Guitar Hero II
More features, more songs, more players... so why isn't there more rocking?
Published: November 30, 2006
The year or so of time between the two games also meant that more time was spent beefing up the visuals. It's subtle, but the framerate is not only much improved, but the number of people in the crowd has been pumped up and, most importantly of all, the animations have been vastly improved. There's something about pure keyframed animations (or at least what I think are keyframed animation) that fits perfectly with a certain type of game. Hamonix's animation work on GHII proudly boasts more frames, making for even more cartoon-like movements, and it certainly shows.
Moreover, there's been a bump up in the quality of the lighting, and the venues that make return appearances (like RedOctane's club) have gotten a nice face lift. Moreover, there was an attempt to sort of put you in the shoes of not only the band, but an audience member heading into the venue. The detail on the band members has increased, the detail on the stages has increased, there are more people and more light sources and more complexity to the animations. In short, there's just more to the visuals. Even little touches like the note track hiccupping when you botch a combo or the option to set a delay for HDTV sets show there was an attempt to improve the small stuff.
The audio, too, has subtly improved. Though all the menu effects have been recycled, the length for the preview tracks for songs seems to have been nudged up a little. There seems to be better separation in the channels for the music itself, and, provided you have a decent surround system, you'll hear your individual part better when playing two-player (though you really do need a good subwoofer to hear the bass parts). And of course WaveGroup's covers have improved -- at least in terms of vocal covers (the music parts were pretty much dead on to begin with, as they should have been).
And so, at the end, it all comes down to the music. The tracks in the game are more fun to play, they better support two players, there's more room for practicing harder parts, the hammer-on/pull-off aspect has been brought more to the fore and the song progression does a better job of subtly introducing the basic concepts of the game for newcomers. And yet, despite all these improvements, the songs themselves just aren't as solid as in the last game. Hopefully taking a little more time to work on the next game (or the proposed genre-specific spin-offs) will help things.
For now, though, all the pieces are in place, they just need to be complemented by the perfect (or, well, near-perfect, since you can't please everyone) soundtrack. When those two come together, Harmonix will truly have perfected the genre. Until then, though, rush out and buy this game (as if you already haven't), but don't expect it to have quite the same level of longevity as the first game.
