Rock Band 2 Review: For those about to Rock, We salute you

Posted on November 7, 2008 - Filed Under Gaming, Review

A long delay between reviews, but well it’s hard to write a review without a computer. Than once I got my computer I was busy catching up on gaming, a little Warhammer, a little fallout, a little civilization 4, a little Audiosurf, and a lot of Rock Band 2. So let’s get to it!

Rock Band 2, is a sequel at it’s finest. At it’s core, it’s not any different than Rock Band 1. It’s still a 4 instrument band game. The UI is the same, the character creation is the same, the game play is the same, the graphics are the same, but the game is far from being the same game. There are many small, but key, differences that make Rock Band 2 worth the $60-$180 to drop depending on if you need (new) instruments or not. The most notable difference you’ll notice you’ll find is obviously a completely new set list. Both offering greater quantity on the disc(plus 20 free songs to download for those that bought the game) as well as a better quality of music too. Having played the game for the better part of the last 2 weeks, there is yet to be a single song I want to skip, which can’t be said for RB1. You also have the inclusion of AC/DC for the first time, which instantly makes the set list a 10/10.

Once you load up Rock Band for the first time, you’ll notice the next change from Rock Band 1 to Rock Band 2. You’ll find that the old single player mode is gone. No longer is it play 4 or 5 songs, unlock the next set of progressively harder songs rinse and repeat until finished, move to next difficulty. That has been removed and Band World Tour mode has been made single player. This has it’s advantages and disadvantages. Let’s start with the good, longevity of the game is increased 10 fold. As you’re not just encouraged to play songs multiple times, you’re required to if you want to truly beat single player mode. The other advantage of this, is if you want, all your characters progress this mode. If you want to play drums, you don’t leave your guitarist behind. If you want to go singing, you don’t leave your drummer behind. With reworking band management characters are no longer stuck to a band. So each person you make can join the band and leave as you please. A very nice, oft forgot, feature put in by harmonix. Oh and did I mention you can take your band online and have some people help you through the tour as well?

As mentioned, there is some downside. For starters, it slows things down. You’ll end up playing 50-100 songs before really progressing the difficulty noticeably, rather than 20-30. Also since you don’t start off with many songs unlocked, you’ll play a lot of the songs over and over again. Even worse if you quickly imported your RB1 songs, you’ll find your constantly playing Rb1 songs instead of the new songs. All of this leads to a lengthy amount of time to unlock all the songs.

One way to work out the slow unlocking process is to check out another one of the new additions to Rock Band 2. Challenges. These are typically 3-7 song set list that act much like the old single player. Each song is the set gets progressively higher and the challenges are broken off into tiers based on ease. Playing the challenges will ensure your only playing new songs or DLC(many dlc bundles and albums come with their own Challenge to play!). This way you can quickly focus on unlocking all the songs, as well as knocking off a few trophies while your at. Which yes, trophies are in RB2. It’s nice to get that little ding of reinforcement after a good song. The challenges have many different categories, they might be for songs of a certain decade or challenge. Both a ’sample’ set of a few songs and an infinite play list that will play all the songs you have of that category, so RB1, RB2, or DLC songs currently loaded. Giving you some monster set list of 30+ often closer to 50 if your a DLC regular. There are also instrument based challenges, so you can play progressively harder songs on drums, guitar, bass, or vocals.

Online also took a step forward, as you can now chat while selecting a song if you have a headset or if you are the vocalist. Which makes it nice so you can find songs everyone wants to play, or at least avoid the ones they despise. As earlier mentioned you can have people join your band and get more fans, money, and stars for them. You can join someone else’s and help them out. You can do quick play, which will rotate who selects songs which also helps ensure people get to play songs they like. Or of course there is score duel and tug of war, which plays like Guitar Heroes head to head match ups. One being you both play all the notes, the other being you play a section than they play a section and you go back and forth until someone wins. All of which adds to good fun and encourages you to get a band together even when your rocking solo. One of the new features that’s semi-online is Battle of the Bands. It’s similar to challenges, only that Battle of the Bands are updated about every week. You have a certain amount of time to post a score and you see how you rank up against others. They did a nice thing of not making it always just a pure score contest. Sometimes it’s Star rating so easy can compete with expert players. Some times it’s note streak or something else. It’s another good way to keep you playing the game.

All in All Rock Band 2 did nothing game changing or genre defining like the original Rock Band. However it did make many small tweaks that improve the overall quality of the game. If you’re a fan of rhythm games or looking to give the genre a try, look no further than Rock Band 2. The game offers everything you could want, a fun experience with good tunes and a good online community. Now with the numerical representation of the text above!

Graphics: 6/10 They aren’t ‘bad’ by any means, but the focus of the game isn’t on graphics and as a result they will never really impress you. They won’t ever distract you for that matter either. Since most of the time your going to be looking at the fret board, which is nice and crisp and clean, this is a minor issue.

Sound: 10/10 It’s a game revolving around music, it’s got great bands like AC/DC, Alice in Chains, Avenged sevenfold, Disturbed, Guns N Roses, Kansas, Metalica, Smashing Pumpkins, Soundgarden, and System of a Down among others.

Game play: 9/10 There is always room to make the game a little more fun. Namely it would be nice to see deeper character customization, a new note chart for Beastie Boys, return of the old single player(keeping the world tour as is), increasing band/crowd interaction, and other things. All of these are very minor things, as all around you’ll be having to much of a blast to care, it’s not until you turn it off for a couple of days that you start to think about it
Mike Factor: 10/10 Given how much I’ve played it in such a short period of time, with some great games sitting on my shelves begging to be played. The game speaks volumes for the amount of fun it’s brought me. With weekly DLC, and continual battle of the bands updates, and plenty of gigs to play in World Tour on top of trophies to unlock. The game is an all around high quality, high entertainment value, long life time game. These are rare to come by and it’s makes me glad to know that Harmonix and EA didn’t just sit on the franchise.

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