An estimated 75, 000 people are packed together in one giant venue, all of them screaming your band's name in unison. The lights dim and you make your last-minute preparation before you finally hit the stage to render your fans some of your greatest hits. You slid the guitar over your shoulder and the crowd's energy got you all pumped up. No, this isn't one of many young people's ultimate fantasy come true. But this could just be the next best thing.



This is RedOctane's sequel to the astoundingly popular series of the PS2 game, Guitar Hero. In Early 2006, the first Guitar Hero was released which allowed you to plug in a Gibson copy guitar into your PS2 so you can rock like one of the music industry's legends.

The basic premise of this game is that you plug in your guitar controller that has 5 colored fret buttons and strummer into your unit. Then notes of your chosen rock song will appear on the screen, so you can start strumming your way with the song.

Just like a sequel is supposed to be, RedOctane and Harmonix have enhanced the features of this game. The difficulty mode has been upgraded with 2 new and practical additions: the Co-op mode and the Practice mode.

The new Co-op mode makes this game even more fun as you get to play with a friend wherein one of you play the lead guitar, and the other takes up either the rhythm or bass, depending on the song you've selected. Since everything is split between the two players, this mode requires the two of you to work together in building up your score meter. If you want to use the Star Power, simply tilt your guitar at the same time. As you go along, each of your scores will be tallied together thus increasing you star power meter.

Perfecting this game and the songs is now possible with the addition of a Practice mode. For this mode, you can choose to adjust the speed in 3 varying degrees: slow, slower, and slowest. This will enable you to figure out the notes of a song as the parts of the song are sectioned out. You can choose to practice on certain parts of a song where you fail miserably.

The practice mode, however, works best to enhancing your technique rather than speed. This will help you figure out how you should attack a song and perfect the notes.

And with the multiplayer mode, 2 players get to compete playing the same song all the way through. Talk about taking this rocking game experience to the next level! This game is indeed your next best vehicle to being part of a real band.

As compared to the first Guitar Hero, the song list for this one has been upgraded for you to have more choices. There is always something for everyone's liking whether you're into Megadeth, Ozzy Osbourne, Pantera, Franz Ferdinand, Motorhead, and even some of today's Emo selection.

So if you haven't purchased one of these yet, you better grab one and be on your way to experiencing music and gaming like never before.