20 out of 20 people found this review helpful.
not a bad rock game for a budget price.
Date of Review: Jun 6, 2009
The Bottom Line: you rock
I got Guitar Hero 2 with the Guitar Hero 2 pack with Aerosmith. Now Guitar Hero 2 is a bit older and is lacking some of the refinement of the modern day music games. There is no online play, all the songs are covers, and some of the other score keeping like the ability to tell how many stars you have earn and the number of combos earn aren t shown. But then this is before GH3 made 1 billion dollars in sales and no one knew if it would even take off on xbox so it s forgivable. The covers are decent enough and unlike aerosmith there is enough songs and enough challenge to really sink your teeth into.
Story.
There is no real story in this one your basically a band traveling the world. After your done with a set a short clip of a truck driving to another place on the map with purposely and comically bad sound effects is shown and you start your next set in the new place.
Graphics.
The back grounds aren t has nice has GH3 and some of the character design have sharp edges making them look like PS2 characters. Still they animate nicely and they look nice enough.
Sound.
Again the songs are all covered and most of them are nice enough covers. You get songs like message in the bottle, cherry pie, sweet child of mine, and many others. The only bad song out of the 70 or so is instuainalized which I don t if it s a crappy cover or the song itself but being able to scream into a mike does not make you a good singer.
Gameplay.
The basic Guitar Hero going on there are 6 songs in a set. 5 you can play in any order and once you beaten the 5 (or 4 on easy and medium difficulty s) you play the encore song and move on to a harder set list. The main game doesn t change between the different incarnations when the dots hit the bottom of the screen hit the right button on the fret button and then strum. Making big combos increases your score, your health, and your score multiplier. If you miss notes or screw up on the strumming you lower your health. To many mistakes and your booed off the stage and have to start the song over again. Added to the mix are star notes hit all the star notes in a patter to build up star power. Releasing the star power by lifting the guitar releases the star power which doubles your multiplier and gives you a huge health boost.
The game is easy enough and like all GH games for 4 difficulty levels ranging from easy to expert mode are presented. Easy having the songs run slow and only having 3 fret buttons, and expert having the songs go by fast and having to use all 5 fret buttons.
Has for difficulty in the harder stages GH 2 is right in the middle of GH 3 being way to difficult, and GH Aerosmith being way to easy. I have gotten through a good chunk of hard before the songs started giving me any real problems.
Online and achievements.
The achievements are pretty basic right down to the letter. Several for breaking certain high scores, another for getting high number of combo notes (made harder because this one doesn t have a counter), beating every difficulty and buying certain stuff in the store. There is no online play but a lot of song packs you can buy on xbox live and download if you want to keep playing.
Final Recommendation.
The more modern Guitar Hero and Rock Band have brought more to the table but the game is less then 20 dollars now by itself or bought pretty cheap in the 2 pack. Despite the songs being covered there still good and fun to play. Not a bad game if your looking for a cheap bargain bin game.
