Gaming Generations :: Rockband 2

battlemankiller · Posted: Wed Oct 08, 2008 1:29 pm Post subject: Rockband 2

Rockband 2

Publisher: Harmonix, Mtv Games
Official Website: http://www.rockband.com/
Release Date: 9/14/2008
Genre: Music Simulation
Number of Players: 1-4 Local Multiplayer, 1-4 vs. 1-4 Battle of the Bands
ESRB Rating: Teen
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Imagine yourself a rock star, playing before crowds of hundreds of loving fans. Now take that fantasy into your living room, and let your friends and family become involved. Thats Rockband 2 in three sentences. Harmonix and MTV games bring back Rockband with Rockband 2, a small upgrade compared to what has been and is being done to video games today. Rockband 2 takes the best aspects of Rockband and makes them even better...to a point.

Visuals:

The graphic overhaul to the game is nothing to cry about. Don't get me wrong, the graphics are great, and some of the show venues and video effects just are plain cool, but the graphics are only slightly better than Rockband 1, I had to look hard to notice a difference.

Game play:

Exactly the same as Rockband 1. To sing you sing into the microphone, to play drums you beat the drums, and to do guitar/bass you do what you always do. They have added some new functions to the game to make it more interesting. The drum trainer in really nice and helps a lot, I recommend it to anyone about to play drums for the first time. Also the fill trainer is great, because before it, all of my fills sounded like I had used my face on the drums instead of the sticks. Battle of the bands mode adds a slight challenge and answers that questions you've always wanted to know. “Are my three friends and I better than a random four person band across the world.” The world tour mode has changed a little, but mostly they added more venues and included a lot more sets to play this time. But for some reason a lot of them include “Tangled Up In The Blue” by Bob Dylan. “Tangled Up In The Blue” is the longest, most stupid song to put in Rockband. I have no problem with Bob Dylan, but a song with a twenty second harmonica solo shouldn't be put in a game with no harmonica. This brings me to my next point, the songs in Rockband 2. The song selection in Rockband 2 is an honest effort for Harmonix to get more people to play Rockband, unlike the Guitar Hero franchise(which seems like they only are looking for the next hardest metal song, not good music). The complete set list can be found here:

http://blog.wired.com/games/2008/07/the-complete-ro.html

Players characters can now play any instrument, so you don't have to have a different person for each instrument. I know that ate up a lot of time when I played Rockband. You can also set other characters that you have on your Xbox to be fill in and play those instruments when the actual player isn't there.
There also is the option to download the songs from your Rockband 1 game to your hard drive to play them on Rockband 2. You lose Iron Maiden and Ozzy, but thats OK, no one liked those songs anyways.
It costs Five dollars but its well worth it, seeing that I don't own Rockband 1, but just had a friend bring over his disk, and downloaded all the songs, saved me fifty bucks.
FYI there is a no fail mode in case you suck a lot

Sounds:

The songs in the game sound great since almost all of them are mastered tracks of the songs. Nothing to talk about here.

Overall:

They made some good changes, but I think most of it could have been done as a patch, or expansion download, not a separate game. Don't knock it until you try it, its just as fun as Rockband 1, but with new songs and some more stuff to do as a band. Couldn't really find any problems with the game, the cheap Rockband 1 instruments break all the time, but the instruments for 2 should fix this problem, so until then.

Single Player: Its fun, but the game was made for more people to play it.
Multilayer: This is where the game shines, whether its local or online.
Replay Value: That's all that this game is, Replay, Replay, Replay.

9/10

Verdict: If you have the money and like rhythm games, buy it.