This game goes to eleven...
Right then, if you’ve been rawking in your front room for the last few months in Europe and well over a year in the US, you’ll know all about Guitar Hero, the game that can rightly claim to have killed off the air guitar. With Guitar Hero it’s no longer shameful or embarrassing to rock like you’re a star and it’s now an acceptable past-time to practise in the living room.
In short Guitar Hero rocks big time and ever since we first got our hands on it back at CES 2006, we’ve not stopped hitting star power for those screaming solos and giving it our metal-grimace best for those finger mangling shredders…
But the big question was always going to how could Red Octane, developer of Guitar Hero, ever best this classic piece of work for their sequel? What could they do better? How could they make Guitar Hero more involving than it is already… Well, we’ve had a thorough play of very early code and we now have a very good idea how the best just got a bit better…
Click for larger imageThe core of Guitar Hero’s gameplay was the pick up and play ease of use. If you had half a brain and a bit of rhythm you could get up a rockin’ in no time at all. The attraction of the single player game isn’t just the challenge of nailing every note on each song, or of collecting cash from touring… it was the pure fun of pretending, just for 3 minutes, that you could actually play the guitar and you did actually sound that good in a band…. But where Guitar Hero really comes into it’s own is in the two player mode where you and a buddy go head to head in a guitar face off. You both played parts of the same song, often joining in on the chorus with the winner being he who rocked the crowd and scored the most notes… Of course, it being a straight duel, you couldn’t fail the song as it was purely a duel of plectrums and frets.
Click for larger imageNow all that is set to change as Guitar Hero 2 is set to stroll backstage, demand to know why there’s no peanut M&Ms in the dressing room, throw the TV out of the window and drive the Rolls into the pool…
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