Call of Duty you get to pretend to be a war hero, Grand Theft Auto you get to pretend to be a successful criminal, God of War you get to pretend to be a god and Guitar Hero II you get to pretend to be a rock star.įor simply being a game to play with friends, Guitar Hero II was incredibly fun. Guitar Hero II is all about fun and escapism. There is some carry over between being a guitarist and playing Guitar Hero II and having proficiency with one can help the other, but they are still different skill sets. Saying it is would be like saying Call of Duty is comparable to going to the shooting range for firearms training. Guitar Hero II isn’t actually about playing guitar. And there were always the few on both sides that took the game way too seriously. The latter category enjoyed the rhythm game a lot for its addictive gameplay, while some of the musicians struggled with trying to follow the rhythm the game wanted them to play that didn’t always match up to how someone would actually play the song. While critically and commercially successful, Guitar Hero II led to some polarizing reactions within my circle of friends, namely those that primarily consider themselves musicians or gamers. The guitar controller was still a new novelty for most people, since this was before a new version of Guitar Hero or Rock Band was released every three weeks. Or at least four button virtuosos - that orange button can be tricky. About a year later, Guitar Hero II came out for the PlayStation 2 and an Xbox 360 version followed five months later, and this was the beginning of when just about everyone graduated from being lord of the strings on air guitar to becoming five button virtuosos. Guitar Hero came out for PlayStation 2 about the same time Microsoft unleashed the Xbox 360.
It’s common now to walk into a random dwelling and stumble across enough plastic Gibson knockoffs and plastic drums to outfit several bands, but back in 2006 finding a plastic five buttoned guitar was a bit of a rarity.
The world can change a lot in just a decade and nothing drives this point home more than looking back to 2006. We even have a beige computer with a floppy disk drive. All the classic systems are down there collecting dust, so in an effort to improve the cleanliness of our work space, we dust off these old consoles every so often and put an old game through its paces, just to make sure everything stays in working order. The basement at the Hardcore Gamer office has a section known as the Crust Room, with an old grey couch and a big old CRT TV. Member the games you used to play? We member.