The original Guitar Hero game for the PlayStation 2 epitomized the definition of a sleeper video game – it was released with very little fanfare in November 2005 and initially did not create a blazing trail on the sales charts. Then people started to discuss the games on forums and blogs all over the internet and the game then took off. I joined the party late in October 2006 and after one night I was hooked. Needless to say when Guitar Hero 2 was released for the PS2, I went right to the store to pick it up. While the PS2 version wasn’t bad at all, people started thinking: how would this game be on the 360? Would it be a wireless controller? Would the graphics be better? Would there be better songs? What sort of achievements would there be? Well, finally in April of 2007 we can answer all of these questions!

For the noobs, Guitar Hero is a concept game developed by Harmonix. This company, originally based in Massachusetts, has been designing music rhythm games since the early part of this decade. Although Amplitude and Frequency didn’t sell well, they had great music – however people hitting R1, L1, and R2 to hit music really just didn’t have the ‘fun factor’. Enter Guitar Hero. Packed with a guitar controller (not an actual guitar) you can rock out to some of the best rock music out there. In order to fully enjoy the game, you should a)love rock music, and b)want to play a guitar. The guitar has five fret buttons, a strum bar and a whammy bar, as well as the Xbox guide button and start and select buttons. There is also a port that is unmentioned in the manual that bears a resemblance to an Ethernet port for some sort of future use.

The controller itself is a nice looking guitar replica and feels good in your hands – you can use an optional shoulder strap but I opted to stay seated and use the controller without any other encumbrances save for the USB cable. I’m close enough to the Xbox console to not have this be a problem, but those of you that prefer a wireless experience will be somewhat disappointed as you do have to use a wired controller to play the game. The cord is relatively long and has the old Xbox 1 breakaway cable which can come in very handy.

You can play the game with a standard Xbox controller, but that’s about as fun as playing Dance Dance Revolution without the Dance Mat – the controller is half the fun. The game and controller together are sold at retail for a rather expensive $89.99. This price is not as bad as it seems considering the PS2 version of the game with guitar is only $10 less, which is in line with ‘normal’ videogame pricing. I did have some problems with the original controller activating star power (where scores are doubled), but with a second replacement guitar I did not have the problem, so we’ll just say I had bad luck there and not knock the game for the control issues.

All of the modes that were in the PS2 game are here: there’s career mode, quick play mode (where you can just play one song), multiplayer mode (co-op or competitive), training, and of course options. New in the 360 version are leaderboards which is a nice way to gauge your guitar skills against the rest of the world. There is no online play, which is a bit of a let down.

Career mode is where you’ll spend most if your time if you opt to go it alone. There are four difficulty levels: easy, medium, hard, and expert. The hard level separates the men from the boys and the expert level separates the rock stars from the men. Medium is probably the best place to start off, as it gives a pretty good challenge without killing you – the mode only uses four of the five fret buttons so you’re not moving around as much as opposed to the expert level, which uses all five fret buttons.