System: PS2
Publisher: Red Octane
Developer: Harmonix Music

Players of the first Guitar Hero game know what to expect from this new outing. This is because Guitar Hero 2 is almost exactly the same game. You have a controller that looks like a small guitar. As notes slide down an on-screen fret board in time to popular rock songs, you use your left hand to press the five corresponding buttons on the neck of your mock-guitar, while clicking a spring-loaded strum button with your right. There’s a whammy bar to play around with, to bend the pitch of the note, if you’re into that sort of thing. You can get a fat score multiplier by performing long combinations of notes without screwing up. Star Power is a gauge that fills and, when activated, doubles your multiplier points. You tilt your guitar vertically to activate Star Power, via some gyroscopic doohickey planted somewhere inside that beast of a controller. You’ll look kind of goofy doing it, but you’ll love every minute of it.

With the sequel announced so soon after its predecessor, I don’t think anyone was expecting a new and different Guitar Hero. Rather, you can think of this as Guitar Hero v1.5. If it were a computer game, it would be an expansion pack. You get more songs, over 40 new songs, in fact. They’re all rock songs though some are harder rocking than others. There’s a little more depth, with more country-rock, alternative, and grunge making their way onto the game’s extensive soundtrack. Still, most of the new songs would have been perfectly at home in the first game.

To compliment the new songs, Red Octane has loaded Guitar Hero 2 with a healthy selection of new venues, bonus tracks, skins, and characters, even if they’re all the same kind of venues, bonus tracks, skins, and characters from the first Guitar Hero (with a surprise exception coming from internet Flash phenomenon Strong Bad, bringing his track “Trogdor” to the bonus song list – yes the rumors are true). But don’t let this make you think, not for one instant, that this is any less of a reason not to save your hard-earned paycheck, or quit smoking, or cook your girl a nice ramen dinner for your next date, to justify the $80 you’ll be spending on Guitar Hero 2.

Oh, I know what you’re thinking. “I already rocked out on the original Guitar Hero, and I’ve got my controller. I don’t need to shell out the full $80 just to have an extra guitar lying about for Guitar Hero 2.” And let me tell you, if you’ve got a friend in this world (and being the website for “cool geeks”, we’re pretty sure you do), you’ll need that second guitar to take advantage of the best new additions to Guitar Hero 2.

Somewhere over the past year, Red Octane got the message: Guitar Hero is a party game, even if the original didn’t quite know it. So for Guitar Hero’s encore performance, in addition to its predecessor’s “dueling guitars” versus mode, Guitar Hero 2 spices things up with a new co-op mode, which lets players work together to clear songs, choosing assignments for Bass and Lead (or Rhythm and Lead) before each round begins. Teamwork is important, as my neighbors now know from the frequent shouts of “Star Power! Now!” pushing through our flimsy Brooklyn walls this week, as me and my lucky rocker-friends coordinate our Star Power usages for maximum bass/lead efficiency.

Those aren’t the only things my neighbors must be hearing. Sometimes I’m not even sure what we’re saying while rocking the multiplayer in Guitar Hero 2.

“Keep up! I can’t stay in time if you keep dropping the bass line.”
“Well, I can’t hear over the sounds of your missed notes.”
“Hey, lead guitar is a bit harder than bass. You barely have any chords!”
“You want to throw on Primus again? ‘John the Fisherman’ is all bass.”
“Your ego is going to tear this group apart!”
“My ego? That’s it! You’re out of the band!”

There you have it. The corrupting influence of Guitar Hero and a few hours of playing “rock star” can manage to turn even a cooperative mode into a competition.

It’s. . . kind of like being in a real band.

The point is this: Guitar Hero 2 is all about playability. It’s that raw, pure fun you get when you and a buddy stand side by side, shouting nonsense and arguing over who pulls more weight in an imaginary band, not caring that you have to be awake for work in just a few hours, and you’re probably going to have a headache when you get there. Red Octane knew this, and devoted the bulk of their innovation towards the multiplayer side of Guitar Hero 2.

The brilliance of Guitar Hero 2 isn’t in the new venues, or the new in-depth stat reports shown at the end of each song, or the slick presentation bathed in rock history, making each player feel like Jack Black in a movie where he gets to act like a rock-snob (which is to say, Jack Black acting like Jack Black). It’s not even about the songs themselves – I’d never been a fan of “Carry On My Wayward Son”, or much Kansas for the matter (I’m a hip-hop DJ after all) but that’s the thing about Guitar Hero; it has a way of making you love playing songs you hate. Everything down to the sheer sequencing of notes shows the utmost care for music, that the programmers knew how to break down a song into its most important components, that they understood both the technical musical theory needed to create a good game, and the musical legend needed to give that game soul.

The original Guitar Hero’s addictive gameplay has translated perfectly to it’s sequel, with an expanded song list to compliment the tweaks and polish that have been added to let us know that Red Octane really cares about our love for their game.

It’s always about the gameplay. It’s the gameplay that makes games like Pac-Man and Tetris live long past their sound and graphics’ expiration dates, and remain fun for decades. Those games have earned their ‘A’ scores.

And now, so has Guitar Hero 2.

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