What's truly terrific about requiring HO/POs is that it just causes that same "I'm a rock badass" feeling to rush back anew. Remember that magical point where you stopped thinking about what notes to hit and you started nailing extra-long licks as if your fingers already knew what to do? It feels about 20 times cooler when you do it as a hammer-on sequence. It fundamentally changes how you play the songs, and suddenly parts that seemed impossible are now just challenges on your quest to become a digital rock god.

Visually, things are familiar, but nicely upgraded. Most of the early venues stress the almost claustrophobic quarters that you normally get in bars with the camera pulled in close to show the increased detail on the characters, their animations (which are very, very nice indeed), and the lighting model that better throws light (and casts shadows) on the characters. When you're actually walking into venues, though, there's more of a cinematic-style approach with some camera bob and zooms. New Star Power animations and after-song celebrations were also thrown in (we noticed a levitation act and chucking the guitar into the crowd, respectively, as some of the new ones).

A nice little touch, too, was the inclusion of both widescreen and progressive scan plus the ability to adjust for lag on some HDTVs. This simple little addition is an absolute life-saver for folks who were basically unable to play the game on some TVs because of the time it took to decode the signal. With a simple calibration menu, you can move things back enough to actually enjoy the game on any TV -- a very nice touch.

Otherwise, though, the game is essentially unchanged, there are new venues now; we could choose from the Nilborb High Battle of the Bands (complete with school scoreboard and overloaded power outlet), the Rat Cellar in Boston, The Blackout Bar in Providence, Red Octane in Brooklyn, Rock City in Detroit, the Vans Warp Tour in Austin, Harmonix Arena in Oakland and Stonehenge at the Salisbury Flats in the UK. The song list has climbed to a whopping sixty-four tracks including encores and bonus tracks, and the sequel will ship with a new Classic Red Gibson SG controller. The "road" of notes will now buck slightly if you kill a combo with a missed strum, but the interface itself is identical.

In all honesty, that's the core of Guitar Hero II; tweaked, but otherwise untouched from the previous game. Clearly Harmonix and Red Octane feel that nothing's broken, and they don't intend to try to fix it.

Lucky for both newcomer and Guitar Hero vet alike, we couldn't agree more.