Guitar Hero II

Below are a few pictures of the guitar controller you use to play the game. It's a unique controller, and it's styled as a 3/4 size Gibson SG.

Instead of strumming you use the flicked button to play notes. This button goes up and down to allow you to play the faster notes more easily. On the simple settings, though, you'll only need to flick one way. The strumming button also acts as the D-pad when navigating through menus – nice and simple.

At the bottom of the guitar are the start and select buttons. These have been positioned slightly awkwardly and I found myself accidentally pressing them sometimes when I was playing. The whammy bar - for really wailing the longest notes - can be rotated to make it most comfortable for you to use.

At the other end of the guitar are the five different coloured buttons used to playing the songs with. On the easiest setting you only need to use the first three buttons and as you increase the difficulty the other buttons come into play.

Conclusion

I need to talk a little about price here is that is going to be the major turn off for most people, despite the fact that this is an absolutely brilliant game. If you already have the two guitars from Guitar Hero I then you can buy the game on its own for around £17.99. To buy the game with one bundled guitar will cost you £39.99. To get the most out of the game, though, you're going to need a second guitar. That will cost you £25 if you buy it online or £30 if you buy it from your high street retailer. All in all you're looking at nearly £70 for a game on the Playstation 2. This is something many will think twice about, and with the prospect of Wii's in Christmas stockings, will you really want to shell out for this?

The other thing to consider is that the game is set for release on the Xbox 360. Now although this doesn't mean amazing graphics or a larger selection of songs (though perhaps there will be more content available on Xbox Live), it does mean that there will be wireless guitars – which would be very cool (Ed - We have been informed that wireless guitars can be found for the PS2 as well. Check this site). It would also be pretty interesting to see how good people can get when plunged into the Xbox Live environment. To illustrate this I've thrown in a few videos below to show how skilled some people are when playing the game in terms of how they look and how fast they can play.



As you've read, we had loads of fun with Guitar Hero 2 and highly recommend you get it. If you can't afford it on your own then get your friends to buy it collectively, it just needs to be played!