New Fact #3: the new practice mode will let you practice sections of songs. Cowboys from Hell, I command you to rise from your gentle bed of human flesh and live in the hellish fear you deserve, becuause I will master II on Expert, and when I do, I'm coming back to pay you a visit, bitch.

I know this because I am secretly bill harris AND Lobo is my secret lover.

AND Lobo is my secret lover.

More GH II Impressions
I've gone through the first ten songs on Hard in career mode.

No failures yet, although I did flash red in a couple of songs. I wanted to start off in Hard so that I would immediately remember--
[let me just insert this editorial note: I'm trying to write while I'm listening to the new Who album "Endless Wire," but this album is complete sh*t. It's absolutely flaccid and almost entirely unlistenable. I've got almost every Who album and all of Pete Townshend's solo albums, so it's not like I've never heard their music before. What a freaking disaster. ]
--the hand slide.

Oh, and if you still haven't played the original Guitar Hero (good grief, what have you been doing with yourself for the last year?), when you do play, spend as little time on Medium difficulty as possible. Medium never requires you to play the fifth fret button, and if you spend too much time there, it will be hell to learn the hand slide when you move up to Hard. I know--I wanted to five-star everything on Medium before I moved on. Big mistake.

Okay, here are some more impressions. I did check out Practice mode, just to see what it was like, and it's fantastic. Pick your song and difficulty level, pick the start and end sections of the song, and you're good to go. When you're done playing, you get a percentage rating for note accuracy. There's no further statistical breakdown, but being able to play a small section of a song is unbelievably helpful. Oh, and you can also select the speed (I think there are four different speeds available).

One other very nice design feature is that you don't need to unlock a song in career mode before you can play it in practice mode.

Again, it's pretty remarkable how good this game looks in progressive scan mode--it's a significant upgrade over the original. I also noticed that progressive scan needed to be re-enabled when I booted up the game today, so you may have to set that each time you play (in the Video options menu). I'll check that tonight.

I think there will probably be more criticism of some of the recordings this time, because the game includes some very high-profile songs. In the first ten, I thought that two were considerably weaker than the others: Surrender and Carry on Wayward Son. They both sounded a little flat and a little slow (at least to me). On the other side, though, Strutter and Message in a Bottle both sounded terrific and both are very fun to play (MIaB really surprised me).

When you've passed the fourth song in a set, you're immediately given the option to play an encore (which is the fifth song in a set). It's very fun, and they don't tell you the song until you leave the screen and "return" to the stage.

I haven't seen many three-note chords yet--only two in the first ten songs on Hard. This is consistent with how they introduced difficulty in the first game, though--the last ten songs of a set were significantly tougher than the first ten--and I'm expecting many more of them as I work through the sets (I'll let you know).

As a last note (for now), there are plenty of funny moments in the game. I've burst out laughing at least half a dozen times. No spoilers, but there are some funny, funny bits.

The forums will be quiet for the next few weeks as people recover or learn to type with one hand.

I am quite disappointed with the vocalist for "Killing in the name of". I know it's suppose to sound different but it just isn't the same.

So, was anyone else dumb enough to preorder? Did you get your "Game has been shipped!" confirmation?