Rock Band 2 (Xbox 360)
Oh, Harmonix, you know the way to my heart. The sequel to Rock Band isn’t exactly a great leap forward, but since the original worked pretty damn great in the first place, that’s not too bad. At this point, I have renounced the Guitar Hero franchise, because everything about Rock Band is superior. The downloadable songs, the presentation, the note charts – everything is slick, clean, and functional.
The biggest change over Rock Band is that rather than having a solo play and a band world tour option, the band world tour has been made available to friendless loners like me who play by themselves. This opens the game up a lot from “hmm, what song should I play” to “what set of songs should I play” or “screw it, I’ll let the computer choose ‘Everlong’ for the fiftieth time”. But seriously, it’s more fun when you can choose sets and whatnot. The difficulty has been pushed up a notch or two, as the highest-tier songs will generally chew your wrists up and spit them out. Aside from that, most of the changes are cosmetic, but the menus in particular do look a lot nicer now. And you can choose your band stand-ins, so you can have a set band rather than having the guys from GWAR or Solid Snake show up in your band randomly.
As far as the setlist goes, it goes a little too far into Guitar Hero territory with a bunch of crappy metal tunes, but there’s a whole lot of 70s, 80s, 90s, and today hits to balance it out. They’ve even managed to find the one decent Modest Mouse song, ‘Float On’. My only quibble is that their decision to go with original masters only really hurts the chance of getting more rock from the 60s – the only 60s songs on here are ‘Pinball Wizard’ and ‘Spirit in the Sky’. By the by, there are 85 songs on here; nearly twice what the original RB had. In addition, for the low low cost of only $5, or 400 Microsoft Itchy & Scratchy Dollars, you can rip the songs from RB (except for three, due to rights issues or whatnot) and use them in RB2. So, no disc switching if you have a particular urge to play one of those songs.
The instruments associated with the game are also new and improved, but I have none of them at this time, so I can’t comment. I don’t imagine the microphone can be improved on that much, but the drums and guitar are supposed to be a lot better. Regardless of whether or not you want the instruments, though, Rock Band 2 is a must-buy for the plastic rockin’ out aficionado.
5 out of 5
Oh, Harmonix, you know the way to my heart. The sequel to Rock Band isn’t exactly a great leap forward, but since the original worked pretty damn great in the first place, that’s not too bad. At this point, I have renounced the Guitar Hero franchise, because everything about Rock Band is superior. The downloadable songs, the presentation, the note charts – everything is slick, clean, and functional.
The biggest change over Rock Band is that rather than having a solo play and a band world tour option, the band world tour has been made available to friendless loners like me who play by themselves. This opens the game up a lot from “hmm, what song should I play” to “what set of songs should I play” or “screw it, I’ll let the computer choose ‘Everlong’ for the fiftieth time”. But seriously, it’s more fun when you can choose sets and whatnot. The difficulty has been pushed up a notch or two, as the highest-tier songs will generally chew your wrists up and spit them out. Aside from that, most of the changes are cosmetic, but the menus in particular do look a lot nicer now. And you can choose your band stand-ins, so you can have a set band rather than having the guys from GWAR or Solid Snake show up in your band randomly.
As far as the setlist goes, it goes a little too far into Guitar Hero territory with a bunch of crappy metal tunes, but there’s a whole lot of 70s, 80s, 90s, and today hits to balance it out. They’ve even managed to find the one decent Modest Mouse song, ‘Float On’. My only quibble is that their decision to go with original masters only really hurts the chance of getting more rock from the 60s – the only 60s songs on here are ‘Pinball Wizard’ and ‘Spirit in the Sky’. By the by, there are 85 songs on here; nearly twice what the original RB had. In addition, for the low low cost of only $5, or 400 Microsoft Itchy & Scratchy Dollars, you can rip the songs from RB (except for three, due to rights issues or whatnot) and use them in RB2. So, no disc switching if you have a particular urge to play one of those songs.
The instruments associated with the game are also new and improved, but I have none of them at this time, so I can’t comment. I don’t imagine the microphone can be improved on that much, but the drums and guitar are supposed to be a lot better. Regardless of whether or not you want the instruments, though, Rock Band 2 is a must-buy for the plastic rockin’ out aficionado.
5 out of 5
posted by Cole at
6:16 PM
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