Genre: Rhythm
Publisher: Red Octane
Developer: Harmonix Music Systems
Release Date: April 3, 2007

Guitar Hero II was a tremendous sequel to a game that quickly turned into a system seller, which is no small feat for a system as old and entrenched as the PS2. Its immense popularity with casual and hardcore gamers alike is well justified; Guitar Hero II is the single greatest rhythm game to come along since the original Dance Dance Revolution, and you definitely look cooler playing it. X360 gamers have been slavering for the next-gen port Red Octane promised around the time that GHII streeted, and the final build that worked its way into WorthPlaying's hands promises to be perhaps the finest PS2-to-360 port to date.

In case you're too much of an Xbox die-hard to have already played either of the PS2-exclusive Guitar Hero games, here's a brief rundown of what to expect. Guitar Hero is a rhythm game played with a guitar-shaped controller that comes packaged with the game (which makes it unusually pricey). The guitar "controller" has a bar you depress with your thumb to simulate strumming, and color-coded buttons that simulate the frets. You select a song and your difficulty level, and while the song plays you must strum in time with the color-coded notes that scroll down the screen. A strum only counts if you have the correct fret (or combination of frets) depressed while strumming. On easy difficulty, you only worry about three frets, but on Normal it's four and on the highest difficulty levels, it uses all five.

Like most rhythm games, you start with very few songs and have to meet certain gameplay goals to unlock more. In GHII's case, you do this by playing a campaign mode that lets you earn money and unlock songs by scoring well enough on three out of five songs in a particular song group. You can spend money on bonus guitars and costumes for your onscreen avatar, and new venues to rock out in, in addition to "bonus songs" that can't be unlocked any other way. It's one of the most sensible unlock schemes you'll ever encounter in a rhythm game, since it's always easy to tell how close you are to achieving your next goal. Best of all, few goals demand the level of absurd rigorousness that Dance Dance Revolution and Pump It Up unlocks frequently do, so mediocre players have some shot of actually getting all the songs in the game even if they're never able to play on the hardest difficulty levels.

Guitar Hero II does a lot of things right when it comes to porting a PS2 game to the 360. Aside from songs exclusive to the 360 version and the additional songs you can purchase via download through Xbox Live, the gameplay modes are completely identical to the PS2 version. Most of the work in altering the game has gone into improving the graphics and interface so they operate properly at 720p on an HDTV. This is actually no small feat, and gives the 360 version of Guitar Hero II a significant advantage over the PS2 version. The PS2 version of Guitar Hero has a hard time playing nicely with HDTV displays, and on default game settings, you'll find the game basically unplayable. You can improve the situation by setting an HD offset via a handy test in the options menu, but this still can prove troubling on higher gameplay setting. Guitar Hero II 360, however, is completely compatible with HDTVs right out of the box.

As for the graphics improvements, they're exactly what you'd expect and exactly what the game needed. There are no dramatic alterations made to the display, which consists largely of colored dots that scroll down a music sheet; you hit the properly colored fret button and strum when the dots hit a line at the bottom of the screen. Every correct dot earns points, and the multiplier for point gains increases if you strum flawlessly over a series of notes. Hitting star-shaped notes builds your "star power" meter, which lets you give your point multiplier an artificial boost. Your goal, of course, is to score as many points as possible during the course of the song.

To liven up the visuals, you see the "band" you're controlling playing in a given venue throughout the song, complete with an animated crowd that gets enthusiastic if you do well, and animations from a variety of character angles for your lead guitarist and band. Activating your "star power" causes your guitarist's animations to change and become more flamboyant, with guitar twirls and more dramatic strumming motions. You can select your guitarist from one of eight archetypes at the game's beginning, and which guitar you'd like to see him or her use. Later on, you can unlock a wider variety of guitars and outfits for them. This doesn't affect gameplay and is purely aesthetic.

All of the guitarists from the PS2 version are back, but the character models have been rebuilt from scratch with more complex animations and more polys. Guitar Hero II designed its characters in an unrealistic, loose style that evoked the kind of art you might see on an album cover, and the 360 port hasn't messed this up by trying to convert the designs into something more realistic. Instead it's pushed to keep the cartoony look with improved hair and clothing textures, and the result is good enough to make me wish there were more 360 games out there that opted for this type of design instead of straining vainly at photorealism. If you play it in a party atmosphere, then you'll find other players quite happy to watch the on-screen animations while they wait their turn.

If there's any real disappointment to be found in the current build of Guitar Hero II for the 360, it's... well, not in the build. One of the selling points that really excited Guitar Hero fans for the 360 game was the prospect of a wireless guitar as a pack-in, but this hasn't come to fruition. The pack-in guitar given to WorthPlaying with its build of the game was distinctly wired. It did feature the promised microphone port, so you can use a Live headset to sing along with songs as you play and enhance the feel of the "rock star" experience. Otherwise the guitar is, as promised, definitely modeled on the white Hetfield flying V, and looks very sharp leaning next to your 360 console. While true wireless 360 Guitar Hero controllers are in the works from third-party manufacturers, it is slightly disappointing to see that the default guitar is probably going to be wired.

Last but by far not least in discussing Guitar Hero II is the song selection. Red Octane's previous releases have been roundly praised for making sure the song selection contained actual guitar-shredding classic rock anthems of many different kinds, in addition to some original songs and, in GHII, a few comic relief songs. Often the songs aren't the versions performed by the original artists, which would probably be too expensive to license, but excellent covers that push back the vocals and instead emphasize the guitar riffs you'll be expected to create by strumming correctly.

A sampling of the songs unique to the 360 version includes Alice Cooper's "Billion Dollar Babies," Deep Purple's "Hush," My Chemical Romance's "Dead!," Pearl Jam's "Life Wasted," Rick Derringer's "Rock n' Roll Hoochie Koo," Rancid's "Salvation," and Iron Maiden's "The Trooper." Basically any kind of music that involves guitar work gets represented, even synth guitar electronica and outright comedy like the Strong Bad power metal parody "Trogdor and Thunderhorse" by the fictional Metalocalypse band Dethklok. It really adds replay value to a rhythm game for the songs to all feel like "real" music that's worth listening to repeatedly, and will be familiar enough to make learning the notes required for a song much easier.

There are few modern video games that can be described as total crowd pleasers or must-owns. Most games stick within the bounds of a given genre, and play largely with fans of that genre in mind. Guitar Hero II is one of the rare, wonderful exceptions that crosses genre lines, and can entice people who'd never otherwise give video games a glance to pick up the guitar and start playing. It's a title that deserves to be included in every gamer's library, and the Xbox 360 port is definitely the version that all HDTV owners and most 360 owners will want. The enhanced Xbox Live content and expanded song selection take the worthy PS2 version and simply make it better, with the graphics to match. Hopefully with this, Red Octane will set the new standard for how other publishers approach their PS2-to-360 conversions, the same way they raised the bar for quality and presentation in gameplay with the original releases.