Guitar Hero II

Everyone wants to be a guitar hero, don't they? Standing up there on stage, basking in the adulation of thousands of adoring fans, many of them foxy ladeez! But if, like us, you can't manage the chords and notes and things, Guitar Hero is the answer. If you can manage four buttons and a flicky thing, you have all the dexterity you need to lay down some funky licks.

Guitar Hero 2 takes the principles of timing games like Gitaroo Man and Donkey Kong Bongo Blast and marries them to the innovative SG guitar controller that looks and feels like a guitar. A Gibson SG guitar to be specific. Okay, it's a lightweight, plastic guitar - but it's surprisingly effective, so as you play the game, you feel like you're Eric Claptout, Slosh, Sergio Pizza out of Kasabian, or whoever floats your guitaring boat.

Version two of the game takes off exactly where version one left off, with the exception that it's slightly more difficult, but not hideously so, and first timers will still find the easy level manageable. However, experts from the first version will be challenged by the higher difficulty levels.

There is a whole new set of tunes of course: 55 of them, from artists as diverse as Nirvana, The Pretenders and Rage Against The Machine - okay, maybe not that diverse, but this is all about the guitar.

It really is incredible hearing the action of your fingers are translated to blistering guitar licks out of your speakers. If you've ever played a tennis racket in front of your bedroom mirror, this is the game for you.