Heroic-mode Guitar!

Guitar Hero II is an excellent game for the PS2. I never actually bought it, or the first game, though I played Tim's copy a lot. That recently changed, with the release of Guitar Hero II for the Xbox 360, I picked up a copy of the game, along with the guitar controller which was redesigned for the 360. The short verdict: Excellent game, my hands hurt.

As far as I can tell, there are very few differences between this game and the PS2 version. Most notably, there are 10 more songs, and eight of them were added to the career mode, by making each block have 6 songs, including the encore, rather than 5. Some of the songs have been rearranged a little, so while each block has an additional song, the final set doesn't have any of the new ones, and the first set has two of the new ones. See this article for complete details on that. The other difference is that there's the achievements which are tracked for each profile. The one I'm proud of currently is "Eddie Van Halen Award", which is given for a streak of 500 notes without a miss. I got that one on "Less Talk More Rokk", by Freezepop, on medium difficulty. Also amusing was "Rock Snob Award", given for refusing to play an encore. (Hey, they wanted Free Bird as an encore! I had to say no!) I got help for the "Hendrix Award", which is given for completing a song left-handed.

Song list review: (New songs)

Possum Kingdom - Toadies. Not a cover. For being in the first set, on medium difficulty, this one had some fairly tricky fingering and rhythm. Notably it starts you on the sections which are long repeated notes followed by an almost hammer-on (doubled note, you do have to strum but has a similar feel). Good practice there, and it also has several offbeat sections which can be surprising unless you are paying attention. I don't actually know the song, but L says she's heard it before and she liked it.

Salvation - Rancid. A cover. Not very long song, which is nice, but I didn't really like it. Only interesting part was similar almost hammer-ons as in the previous one.

Life Wasted - Pearl Jam. A cover. In the second set, and I nearly died trying to play it the first time. Has some really tough fast fingering parts, and near the end there's a "this part is just to be an asshole to those playing guitar hero" type solo. On medium difficulty I could manage it, but I wonder what it'll be like on harder settings. Good song though.

Billion Dollar Babies - Alice Cooper. Cover. Love this one, just a fun song to play. Not really as hard as some of the previous ones, but could be because I can play this type of song better. It has some nice solo type sections and the vocal sections are awesome.

Hush - Deep Purple. Cover. Another fun one to play, has a good combination of single note sequences and chord sequences. I like the way it sounds, too, looking forward to seeing what the co-op bass part looks like.

Rock and Roll Hoochie Koo - Rick Derringer. Cover. Lots of off-beat notes, good sequences and has some hammer-on moves in it which I found good to practice. Also a good one for me to practice not releasing lower notes in long sequences that will re-use them.

Dead! - My Chemical Romance. Not a cover, woot! Also a totally awesome song. Pretty fast, lots of cool sequences and arghhhh I only missed two notes that time! This one gets my approval as the best song that was added.

The Trooper - Iron Maiden. Cover. Hardest song in the group that was added to the career sets, the main difficulty on medium is a sequence of lines that just gets painful to try and finger individually, but can be done a lot easier by holding the lower frets and doing the upper sequence. Even that is really tricky in this one as you have to both add notes and reveal to other notes in rapid succession.

Bonus tracks:

Drink Up - Ounce of Self. This one sucks. Hard to read sequences and it's basically the same stuff all the way through to the end. Probably a good one to practice hammer-on and pull-off moves on, but not that fun to play and the music isn't my style.

Kicked to the Curb - Noble Rot. Easier than the previous, and actually fun to play. Has some fast solo sections that are actually readable and also helpful in learning how to do the long runs with no strums.

Honorable Mention - Soy Bomb, by Honest Bob and the Factory to Dealer Incentives. Excellent instrumental bonus track, that I don't think I played in the original ps2 version, but was apparently present.

There's also some purchasable tracks for download on Xbox Live, but so far I've managed to resist getting Killer Queen, my favorite song from Guitar Hero. The other thing that deserves mention is the new controller. The action on it is pretty good, and I found it a lot easier to trigger star power with a subtle motion on this one, making it a lot less distracting than it sometimes can be. It also has a d-pad, xbox button, and start/back buttons! Now I just gotta find a use for that. Maybe Castlevania: SOTN using the guitar controller? :)