Guitar Hero II

Wil's thoughts

Guitar Hero is enjoyably easy. Sit down, whack up the difficulty and prepare to amaze your mates with a blitz of fingerpicking glory.

Well, that's if you're a bit musical in the first place. I will confess to having spent the vast majority of my life occupying myself with an instrument of some description - six years playing piano, five playing percussion and drums and another four playing guitar. Consequently, I have a good understanding of music, as well as fingers that are fantastically nimble (I'm a good typist, too).

Coming from a musical background, then, I do find Guitar Hero very easy - which isn't to say it's not enjoyable. For my first go on the game (I have never played the first one), I sat and played a couple of songs on Easy, quickly discovering that continuing in this vein would lead to perfect scores and immense boredom. One rung up the ladder made things a bit more interesting, but it wasn't until I started playing on Hard that there was any sort of real challenge - and even then, only as Career mode progresses and things start to get a bit more heavy.

In an office of non-musical geeks, this made me something of a Guitar Hero Rock God, idolised for my awesome whammy bar skills - and isn't that the whole point?

Let me tell you my favourite things about Guitar Hero. Number one, the guitars themselves are cool. Yes, they're wired, but wireless versions are coming, along with the Xbox 360 version of the machine. They feel cool, the buttons are responsive and the Gibson 3/4 size is fantastic. Second, when you do manage to nail a song on Expert, the resulting guitar sounds coming out of the speakers are fantastic; the massive amounts of notes and super-fast fingering you've had to pull off really end up giving you a suitably rad solo. Lastly, there are a couple of absolutely sublime tracks to get your teeth into - with the obvious candidate for praise being Guns 'N' Roses' epoch-defining classic, Sweet Child of Mine. This includes possibly the ultimate guitar riff of all time, and replicating on Expert will be giving you nightmares for weeks.

I also love practice mode. For a perfectionist musician like me, I really want to learn to nail the difficult licks, and that's not always possible just in Quick Play or Career mode. Practice mode allows you to slow the song down and play it at half, or quarter speed. You can also pick out sections of the song to practice, allowing you to just play the second guitar solo, or third verse, or the bridge just on its own. Fantastic idea.

What don't I like? Well, apart from two or three tracks that I love to play over and over, the rest of the song list is great if you're one of these people that loathes the mainstream, and sucks if you happen to like cheesily popular power guitar music. Where are the epic guitar thrash tracks? Why no Chuck Berry, or, for crying out loud, Hendrix? Having Nirvana and Rage Against The Machine in there are definite bonuses, but the vast majority of tracks are not what I would call classic guitar rock. This is disappointing.

What also sucks is, to be honest, the lack of support for MultiTap. The PS2 lacks, in the first place, by only having two control ports, but having a four-way thrash contest would be fantastic. I'd love to see something like this in the next incarnation - maybe Rock Hero - that allows for two guitars, a Donkey Konga-esque drum set and a Singstar-a-like mic. How much would that own?

However, the best thing about Guitar Hero is the awesome replayability. The game keeps you coming back again and again and again to try to get the Expert tracks perfect, to get the best scores possible. I can't wait to get this on Xbox 360 and compare scores with gamers around the world on Live. Will I still enjoy the Rock God status I have in the office? That remains to be seen.