Guitar Hero II review

The other, more frequently-mentioned changes for Hero 2 are bass and rhythm sections for co-operative play. These give songs yet another dimension: unless you're a decent musician, we'd practically guarantee that you've never noticed how good the bass section is in Sweet Child O' Mine.

Playing together's a whole new experience: suddenly, you're forced to hold your bit of the action up when the lead guitarist fumbles a tricky riff, and whoop "Star Power!" for synchronised power-up activation. Our only complaint is the lack of a co-op career.

Above: The 3D crowd reacts to your skill just like a real audience would

Problems? Well, for what it's worth, we're not quite as keen on the new tracklist as we were on the old one. It's telling that our most-played songs are the Stray Cats and the Top Gear theme, and there simply isn't a punk tune on here that's quite as memorable as Infected or Fat Lip.

What Guitar Hero always does well is introducing you to new songs - and making you realise that you actually quite like KISS - but the selection here just isn't quite tight enough for our liking.