Guitar Hero - Completed all songs of medium difficulty at 5 stars

I bought this game at full price - mistakenly since I thought I was getting an amazing deal on the Guitar Hero bundle. I meant to return it, but put it off too long and it was too late so I held onto it, thinking I might sell or trade it once I found a great deal on the original Guitar Hero bundle. I finally ended up getting a good deal on a plain controller so now this game once again had merit.

What prompted me to play it was talk of doing a video game party at some point and Guitar Hero is a great party game. But... at least in Guitar Hero II, you need to unlock some songs before they are available so I figured I should do that for the first game. I have now gotten as far in this game as I have in Guitar Hero II so I have some interested impressions on the differences between the two.

Guitar Hero II is definitely more of a polished game. The biggest issue is the control difference. The first Guitar Hero feels a bit more mushy in the controls. It's hard to explain - maybe just slightly less responsive or not handling the transitions between chords or strums as well? It definitely doesn't handle hammer-ons and pull-offs as well. There are little things too. Llike the way you progress between song tears and the fact that you get encores. Guitar Hero is still very fun, but I think they really got the formula right with the second game.

Some people (that I remember, those who do the Player One Podcast) have remarked that the song list in Guitar Hero is better than the one in Guitar Hero II. I'm just not seeing it, unless you are really into heavy metal. To me, they both have the about the same appeal in terms of songs. Each tier of songs has one song I really like, another song I think is good, one or two more that I have heard before, and one or two that I have never heard (or only heard in passing). This holds across both games. Guitar Hero II get some props because, though I am unfamiliar with the independent band bonus songs on each game, I do know the Trogdor song.

Because of its lack of practice mode and more difficult hammer-ons and pull-offs, this Guitar Hero seems like the more difficult one. Since I am just learning how to do hard mode in both games, I think it might be to my benefit to go through Guitar Hero II first before coming back to this one. We'll see.