Gamers are plagued by a serious lack of innovation and ingenuity in the videogame industry. Sequels, in particular, rarely include new and exciting improvements over their predecessors.

Those who enjoyed the first "Guitar Hero" can breathe a sigh of relief. "Guitar Hero II" avoids the staleness of past game sequels in the music genre, such as the "Dance Dance Revolution" follow-ups that provide nothing but new songs.

GH II does offer up 40-plus colorful songs, including: Guns N' Roses' "Sweet Child of Mine," Heart's "Crazy On You" and The Allman Brothers' "Jessica." But new features are what make this sequel a must-have. Harmonix, the game's developer, could have sold plenty of copies no matter what quality of product they put out. But they decided to add some much-needed depth to both the single and multi-player modes.

Players of "Guitar Hero" have to learn how to use a nearly life-sized plastic guitar with five colored fret buttons and a strum button. It's a simple technique to learn, especially on lower difficulties where fewer fret buttons are used. However, on more advanced levels the difficulty can be downright frustrating.

Luckily for players of "Guitar Hero II," a practice mode has been added. In the first "Guitar Hero," gamers had to play through tough songs dozens of times to learn the note sequences. Now players can pick a song, or even a small section of a song, to slow it down and work on mastering even the most tenacious riff.

Songs in GH II are clustered into groups of five. The first few groups offer songs from multiple genres. As the difficulty progresses from "amp-warmers" to "furious fretwork" gamers have fewer options. Those who can't stand metal songs will find themselves playing easier songs more often than not. The game also has about 25 unlockable "indie" songs. Their quality ranges from unique to laughable, but some of them are fun to play.

Another feature that was missed in the original was the ability for two players to play rhythm and base on the same song at the same time. Maybe Harmonix left it out because of time constraints, but they added it to GH II and nailed it. Now, with two guitars on-hand, gamers can play alongside their friends and continually yell at them for blowing their solos. Players can also battle head-to-head on the same song. But for those lacking a wide-screen TV, the screen can get a bit cramped.

Graphically GH II doesn't offer anything photo-realistic. The visuals are crisp but cartoonish. This shouldn't really be a concern to players. If they are concentrating on the incarnations of the band members on the screen, they will fail the song miserably.

Sound is where this game should, and does indeed, shine. While all the songs in the game are covered, gamers will barely notice. The instrumentals are pitch perfect. Some of the songs' original vocalists, such as Kansas' Steve Walsh, are tough to match, but most of the vocals are well done.

"Guitar Hero II" does not fall into the trap of being a carbon copy of the original. Given the success of the first Guitar Hero, the developers could have simply laid down some new covers and thrown the game onto the shelves, but that is not the case on the solid encore effort from Harmonix.

The game's release comes just prior to that of Playstation 3 and Nintendo's Wii. Considering that many gamers may be saving their cash for the pricey next-generation systems, choosing early November for GH II's release was risky. Fortunately, GH II is far too unique, innovative and fun to be missed.

Grade: 5 out of 5.