Thirty floors up overlooking Sydney's Darling Harbour - there are worse places to drink beer, eat pizza and play some Guitar Hero II on 360. Lots worse.

I arrive late. Well, I arrive at the general location early, expecting a street number and a bar name to be sufficient to get me there. Nope. I got lost. A lap of Darling Harbour, two tower walkway crossovers, a few run-ins with bemused security guards and three keycard checkpoints later I'm upstairs. Ungh.

First stop, the fridge, get a beer. There are 32" flat-panels everywhere, and about 8-10 360s hooked up playing Gears and Crackdown. Nobody touches them. I can already hear Sweet Child O' Mine. I didn't mind that song. I'd go on to hear it another 1742 times during the course of the evening. Now I can't stand it.

I know there's new songs on offer for the 360 version, but Madhouse is calling me. Everyone's still awkwardly saying "hi, hi" and staring around the room, so the guitars are still lying on the floor, untouched. I grab the nearest one, scroll down to Madhouse. Your medication is ready Mr Belladona. Muhahahaha!

It kicks off then...oops. I get about four of the squawking "you fucked up that bit" noises. I bumble my way through the song, but something's not right. It's the fret buttons.

They're tiny. Made for midgets.

Mike's right, they do feel better. They feel a lot firmer, you get a sense that when you hammer down, you're hammerin' down. You even get a little clicky feedback, unlike the mashy vagueness of the PS2 ones.

But they're just so tiny. Made for delicate, precious little fingers. It was really, really difficult for me to distinguish between the 2-4 frets when chords started flying, and that pissed me off. If you've never played the PS2 version, you won't care, you'll probably even enjoy the fact the 5th fret button is now closer to your pinky. But if you have played the PS2 one, just keep in mind: the fret buttons, they're tiny.

The rest of the guitar is nice. The mysterious comms port underneath is mysterious - nobody knew what the hell it was for. Maybe you can plug your guitar into a phone line and just wail down it in morse code, like a really metal skype. Wow, that started as a joke, but that'd actually be really awesome. I don't like the little black select/start buttons, they're not as guitar-y as the PS2's Gibsons, but bleh.

By now I'm 3-4 songs in, and people are on their second beers. All the guitars are now taken. The little crowd I'd formed with my Madhouse fumblings has disappeared, drawn by some guy from PC mag Atomic who can actually play songs on expert, and play them well. I can't, and I'm slightly intimidated watching him. He's kicking my ego's ass.

The game looks nicer than the PS2 version. Lots of bloom. Better texturing on the characters, better lighting. And BLOOM. God, it's everywhere, it's quite distracting. The black marker pen strokes on the tracklist are about the only things that don't radiate light. Death's wing feathers look great. But it's Guitar Hero - if you're caring about the graphics you're kind of missing the point.

I tried out most, if not all of the new tracks. They may as well have not bothered including a Pearl Jam track it's so awful. But Rock and Roll Hoochie Coo is awesome, mainly because it made me feel like I was in Dazed and Confused. Man I love that movie. The other new songs are OK, just nothing special. There's no More than a Feeling or Texas Flood kind of track that'll straight-up convince you to get this if you've already got the PS2 version.

Which pretty much sums the whole thing up. It's nice enough. If you've got the PS2 version don't bother, just don't, wait until the downloadable tracklist starts to swell, because there's nothing here you don't already have. Unless you have tiny fingers. I've already got the PS2 version and saw nothing that would convince me to part with an additional AUD$140.

But 360 owners, if you've somehow never played it before, it's Guitar Hero. It's awesome. But you don't need me to tell you that. You're probably scratching deep clawmarks in your skin counting down the April release. Luke Plunkett

Send an email to the author of this post at plunkett@kotaku.com.