Kurt's Thoughts

I preordered my copy of Guitar Hero 2 for Xbox 360, and sure enough it arrived in the mail along with not one, but TWO guitar controllers – the unique only-on-Xbox360 white-with-beige Gibson "Xplorer" guitar which isn’t just cooler than the red guitar that the PS2 has, it’s fret buttons have clearly been adjusted for more comfortable play.

AND there’s a really cool feature coming only for the XPlorer – a Wahwah pedal!  That’s right… there’s going to be a Wahwah pedal accessorie to allow you to adjust your guitar mid-song.  What’s the big deal you say?  Well, it means that there’s going to be new songs that take advantage of this upcoming accessory and that means that Guitar Hero 2 ALREADY HAS THE CODE IN IT for the wahwah pedal.  Either that or there’s going to be an update for the game that will enable the wahwah pedal which you’ll download likely over Xbox Live.

Either way, it also means that there’s going to be downloadable songs for this new accessory and that’s WAY cool, because as we all know, PS2 doesn’t have any of what I’ve discussed so far:  No Xplorer Guitar, no wahwah pedal accessory, (much less expandability for a wahwah pedal), no updatable software, no downloadable songs…

And look at the OTHER STUFF that ONLY the Xbox 360 version has:

1. 10 new songs that the Playstation 2 version doesn’t have, in addition to the original songs
2. 1080i high definition graphics to accompany the awesome 5:1 digital stereo audio
3. Leaderboards, or "online rankings" that automatically stack rank you against not just the other players in the world, but your other friends that are playing Guitar Hero 2 – and these rankings are per song, per career, and per difficulty level!
4. Downloadable themes and picture packs to accompany the downloadable songs that the PS2 doesn’t have
5. Multiplayer!  Rock out cooperatively with another player or compete head-to-head with someone else.
6. Practice Mode… so you can play without affecting your career scores.  And you can slow down the song so that you can get that solo riff correct that’s been kicking your ass during your career mode

Without a doubt, this game is an absolute MUST BUY for anyone that owns an Xbox 360.  It’s head and shoulders better than the PS2 version and it’s just plain a lot of addictive fun:  Dare I say it, it’s as addictive as HALO, and those are so big shoes to fill.

No wonder XPlay gave it a 5 out of 5… and Xbox Magazine gave it a 9.5 out of 10.  (They wanted XboxLive Coop & Head-to-head modes which aren’t in the product… yet.  I’ve heard that it might get added as a downloadable feature which would be wicked cool.)