I’ve been playing Guitar Hero II regularly since it came out in April. (See my achievements for proof.)
During the first week of release there were endless complaints about the controller from people at work, all of whom are Guitar Hero freaks. Chief among them? The size of the controller.
I quote Scott Horwath, our dev support engineer, with his nicely ordered list:
- The top of the Xplorer (where you would normally rest your arm on the SG) digs into your arm. I couldn’t find a comfortable spot to rest my arm. It’s really obtrusive.
- The controller is apparently designed for toddlers, as the buttons are placed a good further up on the fret bar.
- The whammy bar is positioned oddly, and doesn’t react as smoothly to the touch. Had to jam down on it to “wham”.
- You have to throw the guitar up in order to get it to go into star power… and along the same lines the change of the select button to being so small makes it near impossible to use this to activate star power.
To put his second complaint (“built for toddlers”) to the test I enlisted the help of real, live toddler research subjects. As you can see from the photographic evidence the controller is, in fact, the perfect size for a 5 year old toddler.
