More Guitar Hero

So after playing Guitar Hero 3 to death, I went out and got Guitar Hero 2, just to have some more songs to play. Since I'm totally not following the order of the games' release at all, here are some of the first few things I noticed about Guitar Hero 2:

• The timing window for hitting a note is a lot smaller
• Hammeron/Pulloff (HO/PO) notes are harder to distinguish from their strumming-required counterparts
• The HO/PO window is also a lot smaller, which lead to me not trusting most of them and strumming them instead of going for the HO/PO and losing my combo
• Activating Star Power while tapping HO/PO = lost combo every time
  
• Prices for things in the store are actually reasonable
• TROGDOR!

Also, it appears as though Neversoft decided that GH3 should give less skilled players a break and allow them to get money for playing on Easy, and actually be able to play through the entire setlist on Easy. I went through Easy and Medium just to 5-star everything, since completing both difficulties and 5-starring all songs on them still gives you a guitar for each accomplishment (though "gives" isn't a good word, you still have to actually pay for it, it just unlocks the ability to buy the guitar).

Thankfully I'd played GH2 a bit before, so I knew how horrible of a song Yes We Can is, and purposefully left it locked.

There's an odd bug with one of the unlockable characters, The Grim Ripper. The only guitar available to use with him is the Scythe, but if you go into career mode it defaults to a Gibson guitar instead, and you have to hit "Change Guitar" to get the scythe back. Saving the game with it set doesn't fix this either.

As for the songs, well, I'm enjoying them, though I do have one complaint: Whoever they got to sing the cover of Sweet Child O' Mine sounds absolutely nothing like Axl Rose. It's horrible. Such a bad way to ruin what's otherwise a great song. To be fair, their cover singers have hardly ever been good, in particular, the one for Blue Oyster Cult's Godzilla and the one for Queen's Killer Queen were especially bad. Those songs were in other Guitar Hero games entirely, but I've played them thanks to the internet and Frets on Fire.

I've noticed that a couple of songs I enjoy playing a lot more on Hard than Expert. Trogdor is actually manageable on Hard instead of being the alt-strumming festival it is on Expert, I can keep an x4 multiplier up until the 17 note per second part at the end of the solo and usually hit the star power holds at the end of it. Thunderhorse is just plain fun on Hard, and has a lot of random bullshit grace notes and fiddly bits on Expert, as well as a section of serious alt-strumming that I have yet to get to more than an x2 multiplier on. Sweet Child O' Mine is virtually identical on both Hard and Expert, and it's a tradeoff: Expert has fewer random strums in the middle of HO/POs, but Hard has fewer bullshit fiddly bits and a solo intro I can actually tap.

As in GH3, there is a place I got hung up and was unable to progress any further in Career Mode. Except this time I actually beat Hard (fuck you, Raining Blood! Mosh 1 is such overcharted bullshit!), and I don't have the stamina it takes to play that fucking repetitive section of Freya on Expert. The section that goes G O (YB) (pause) (repeat) followed by a section of G (RB) (YB) (pause) (repeat). Even with star power I haven't managed to make it through that yet.

I haven't even touched co-op. My Kramer's detachable neck is acting up again, currently debating whether to reapply solder and have to do it again in a month or two, or to get some Torx bits (the Kramer takes a T10), a wire cutter/stripper, and some electrical tape and just fucking hardwire the thing.

Also, just for good measure, I full comboed Heart-Shaped Box on Expert. Easy song is easy. My score would have tied for 4958th place on ScoreHero had I actually submitted it. lol.