When this game first came out for the 360 in March I was really pumped to pick it up, but it was totally sold out EVERYWHERE. For the next month or so I looked and looked, but it seems that stores weren't getting in subsequent shipments in. Imagine my surprise then, when yesterday I went to Best Buy to pick up the wireless steering wheel for $99, I saw the big ol' GH2 box! They also had a demo kiosk setup. Well the combined effect of finally seeing it available in person, and rocking out at the demo was too much for me to resist. I ended up walking out with the wheel AND a new boxed copy of GH2.
I still haven't opened the wheel yet, but I've spent a few hours thrashing away, and WOW this game is so insanely fun. When you play it at the store you don't get the same effect because you can't get into it. And that is what this game is all about, getting totally into it and rocking out in a way that you don't even know what your fingers are doing but you're still hitting some crazy string of notes and the star power hits and it's all crazy.
That's where the genius of Guitar Hero comes in. At a high level it's a very simple control scheme, 5 buttons and a moving lever. The way it's designed though is that it becomes a very satisfying abstraction to the guitar playing experience. It lets people who don't have the skills to play a real guitar to have an idea what it feels like. For people that are super ridiculously talented guitar players hitting the chords and notes is probably something that is done subconsciously anyway their fingers just naturally know what a C-chord is and does it. That's kind of like the game works since it's a simplified version of playing notes, instead of having to place your three fingers in the proper position you hit one or two buttons.
On the easier levels this button pressing doesn't really accomplish much since you're usually waiting for the notes to come and it's very plodding and just one at a time. But on the harder difficulty levels it gets very intense and you really start thrashing away and you have to listen and feel the music. If you work on seeing the notes and trying to time it that way, it's just not going to work. Once again I have to tip my hat to the designers of the notes for the songs as they all just make perfect sense. Again, it's not real guitar playing, but as the music scaling up and down there is a relative correspondance to the notes you're playing and it just feels great.
Overall, I just love to play this game and totally understand why it's become a multimillion dollar selling phenomenon. We'll see what happens when Guitar Hero 3 comes out later this fall, and see it goes up against competition for the first time with EA's Garage Band.
