Guitar Hero II

Unless you have been living under a rock for the past year or so you would most likely know what Guitar Hero is, from RedOctane and Harmonix the original game boasted an awesome track list of classic rock titles and shipped with a Mini Gibson SG guitar controller, you were then tasked with rocking up to the status of Guitar Hero, or Guitar God for those really good players, needless to say the game was a hit, and the eagerly awaited sequel, entitled Guitar Hero 2, naturally, is due to hit this November, and I recently traveled to Activision for some hands on time.
Guitar Hero 2 is basically more of the same, though contrary to most cases this is an extremely good thing, with 55 new songs, this game is going to be one epic rock session for us gamers, I went hands on with the first two sessions of Guitar Hero 2, the Opening Licks and Amp Warmers respectively, jumping straight away into a co-op play of Strutter with me on lead guitar and my Activision rep on bass, this is one of the new features in the sequel, the ability to play Lead, Bass and Rhythm guitar depending on what the particular song permits, the first thing about co-op mode is that you can choose different difficulty settings, I played on medium and he played on easy, so more seasoned players can jump straight into higher levels, while their friends, who may be newcomers, can warm up on easier settings, but still play the same song.
After we beat Strutter I was showed some of the new features, namely the practice mode, the lack of this mode in the original Guitar Hero was the only downfall in that great game, though it will be a very welcome addition to this game, in practice mode you select a song, a speed ranging from Normal speed to slow, slower and slowest, you then pick a starting spot, for example solo 1 and an ending spot to practice, say outro, the following practice session will encompass everything in between those two sections, this just gives you a very good idea of what kind of pattern and how to move your fingers to the faster parts of the song, a lifesaver in my opinion.