Last Sunday we stopped in at Best Buy after dinner. The boys wanted to look at the games and I wanted to find out the lowdown on their Wii inventory. They had no Wii’s, but they did have a PlayStation II demo that was running Guitar Hero II. I had heard about this game from Wil Wheaton’s blog, but had not seen it in person. We watched a kid play it for about 15 minutes before giving up to browse the rest of the store. We returned 20 minutes later and he was still playing. I think he took the hint because he finally set his guitar down and let us play. I can’t even begin to tell you how much fun this game is. All four of us tried it and we all loved it.
When I got home, I IM’d a collegue about it and he said he had a PS2 with GH1 and GH2 with two guitars! So he brought them in to work yesterday and we’ve lost a significant amount of productivity in the last two days. This might be the best game ever for a rock music fan.
There are four different levels of difficulty which you can apply to each song. GH2 lets you play cooperatively with another player. For example, on “Free Bird” one player plays lead guitar and the other plays rhythm guitar. On other songs, like “War Pigs”, one player has lead and the other plays bass. It’s really a blast.
GH2 costs $80 with a guitar controller. A second controller costs $50. We don’t have a PS2, so that would cost another $120. Over $200, so we won’t be getting one any time soon.
I tell you, though, it’s way more fun than learning to play a real guitar. At least if you’re a talentless, tone-deaf hack like me.
Check out the song lists for each game: