When it comes to air guitar, we’re up for necking ten Barcadi Breezers and rocking out with the best of them.
Deep down we all desire the kind of groupee frenzy afforded to Slash from Guns ‘N’ Roses and we'd get it too... if only we could be bothered putting in the hours necessary to get to grips with a real axe.
In the meantime there's Guitar Hero. It’s a plastic guitar that hooks up to your PS2 and behaves a lot like the real thing. You get fret buttons, a strumming thingy that you can err… strum, loads of barn storming tracks to unlock and top scores to beat. We’re in rawwwkkk heaven.
But what to do when you’ve exhausted all the tracks? Buy Guitar Hero 2 with 55 new toons of old, of course. Will they be enough to make us shell out all over again though?
They say:
Eurogamer: “Guitar Hero still really and truly makes you feel like a rock star. It captures and conveys the incomparable joy of making music better than any other rhythm action game out there.”
Gamespot: “The only thing that makes GH II inherently less impressive than the first game is simply that its track list doesn't make the same incredible impression that the first game's did, even with these songs' greater level of challenge.”
PSW Magazine: “You probably won't find a more addictive and possibly even challenging game on PS2.”
We say:
Let’s explain how this plastic guitar works. Pick a track and you’ll see five coloured buttons in the centre of the screen that correspond with the five fret buttons on your mighty weapon. Just press the buttons when instructed and you’ll soon be a rock god on the throne.
Easy mode uses only three of the five buttons so you should be through it in no time. Step up the difficulty though and things start getting pretty complicated. We’re talking more fret buttons and tougher riffs to get your fingers round.
Hit the right notes and the songs will sound just like you remember. Get a few right in a row and your score will get an ever bigger boost.
If you perform particularly well, a star meter at the bottom of the screen starts filling up. Get the set and you can tilt the guitar upright to rack up even more points. Plus you get to look cool as hell too.
Successfully completing tracks unlocks much more difficult numbers to test your guitar shredding skills to the max. Impress an audience and you’ll start piling up cash to spend on new outfits, guitars and even new rawwked up endings to songs. We won’t give away whether or not the Hendrix finish makes another appearance.
To crack the higher difficulty levels you’ll need to learn about hammer ons, pull offs and lots more rock jargon. But there’s nothing like performing Foo Fighters’ Monkey Wrench on the top difficulty level – even a few blistered fingers won’t take the sheen off your achievements.
The included songs – including the likes of ‘Shout At The Devil’, ‘Heart Shaped Box’ and ‘Carry On Wayward Son’ – are all recreations of the famous tracks rather than the original ones of course. The vast majority sound dead on though and when you’re playing along you’d be hard pressed to be put off by a slightly odd sounding accent.
Whether the tracks will truly be to your liking – it’s hard rock all the way – is down to the individual, but Guitar Hero II remains a corker. In rock parlance, it goes right up to eleven.
Like this? Try these:
Guitar Hero – PS2
Gitaroo Man Lives! – PSP
Guitar Freakz – PS2
FORMAT REVIEWED
PS2
OTHER FORMATS
None
POSTED...
Tue 28 Nov 2006 at 6:12pm
