graphic system and bumped it up a little bit.  Adding 480 progressive and widescreen options, and cleaning up some of the small jagged edges of the characters, the overall ‘smoothness’ of the band is elevated.  Similarly, the backgrounds are far more active, with fans throwing debris on stage, stage props animating in the background, and your band playing along with the music, all the while dancing around the screen like the real deal.  All of the characters feature vibrant colors (except the Grim Ripper of course) and are have a great degree of movement on the stage.  The better you do, the more they rock out.  Once again, a great deal of detail is paid to the hands and the fingering movements of the guitar. 

Along with success comes a bit of financial sponsorship.  RedOctane teamed up with the best names in the business to include BOSS Effectors, DW Drums, Eden Bass Amplication, EMG, Epiphone, Ernie Ball Strings, Gibson Guitar, Guitar Center, Hofner, Kramer, Krank, Line 6, Mesa Boogie, MusicMan Basses, Orange, Randall Amplifiers, Roland, Vans and the Vans Warped Tour, VHT, and Zildjian in the game. That sounds like a whole lot of product placement, but when you play you’ll hardly notice – it just looks more like a real band.  Now you can schlep real equipment instead of look-alikes. 

As before, there are several venues that you’ll be touring in the game.  You’ll start off in a high school gym, move into The Rat Cellar in Boston, MA, head to the RedOctane club in Brooklyn, NY, break out in the Blackout Bar, headline the Harmonix Arena in Oakland, CA, please the rock Gods at the Vans Warped Tour in Austin, Texas, visit MoTown at the Rock City Theater in Detroit, MI, and even thump the kickers at Stonehenge in England.  All of the venues have been updated and packed with fans that move more independently, properly reacting to the music by striking up their lighters when appropriate.  Rock Ballads need bad lighting ya know!  These event areas are packed with your sponsored gear, your band, lighting that reacts to your songs, pyrotechnics, and various other gear you’d expect at a concert venue.  Ironing out the slight framerate issues present in the early demos of the game, the PS2 keeps things smoothly locked at 30fps – a necessity when you start getting 32nd notes flying at you at breakneck speed.

Speaking of latency, RedOctane has acknowledged that some HDTVs have audio/visual lag that would render this game a complete wreck.  They have introduced a calibration system that allows you to test your TV and adjust for any moderate speeds issues that might occur.  We are talking milliseconds, but that is more than enough in a music simulator.

As it was in Guitar Hero, you can purchase unlockable videos in the store.  This time we get a tour of the Gibson factory in addition to a Making of the Game video, and a Making of the Songs video.  Take everything that was in Guitar Hero and give it a once-over to buff out the rough edges.  It isn’t gonna blow you away, but it more than works.

The heart of any music title is obviously the song selection.  Guitar Hero came to the table with 47 songs that were covered pretty well by members of Harmonix, their bands, and various other hired talent.  This time around we are treated to an incredible 64 songs, 40 of which are licensed, but this time there is a difference – two of these songs are the original recordings.  Primus contributed their track John the Fisherman for the game, and Jane’s Addiction handed over Stop for RedOctane to use.  Big thanks both bands for this incredible contribution!  The bulk of the rest of the songs are very well done covers, and you’ll enjoy almost every one of them.

There are a few songs that sadly lacked the Rock Power you’d expect out of, say, Danzig.  Their contributed track, “Mother”, lacks any sort of punch and just completely falls flat.  Nirvana’s “Heart-Shaped Box” is simply a snore-fest to play, even during the solo portion.  The cover of “Trippin’on a Hole in a Paper Heart” has enough punch, but the voice work could use some work.  3 out of 64 isn’t a bad ratio I’d say, so I can’t complain too loudly.

Since the songs are set up in a progressive Tier fashion, the earlier songs are relatively easy, depending on your difficulty level, and they increase in difficulty as you move through the ranks.  By the time you get to YYZ from Rush, you better have a good handle on your fingering and board movements as the broken rhythms, time changes, chords, and speed will blow your fingers clean off your hands otherwise.  Picking songs after that one will cause you to probably lose the whole arm. I say this as Harmonix and RedOctane have amped the difficulty a bit in Guitar Hero II.  When they suggest that you may want to try a previous song until you can hit 5 stars, they aren’t kidding this time around. 

The trick for a sequel like this is to try to bring a mixture of fantastic tracks that will appeal to a wide audience.  I personally can’t stand Guns N’ Roses, but the inclusion of my favorite band, Rush, offsets that nicely.  There is literally something for everybody here – even The Stray Cats make an appearance for their song “Rock this Town”.  If your song or band didn’t make the list (Testament?), you can simply turn to page 6 of the manual for your answer. Tony M. from Miami writes in with “You guys suck!  I wrote in about 500 times and you guys still didn’t put the song I requested in the game!”  The Grim Ripper replies “We didn’t?  I thought we did.  Huh…my bad.” 

Guitar Hero came with a pretty sweet brown colored Gibson SG guitar to use for the game.  Guitar Hero II can be purchased with a brand new red Gibson SG guitar pack-in, or separately for those who already have all the guitars they need.  The new guitar is exactly like the previous one, but in red, so you know what to expect.  This also means that the strap can’t be moved for a lefty option, just as it was on the previous controller.  Seriously guys – put a peg on the other side, ok?

