Guitar Hero II, the anticipated follow-up to last year's biggest sleeper hit, wants you to be a rock god. The part air-guitar, part rhythm game for PlayStation 2 delivers more axe grinding action to an entirely new rock 'n' roll soundtrack. The good news -- it's better than we could have imagined.

Like the first game, players kick out the jams using a guitar-shaped controller to play notes that decend down a virtual fretboard on screen. The player must keep pace by holding down the corresponding fret button (five in all) and hitting the "strum bar" at the right time. As the game proceeds, players can track their performance by paying attention to a meter that can go anywhere from green (rocking out) to red (sucking badly). During their performance, players can build up a combo meter and begin racking up some serious points. There are also key points where energy can be obtained by nailing a particular part of the song and maximizing it with the help of a "whammy bar", a little lever on Red Octane's guitar peripheral. Once this energy meter is full, players can do an upward sway with this guitar, doubling their combo score and points.

For those who still don't get it, a very comprehensive training mode walks amateurs through every step of guitar playing. This includes basic strums, combos, energy building and activating. And new to the series, players learn more complex hammer-ons and pull-offs. These come in the form of keeping a chord going on the guitar without having to hit the strum bar multiple times, instead pressing the corresponding fret buttons in a specific dial-up or dial-down manner. These five buttons are easily found on the neck of the guitar peripheral.

Still confused? Well, in training mode players can access songs that they've unlocked and practice with them any way they choose. Particular parts of each song can be chosen, like choruses and guitar riffs, for endless play. The speed can also be adjusted, so those having difficulty with a fast rhythm can slow it down until they get the hang of it. Different guitar tracks can also be selected, in case someone feels like testing their skills on a rhythm or bass guitar. This is a wonderful addition to the game and it might be good enough to teach the basics of playing on a real guitar, even if that means moving away from fret buttons and eventually onto strings.

All of this would be useless, however, if the song selection wasn't meaningful. Anyone can take a learning tool and try to embrace it, but it's hard to do that without any ideal source material. Fortunately, the Harmonix team knows its way around a good song list, as proven with the first Hero. What's really likable here, however, is the diversity. Sure, there's favorites like Guns n' Roses' "Sweet Child O' Mine", Van Halen's "You Really Got Me", and Anthrax's "Madhouse" (a personal favorite) that will leave one's neck sore from all the head-banging, but there are also some excellent contemporary rock selections here. When's the last time that Matthew Sweet's "Girlfriend" was even considered for a video game inclusion? Or, for that matter, "Message In a Bottle" by the Police? Most of the songs are covers and not the original master tracks, but they're superb covers, done by the same team that handled the original game's recordings. And included in the old favorites, Guitar Hero II includes plenty of independent band tracks to unlock as well.