'Rock Band 2' takes your rock star dreams to next level
There may be no better game for turning a night in front of your console into an event than "Rock Band 2." It's easily accessible to new players, challenging enough to keep experienced ones wanting to play and cooperative instead of competitive, making it an ideal party game that even non-gamers can appreciate.
The sequel to the hit music game, which combines the best of Guitar Hero and Karaoke Revolution while adding in drums for the full rock experience, just improves on the original. Changes to game play are minor but all positive. The interface is laid out a little better, there's a no-fail mode you can try if you just want to play around stress-free and a drum trainer to help players take on the most challenging role in the game.
But the biggest reason to buy the game is the music. "Rock Band 2" features 80 songs on its own, with hundreds more available for download. If you have the original "Rock Band" you can transfer all the music for a $5 fee. The huge selection includes a variety of genres from classic rock epics to alternative hits to heavy metal. Players start out with a selection of fairly easy starter songs, plus whatever they pay to download, and unlock more challenging tunes by taking their band on a World Tour.
The result is a highly addictive game that can keep players going for hours and hours. Perform a song well at one venue and it might unlock a new place to play, complete with songs that haven't previously been available. Play those and it could unlock still another challenge that would allow your band to tour more cities, with more new content. As the band rises from local talent to international sensation, players also must rise to the challenge of scoring points by trying harder tunes and higher difficulties. Even when you're not playing music you can spend plenty of time decking out your highly customizable avatar with a huge variety of clothing, instruments, hair color and tattoos.
Still, there's enough content that straight linear play isn't necessary so you can spend some extra time playing easier songs to introduce a new player. Another great feature is that while some songs will always be trickier than others, each player chooses their own difficulty, so an experienced guitarist can jam on hard or expert while someone trying for the first time can stick to easy mode.
The cooperative nature of "Rock Band 2" also eliminates the problem of many competitive party games where experienced players will often just beat newer ones over and over again. Sure it might be fun to just try and learn, but that tends to get old quick. In "Rock Band," your group succeeds together. If someone doesn't quite have the skills to get their part done and fails, other players can use their success to save them, letting them back into the game to continue trying.
The only flaw is in the variability between the different instruments and their roles in specific songs. Guitar is almost always harder than bass, and drums are typically more challenging than everything else. The difficulty of singing changes dramatically from song to song and is more impacted by how well the player knows the music than any other role. Even within a set, bass players and vocalists are especially prone to going from being challenged to just bored as some tunes have a bass line that consists entirely of playing a single note over and over again, and there are a few spoken word songs where making noise at the appropriate times is the only thing necessary for the vocalist to get a perfect score.
But the chance to try different instruments and a huge variety of songs, with new ones regularly becoming available for download, makes "Rock Band 2" a game with a huge amount of staying power. The game introduces players to new music and even gets you thinking about other songs you hear from a new perspective. Most of all it leaves you wanting to keep rocking.
Rock Band 2
Platform: Xbox 360, PlayStation 3
Developer: Harmonix
Publisher: MTV Games
Genre: Music
Rating: 4 stars