Rock Band 2

The franchise needs no introduction after a massively successful debut performance on all formats, and the gameplay doesn’t really need any massive amounts of description – so what exactly do you get for your money with Rock Band 2 and more importantly, is it worth it?

This year, Harmonix have listened to some of the criticisms weighted at the original game’s overall structure, and taken steps to acknowledge them. The most obvious change is in the way in which bands are put together and how they don’t require the band “leader” to be present before you can play this time around. This means that you can begin a band with four characters, and continue with the band’s progress as a single player, duo or trio on any of the instruments when you don’t have all of the original members available to play. This is unashamedly awesome since in my household, I find that we aren’t always all ready and willing to play through a set, so I can pick up the sticks or the guitar and hammer through a few challenges on my own, with the band’s progress updating accordingly. Also on the upgrade is the character creation system. Last year’s effort required you to create a new character to use each specific instrument, which led to a band potentially having twelve selectable members, should you all be multi-instrumentalists. Thankfully, this is no longer the case, as each created character can now move between instruments with ease.

These may seem like tiny changes to such a grand package, but they really were the bane of the Rock Band player’s life – along with trying to play Run to the Hills on Expert drums – and now they’re not an issue.

The whole Band World Tour has been expanded with new ways of playing, including the straight tour – which is essentially the same as the original game’s tour mode – and an absolute stack of themed Challenge sets. These sets are in a tiered style, with successful completion of most of them unlocking new challenges to take on, and new tracks to play in any of the other game modes. These work very well indeed, with the theming being a particularly excellent touch. One point of note is that some challenges do require that you have a certain instrumentalist in your band to play them, so 100% completion can’t be achieved by anyone who just has the game and a guitar, for example. However, this doesn’t mean that a solo guitarist, vocalist or drummer can’t unlock all of the tracks in the game, just that they have to go a different way about it. One good thing about these challenges is that you’ll find that your DLC and original Rock Band tracks will form challenges of their own, so buying new songs doesn’t just give you the ability to play them as standalone experiences anymore – they form a part of the game proper.

As for the hardware that comes in the band kit, well…you’re pretty much looking at more of the same from last year, with minor tweaks – and that’s no bad thing. The drums are quieter and more responsive on the whole, with the bass pedal being improved no end over the original stamp-and-break design. That isn’t to say that the pedal doesn’t have its weak points, but it looks (and feels) like it’ll last longer than the original. The pads are now velocity sensitive too, and the kit has two expansion ports to allow you to plug in the third-party cymbals that are being released by Mad Catz. Even with those expansions, the kit isn’t anything like as responsive as the ION Drum Rocker, but for the price, it does well. Guitar-wise, the main improvement is in the look of the thing, although the new version does have a much better strum bar compared to the ridiculously “soft” and somewhat unusable original. The microphone is identical to the one bundled with the first game, although the retooled vocal recognition that comes as a part of Rock Band 2 makes singing seem somewhat easier than it did first time around. Maybe it’s just me. Playing as a vocalist is still fun and rewarding but there are times when you’ll be given a decent score that you know you didn’t deserve, or manage to rack up a multiplier that you know that you should have lost.

As far as the tracklisting goes, Rock Band 2 throws you some relatively obvious new tracks that should have been included before, or made available as DLC. Songs like Bon Jovi’s seminal “Livin’ On A Prayer” and the Foo Fighters’ “Everlong” make an appearance, alongside a good helping of less well-known tracks – and if the eighty-plus on-disc songs aren’t enough for you, there’s a code on the back of the manual to download twenty new songs from free. And if THAT wasn’t enough, you can import all of the songs from the original Rock Band (upon purchase of a license transfer key from Xbox Live at the cost of 400 points) and all of your DLC is playable here too. It’s entirely feasible that you’ll end up with hundreds of tracks to choose from and when you compare that to what you get with other games in the genre, there really is no comparison as to which has the better song library.

For those who owned and enjoyed the first title, Rock Band 2 is – quite simply – an essential purchase. Whether you play solo on any of the instruments, or have the full band kit and three friends to jam with, there are enough improvements in the interface and enough new content to play with to make a purchase something of a given. If you didn’t own the first game, then there really has never been a better time to dive in and let your inner rock star out, since this isn’t a game that you’ll play for ten hours and never touch again. You’ll drag this puppy out every time you have a few friends over and there’s a good chance that you’ll be doing what I did and practicing for the release of the inevitable next game right up until the day before it comes out. The price may be steep for the band kit, but Rock Band 2 is the pure definition of value for money.