There are several in-game controls that bear mentioning, with the previous mentioned widescreen, lag calibration, and progressive scan modes are most notable among them.  In addition to that there is an all-new practice mode. With Guitar Hero II you can play specific sections, or the entirety of the selected song at four different speed settings to help you really nail your board movements and fingering.  In my preview I mentioned that this could be the feature that gets me over the hump from Hard to Expert – I’m gonna need more practice it seems. Now, rather than just beating your head against the track over and over,  you can slow it down and obtain the muscle memory and speed necessary to complete the track at the normal pace.

You do need to know that there is another feature that’ll challenge your shredding abilities – three finger hits and chords.  If you make it to the latter parts of the Hard difficulty or higher, you can expect a real challenge that closer approximates real guitar playing.  In addition, 32nd notes make their way into some of the lower tracks now as well.  Learn to strum both up and down and you’ll do a whole lot better when these portions come your way. 

Overall, it seems that Harmonix and Wave Group Sound have really come together to bring some fantastic songs together in a way that makes 5 notes feel like 50.  By adding a coat of polish to the Hammer-on and Pull-off system, you’ll find that the controller is more responsive, and your score will reflect that.  Nowhere is this more apparent than on the Face-Melter from Megadeth, Hanger 18.  Good luck, my fellow Rock God wannabes. 

How do you follow up a game that received such critical acclaim from anyone who has played it?  There is an incredible amount of pressure to deliver more songs, better cuts of the tracks, and a more organic approximation of playing a real guitar.  Well, the first step has to be listening to fans, and Harmonix and RedOctane were listening intently. 

Taking the best parts of Guitar Hero, including the funny High School themed humor, and keeping them, while polishing and improving what didn’t work the first time around, Harmonix has set the bar for all music games with Guitar Hero II.  The most basic of examples is that fans wanted to be able to play multiplayer, while allowing each player to shred at different difficulty levels.  Done!  You can now chose one difficulty level while your fellow rocker picks another.  In the cooperative mode, you can work through a song with one player playing lead guitar, while the other either plays rhythm guitar or bass guitar.  Since you are rocking out as a team, you both have to activate your Star Power simultaneously.  You can also fail as a team.  No longer can you drag your partner through the track by your own will and skill – your partner will have to pony up their own shred skills to keep the boat afloat, so to speak.  Once you have completed the career mode on any difficulty level, you’ll unlock a Pro Face-Off mode.  In this mode, both players have to play the same exact song on the same difficulty level.  It is your own battle of the bands in your own living room.

The Pro Face-Off mode isn’t the only unlock in the game.  There are three unlockable characters in the store, and an alternate outfit that you can purchase for every character except the three unlockables.  There are 24 bonus tracks to buy (Including the Homestarrunner.com favorite, “Trogdor”, and Adult Swim staple Dethklok’s “Thunderhorse”), as well as a ton of licensed guitars.  Even the Gibson doubleneck EDS-1275 is in the game!  Once you get your new axe, you can also purchase 9 different finishes for the body including a custom Flame Job finish, a Candy Apple GT finish, and an authentic Zakk Wylde spiral finish.  What?  Not enough for you?  Fine.  You also unlock one guitar by beating all of songs on Easy.  If you get 5 stars on all of the songs on that difficulty level you’ll net yourself another guitar.  You can do this for all four difficulty levels netting you another 8 guitars for your arsenal.

All of this adds up to a game that exceeds the previous title in every way.  Since you can name your band in the beginning of the Career mode, you’ll feel a genuine connection to your band.  As you complete each tier you’ll get the opportunity to lead your band through an encore performance.  It just feels great when you finally get that fifth star on a song you’ve been struggling with in practice – a feeling normally reserved for the real thing.  Guitar Hero was a staple of the parties I throw at my house, but it looks like Guitar Hero II has stolen the crown!

I mentioned that the humor from Guitar Hero had made its way across to the sequel.  This is readily apparent when you open the manual.  Rather than going with the notebook style like the previous game, this one is set up like a magazine, complete with an interview with Axel Steel, letters to The Grim Ripper, who acts as Editor-in-Chief, sidebar information, advertisements for other bands, and a retrospective on unlockable rocker Clive Winston. 

Speaking of unlockable rockers – there are three in the game.  The aforementioned Clive Winston, a hippy-looking guy with stars on his shirt and flames on his sleeves and pants.  The long hair and big glasses reminds me that some people never left the 70s.  Next up you’ll see the return of Xavier Stone, but this time the fro is a little bigger, and the sideburns and goatee are a little longer.  Rocking out in a brown suit, he reminds me a bit of Lenny Kravitz.  My personal favorite unlock is the all-new Grim Ripper.  Sporting a set of Ram horns and a hourglass necklace, it looks like the Angel of Death Metal has gotten a great makeover.  He costs $6000 bucks to unlock, and at 600 a pop for 5 star performances, you’ll need to save your pennies before you can “By Demons, Be Driven”.  (Maybe that song’ll make it for Guitar Hero III?)

The very nature of Guitar Hero and Guitar Hero II suggests that you’ll be playing these songs again and again, long after you’ve mastered them.  I’ve played through YYZ and Trogdor more times than I can count and it still puts a smile on my face every time.  With the deeper co-op guitar experience, the all-new practice system, and a whole batch of new songs in this game, I suspect there will be a Guitar next to my PS2 for a long while.

What’s left to say?  Most stores will have this finger-melting axe swinging title by the time you read this review.  If you haven’t invested in Guitar Hero yet, you should seriously ask yourself why.  This is, by far, one of the best games on any platform – ever. 

Gaming Trend Score

93

1. Graphics: 86
2. Audio: 90
3. Controls: 90
4. Gameplay: 97
5. Value/Replay: 95
6. OVERALL:93