It's been out for a few weeks and early numbers show it has sold 291,000 units after only five days on the market (2,500 units per hour were rolling off the store shelves).  The numbers are surely higher now due to more units being available.  Now, I could tell you about the great gameplay, cool songs, doing my first encore, refusing my first encore, breaking 100K in a song, finishing Easy and Medium modes, etc, etc.  I could tell you about playing old favorites like Rush's YYZ or Iron Maiden's "The Trooper".  I could gush on about new found songs like those from All That Remains or Drist or Lamb of God.  I could tell you about how amazing the process is for getting a song on the game, or how there are real-life guitar heros that  work for Red Octane and bring us all the juicy goodness of music.  Sure, I could tell you about the cool achievements that are only available for the Xbox 360 version (yeah, I know PS3 will have them....one day) or the downloadable content that's already begun (yeah, I know, PS3 will have it....one day).  Sure I could tell you about this and more, but instead I'm going to tell you about how Guitar Hero II introduced me to a guitar hero I'd heard about in passing, but never explored further...until now....

You see, there's a song you can purchase in the game called "Jordan" and it's an smorgasborg of electric guitar played like a buzzsaw ripping through slabs of metal.  This song is the brainchild of "Buckethead", an avante-garde underground guitar cult hero.  But, if it were left at that it wouldn't seem that amazing.  Dig deeper via Google or YouTube and you'll find a workhorse of guitar work rivaled by a very select few.  Breaking all the rules is nothing new for Buckethead, since you'll find chicken-picking, face-melting shredding, ambient acoustic, electronica guitar, and more in the extensive catalog of this mysterious musician.  I'm not going to cover the history of Buckethead, rather I will point you to his entry on Wikipedia for more background.  What I want to point out is the way that I probably would never have found Buckethead on my own, despite being a bit of a music freak.  Guitar Hero II introduced me to him and I have spent the better part of a week listening to every song I can find on YouTube and grabbing some of his music for my listening pleasure.  Examples you ask?  I thought you never would....

For Mom - one of the prettiest songs you're going to hear and it was written by Brian Carroll (Buckethead) for his mother while she was in the hospital.

Interworld and the New Innocence - I have two recordings, the first, while the sound isn't great, since it's from a bootleg, but the feeling from the playing is incredible.  The second is a more warm version of the same song. 

Buckethead and Les Claypool having some fun with a variety of improvising.  Notice the songs you'll recognize, but be surprised to hear.

Padmasana - spell-binding sounds from a guitar.

These are a bit of the mind-numbing amount of material he's released, including 21+ solo albums, 30+ collaborations and hundreds of projects and involvement in other songs.  Just recently he was the first artist to release thirteen, yes that's "13" albums of new material.....ON THE SAME DAY.

Check it out and see what you think.  You never know how you'll be influenced by something you hear, a game you play, or both!