LogFAQs > #950404250

#32. Guitar Hero 2 (2006, PS2)
The year is 2005. Im a freshman in college. After a couple months of making similarly-minded friends who also like video games because were all nerds, this new rhythm game comes out with a plastic guitar peripheral where you can play classic and more-current rock songs with a 5-button fret system, to the beat of strumming. It was fun, people liked it. Friends would come to hang out at my room and wed play a whole bunch. Its a little hard to say what was missing though. It was fun for sure, but it felt like it needed more. A little more style, a little more action, maybe some more songs or a better track list.

Enter the following year, and enter Guitar Hero 2, where Im now in a larger dorm (one with an actual common room), and a sequel comes out. And it was all those things I said. More style. More and better songs. The addition of Hop-Ons and Pull-Offs were CRUCIAL, and its impact long-lasting on this genre. And the difficulty felt perfect (I basically was able to start on hard and graduate to expert in short time). And being able to just set this up in the common area and friends and wanderers alike could just come by and play; it was a smash hit. I without a doubt played this game more than any others during college well maybe at least that year, and actually made some friends just through this.

The style was better. I felt in general like the presentation was better, the character rockers given to you to play as felt like they had more personality. The loading screens were funny. Clive Winston is the best.

The action was better. I already mentioned the HOPOs, but they really made the game feel like it worked. I also realized I thought GH1 was very slow. You could turn on light speed mode or whatever it was called then, and that separated out the notes enough to make them more readable as far as what notes to hit when. It blended in nicely with the difficulty curve.

The playlist was better. Almost all of the songs were covers done by Red Octane, but you could barely tell. I think some were done to make them even better for a guitar-based game also. Theres very few misses as far as the song selection. To this day, Guitar Hero 2 remains unrivaled on its in-box song selection. From Motley Crue to The Police to Kansas to Foo Fighters to Black Sabbath to the Rolling Stones to GNR to Primus to Heart to the Allman Bros to Rush to Skynyrd. And they were legitimately fun to play with great charts. Or so I recall. Maybe if I went back to this game now, I wouldnt think so but I certainly loved it at the time.

And then you even have the bonus songs, so thanks for introducing me to Freezepop. FTK is a fun song also. And they even had some extra fun stuff between the bonus and regular stuff, like a song from Deathklok, that damn Buckethead song, Misirlou, Spinal Tap, and uh am I forgetting anything? Oh yeah.



Most fun songs to play/Best songs (because how much you like the song affects how fun it is to some degree):
YYZ > Jessica > Sweet Child O Mine > Beast and the Harlot > Carry On Wayward Son > Hangar 18 > Crazy On You > Get Ready 2 Rokk > John The Fisherman > Freebird

(Freebird is too long or would be higher, but the way its like WAIT ARE YOU SURE YOU WANT TO PLAY FREEBIRD is hilarious)

Bad songs in no order: Tattooed Love Boys, Cherry Pie, Girlfriend, Stop, Carry Me Home

What the fuck????: Psychobilly Freakout, Institutionalized

So anyway yeah, this is here for its fantastic timing in being THE college game, for a while anyway, right in my dorms common room, improvements over the first game, and fantastic song list.

Next Up: A pixelated dungeon crawler with lots of items featuring a guy with a sword whose sword gets special powers at full health.

---

~Wigs~ 3-Time Consecutive Fantasy B8 Baseball Champion
2015 NATIONAL LEAGUE CHAMPION NEW YORK METS