Before I made any plans for my eventual career (doctor, then racing driver, then planet-surfing police cowboy), the one thing I really wanted a good crack at was forming a band with my mates. The lure of the sex, drugs and rock n’ roll lifestyle is something I guess pretty much everyone aspires to at some point in their lives, eh? In my case, however, things never really got off the ground. Actually I tell a lie; they never even began in the first place. I never got the chance to write a groundbreaking first album, go on tour, turn completely odd and write an elegiac industrial concept album before leaving my band due to ‘creative differences’. My loss, I suppose.

Guitar Hero 2 doesn’t quite fill the void, but it does a pretty nifty job. Playing it in an office environment prevents brilliant lead guitarist antics such as sliding across the floor on your knees or running around like a bit of a nutter (not that this usually stops Jay, come to think of it), but standing or sitting in front of the TV kicking out some pretty fantastic tunes with deft finger coordination is immensely satisfying nonetheless. As you may have been able to gather from Jay’s review of the PS2 version, the game is absolutely ideal to fill a few hours in between work or suchlike, and after a while it really becomes quite compulsive.

Alas, I was a Guitar Hero n00b when I first turned on the 360 and rested the white guitar peripheral on my knee. For this reason alone I went straight in at the easy difficulty level of the career mode offered having already seen off the tutorial in some style, and almost immediately regretted it. It’s not that there is anything particularly wrong or broken with the difficulty; if anything, it’s a reasonable way to learn your craft for an hour or two.

Problem is, I had Jay occasionally jutting in and doing tunes on Expert level. The difference in difficulty is nothing short of astonishing, and pretty soon after watching his escapades my efforts on the one-note-at-a-time setting became somewhat repetitive and… well, dull. A quick jump up to medium solved such issues and I heartily recommend every newcomer save the utmost in butterfingered buffoons to start from this mark as well, as it gives you far better grounding than easy ever could.

Jay - Damn you psychobilly! *Shakes Fist*

But hang on – if you’re a newcomer, you’ll want to know the gist of this career mode, won’t you? You begin by selecting from a number of generic-yet-amusing rock stars and then from one of three initial guitars. You are then presented with a number of options; you can play a live gig, change your character or go to the store to spend cash you’ve earned (although you’ll not get this privilege if you’re on easy). Playing live gigs is the main meat of the mode, and is where you’ll get your chance to display your Slash-like skills.

You’ll start off pretty modestly at a small Battle of the Bands competition. Each location has five songs for you to play, with an optional encore available on one of them when you make it to some of the bigger arenas. During each song you have a score that tots up the more notes and combos you hit correctly, and the amount that you score directly links to how much cash you’re given for your efforts. Thus, going through on each song and perfecting your technique for five-star excellence will pay off in terms of reward, and it’s actually rather compulsive too. I certainly found myself more than happy to play my way through a single song two or three times to get the most out of it I could, and given my rather short attention span that’s no small thing.

As you progress, songs will become trickier and involve a whole lot more interaction. Whereas early tunes will see you pressing relatively simple note changes as you strum along, later efforts see rapid multi-button combinations thrown at you from all angles. After a while the use of your whammy bat to extract every single last drop of star power from the star-shaped notes becomes paramount, and using the star power (by tilting the guitar upwards, of course) will give you not only the chance to score bit on some sections, but also some welcome respite from horrendous solos as your character pulls off some crowd-pleasing moves to distract the audience.

Thus, timing your star power bursts becomes rather tactical. When activated the star power bar ticks down, so do you, for example, unleash it at a relatively simple part of the song to get big score bonuses, or do you save it for the most difficult part to cover up your mistakes? A few attempts at both techniques at medium difficulty proved inconclusive, but from Jay’s experience it’s most certainly better to do the latter on Expert and save your power for the bits where having 20 fingers wouldn’t save you from getting it all wrong.

Thankfully, the game also offers a practice mode so you can concentrate on a particularly tricky tune in slow motion, which gives you more than enough chance to learn and memorise the finer patterns you’ll need to use at each point of the song. This comes as a godsend when higher-level riffs begin to pop up all over the shop, and as with learning the real instrument you’ll find that practice does indeed make perfect, or at least relatively competent. It’s a rewarding, addictive task.

No music game is worth its salt without a great list of tracks, and by-and-large Guitar Hero 2 nails it. Jamming along to Heart-Shaped Box or Search and Destroy is thoroughly enjoyable and easily identifiable, as is You Really Got Me Going, even if the game tries to tell you that it was Van Halen who made the song famous. There’s a nod towards more modern bands with Avenged Sevenfold, Wolfmother and My Chemical Romance cropping up along the way, and a few softer tracks like Kansas’ Carry On My Wayward Son. That being said, you could argue that at times the track selection is a little on the heavy side, and a bit of added variation would not have done any harm.

Still, it’s all good fun. Practicing your technique and making progress through the difficulty levels is really very satisfying indeed, and there’s always the quick play option for people wanting a short jam. There’s also a rather excellent selection of multiplayer options for those with more than one guitar (seriously, you don’t want to ever, ever try using the 360 controller at all), with a cooperative mode allowing one player to take the lead and the other the bass or rhythm guitar. For those who prefer working against someone rather than with, there’s a duel option that puts you directly against another player as you try to complete a song with the highest score.

As this is the 360 version of the game, there’s also downloadable content on the way. Sadly it currently seems that the songs are a little on the expensive side (500 Microsoft Points for a 3-song pack), but the idea is sound and will add a lot of longevity to proceedings. The game itself comes packed with an added ten tunes from the get-go, and seeing as one of these is The Trooper by Iron Maiden it’s all the excuse anyone with the PS2 version needs to splash the cash once more.

So, two thumbs up from me. Initial boredom with the easy setting aside, playing through Guitar Hero 2 has been a pleasure. Obviously those who prefer the slightly subtler side of music might feel a little cold at some of the tracks on offer, but overall the experience is classic, slightly corny rock ‘n’ roll laugh which even the most stone-hearted gamers will have a had time not enjoying. Time to dust off the sweatbands and buy a barrel of blister cream, then!