Guitar Hero II Well-Received By Xbox 360 Critics
Although it's been instigating acid flashbacks for middle-aged hipsters on PlayStation 2 for a few years, the Guitar Hero franchise has only recently made its next-gen debut. The game launches this morning on Microsoft's Xbox 360 console, and, perhaps as expected, is already receiving extremely positive reviews.
The premise of Guitar Hero is fairly simple. Plug in a guitar-inspired controller, and simply press the colored buttons as the notes appear on screen. There's strumming involved, and even a little whammy-bar action, but none of the required actions are particularly complicated. Although Guitar Hero II is hardly easy to complete – heck, I'd go so far as to say that expert feat is nearly impossible – it's a very simple game to pick up and enjoy.
Thus, it makes for a much more enjoyable party favor amongst a casual gaming crowd than, say, Halo 2.
So, how good are the reviews?
According to video game database gamerankings.com, the average professional reviewer has posted a 9.6/10, or 96% score for Guitar Hero II. That quickly places it in the top 30 as far as Xbox 360 releases go, and even within the top 700 games of all time. Considering the rising number of titles being released and video gaming's multi-billion dollar capacity, Guitar Hero's ranking is fairly impressive.
With the drought of Xbox 360 releases at this current moment, RedOctane's riff-fest should easily tear apart the retail landscape. That will only fuel the ambitious development of Harmonix and EA's "Rock Band", which will provide players with everything but a garage.
Note: Although RedOctane promised Xbox 360 owners a wireless guitar/controller during the game's development, this first edition must be plugged in.
A future, wireless release is widely rumored.
