Gaming Trend

Gaming Trend Review

by Ron Burke

Most of the time people look at game ports as a bad thing.  X version for the PS3 and 360 look great, but Y version for the PS2 is a visual horror with shoddy framerate.  This has been the way of things since the launch of the Next-Gen systems as developers and publishers are so loathe to stop developing for the venerable PS2 platform.  The results usually aren’t favorable when a game is ported from the PS2 to the Xbox 360 instead of the other way around.  Red Octane has finally ported the PS2 smash-hit series Guitar Hero onto the Xbox 360 and hordes or Next-Gen rockers are finally appeased.  What took so long in moving the game over to the new platform?  Is the new axe as sweet as it looks?  What new bells and whistles can the 360 bring to the table to make gamers buy this game on the 360 (or in many cases, re-buy it and sell their PS2 versions)?  I’ve spent the last month with the game and I think I can safely answer all of those questions.

When I reviewed Guitar Hero II for the Playstation 2 I scored the graphics in the mid-80s range.  While progressive scan helped greatly, the game was still somewhat jagged with a lot of fine details lost in the mix.  The stylized caricature-esque models present in the game are brimming with small details that aren’t readily apparent on the PS2 but spring to the foreground on the 360.  Some characters seem completely new as the definition on the player models are so vastly improved. 

The new character models look fantastic but it is the new lighting engine that really takes center stage.  When you activated your Star Power in the PS2 version, you got a shakey-cam look up at your player’s fingers. Lightning bolts struck the board when you had charged up your Star Power.  Now those bolts are rendered in 720p HD glory, along with some new flame effects, crisp light sourcing, particle effects, and some slightly improved animations. The game won’t push the 360 by any stretch of the imagination, but it does look considerably crisper than its PS2 counterpart.

Just as before, your eyes will probably miss out on most of the bells and whistles as your focus needs to be on the board of notes as they stream towards you.  The visual upgrade is for everyone watching you play.

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. Guitar Hero II on the PS2 brought an incredible 64 songs, 40 of which were licensed with two of them coming from the original artists. For the Xbox 360 version, Primus and Jane’s Addiction are joined by Toadies performing “Possum Kingdom” and My Chemical Romance performing “Dead!”  Along with those two tracks, we also get covers of Deep Purple's "Hush", Iron Maiden's "The Trooper",  “Life Wasted” by Pearl Jam, “Rock and Roll, Hoochie Koo” by Rick Derringer, and “Billion Dollar Babies” by Alice Cooper.  To pry these new songs in, the song sets have been adjusted with some songs being moved up or down in the list to better reflect their difficulty level.  Additionally, some of the songs have been adjusted, but nothing drastic.  This creates a more gradual challenge increase which should alleviate some frustrations for new players.

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 vocals could use some work.  Three out of 72 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 check 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.”  With downloadable tracks and Guitar Hero III just around the corner, perhaps your blessed Dragonforce will make it in at some point in the future.  In the mean time, enjoy the completely remastered 5.1 surround sound  eargasm of Guitar Hero II.

Guitar Hero on the Playstation 2 came with a brown colored Gibson SG guitar.  Guitar Hero II on the Playstation 2 came with a shiny new red Gibson SG guitar.  Guitar Hero II for the Xbox 360 on the other hand comes with a completely redesigned white axe sporting a shiny USB connector. (More on that connector later)  This new guitar has several improvements over both the aforementioned Gibson guitars, the first of which is a centrally located strap peg.  This means that you can easily lefty-flip the guitar and hand it to your (backwards) lefty friend and let him play without sacrificing comfort or balance. 

Another area that was improved on this new guitar is the fret system.  I’m not sure what was done but the new fret buttons feel more responsive somehow, making more difficult passages a bit more friendly.

As with Guitar Hero II on the Playstation 2, you can use the included practice mode to work on specific song 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.  Now we just need some more information on that RJ-11 port on the bottom of the guitar and what kind of pedals we can expect in the future.

I promised we’d come back to the USB controller cord on the new guitar, and here we are.  Since the device is USB, I couldn’t resist plugging it into my Windows Vista machine.  The device was immediately recognized and all of the buttons worked.  What does this mean?  It means that programs like Frets On Fire will work nicely, if you are into that kind of thing. 
There is one large issue connected to the title currently that hangs like an albatross around its neck.  Two SKUs of guitars shipped with whammy bar issues bad enough that Red Octane suggests replacing the guitar to fix.  The company will undoubtedly address this issue soon, but it may cost you a second trip to the store.

In my PS2 review of Guitar Hero II I asked how you follow up on a game that received so much critical acclaim.  The answer is – make it look more shiny and add the ability to download stuff!  The game essentially plays the same, with the addition of the new track in each tier of course.  If you liked what the PS2 version brought to the table, this just brings a little bit more of that.

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 choose 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 can change it if you have a ‘falling out’ with your current band name), 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, and the PS2 version of Guitar Hero II took over from there.  This new Xbox 360 version is sharp and polished making it the new king.  Bravo Harmonix! 

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, the unlimited potential of downloadable tracks, and achievements doled out 10 points at a time, there will be a pair of axes propped against my entertainment center for a long while. 

What’s left to say? If you haven’t invested in Guitar Hero yet, you should seriously ask yourself why. The 360 version of Guitar Hero II sports improvements ranging from subtle to vast that bring this game to the next level. This is, by far, one of the best games on any platform – ever.

Gaming Trend Score

94

1. Graphics: 90
2. Audio: 95
3. Controls: 87
4. Gameplay: 97
5. Value/Replay: 100
6. OVERALL:94