Every so often, a game comes along whose purchase is a foregone conclusion for many. Long before the game is released, there are those who already know they intend to buy the game, and there are those who won’t bother; very seldom will any news or details change these decisions before the game is available. This is most often true of sequels, and in the case of a major franchise, it’s barely even worth discussion. The next Mario game will always have a guaranteed audience, the next Madden will always fly off the shelves, and nobody ever needs to worry about the marketability of Halo. Rock Band 2 from Harmonix and MTV Games, being the sequel to one of 2007’s highest rated, best-selling gaming phenomena, is one such game: From the moment of announcement, everybody knew whether or not they would be buying it. Thankfully, there is good news for Rock Band’s many fans — your initial assumptions were correct, and you will not regret buying this game.
It’s a cliché to use the old review mantra of “If you liked the prequel, you’ll like the sequel,” but there really is no better way to describe how you will receive Rock Band 2. Rock Band 2, you see, is Rock Band 1. It’s the exact same game. Yes, there are new songs, and there’s a handful of new features added to the game — really, really good features, mind you — but playing Rock Band 2 is a nearly identical experience to Rock Band 1. This isn’t a bad thing; playing Rock Band 1 is extraordinarily fun. You can look at this as a disappointment if you demand a revolutionary new experience from your sequels, or you can look at this as a $60 upgrade and overhaul of the game you already loved. From an especially frugal standpoint, you could even look at it as paying $60 for over 100 new songs, and if you buy Rock Band DLC on a regular basis, you know that’s one hell of a bargain.
The game’s DLC, in fact, works as a curious double-edged sword in this regard. One of Rock Band 2’s crowning features is its complete and total backwards compatibility; not only will all of your old hardware continue to work, but the game will allow you to continue playing any song you purchased as Rock Band DLC, and a one-time $5 fee will allow you to export nearly the entire library of Rock Band 1’s on-disc library. What this means for you, if you owned Rock Band 1 and bought DLC for it — which, let’s face it, you probably did — is that when you get started on Rock Band 2, you already have a gigantic list of songs that you already know. The new on-disc songs for Rock Band 2, meanwhile, are portioned out and unlocked through gameplay as they were in the last game. The difference, of course, is that in the last game, though you only had a handful of songs to start with, they were all new when you played for the first time. In Rock Band 2, experienced players will find the new content gets lost in a sea of familiar tunes, which only increases the impression that you’re still playing Rock Band 1.
This sensation fades in time, as a couple of hours spent in the game starts unlocking more and more of Rock Band 2’s on-disc tracks. Not every selection is a winner — differing musical tastes, naturally, make it impossible to please everybody — but the appearance of bands like Billy Idol, Pearl Jam, Journey, Bob Dylan, and dozens more, make for some exciting first-time playthroughs, and some surprisingly pleasant discoveries from unfamiliar names. Again, if you’re a frequent buyer of Rock Band DLC, the price of admission is well worth it merely for the new tracks, but then, why not simply release all of these excellent tunes as DLC, and make more money? It takes a while to realize it, but Rock Band 2 is actually a new game — one whose various upgrades and new features are such a vast improvement, when viewed collectively, that you’ll likely never return to Rock Band 1.
The features creep up on you slowly, revealing themselves one at a time, each one lending itself to a pleasant moment of discovery. The gameplay is untouched from Rock Band 1 — the four instruments are played just as before, the guitars and drums handled with their colored bars, the vocals presented with a side-scrolling pitch chart — it’s all there; overdrive, guitar solos, saving failed-out bandmates, and big rock endings. Even the majority of the in-game venues and avatar options have come over — if you’re playing with Rock Band 1 peripherals to tunes imported from Rock Band 1, the only difference in your game will be a slight cosmetic change to the interface. Then, one at a time, the new bits and pieces start making themselves known. Tweaks to the engine appear — guitarists will find hammer-ons to be slightly more forgiving. Vocalists will have an easier time with spoken-word sections. From there, a few new song elements join the fray — did that song just have hammer-on chords? Is that a drum solo?
That’s right, Rock Band 2 has drum solos, providing moments where the hardest instrument in the game is put under even more pressure. Not to worry, however, because the game has also added a fairly effective “drum trainer” suite, allowing players to study common drum beats and fills. As the worst drummer in my band, I gave the trainer a try, and found it to be surprisingly intuitive — the progression of the beats that are offered will guide new drummers, one step at a time, through basic techniques. It starts out simple, and adds upon each previous lesson with a new wrinkle. Can you sustain a quarter-note beat? Good, now add in a half-note with the other hand. Good, now switch the quarters to eighths. Got that? Okay, try quarter notes on the foot pedal. All right, now you know what each limb needs to do, let’s put them all together: Congratulations, you’re playing a 4/4 rock beat! What excites me more, however, is the prospect of the fill trainer helping gamers to learn that drum fills involve more than flailing wildly whenever the solid bars show up in the song. People, here’s a pro tip: You do not gain extra points for extra hits during a drum fill. It is not a big rock ending. When you mash like an epileptic child at the drum fills, you sound terrible, and you are throwing off everyone else. Stop it.
The game’s “world tour” mode also has some new additions, which also portion themselves out slowly but surely. As before, player bands will start out playing easy songs in tiny venues, and then unlock perks like a tour bus, various staff members, and make their way to bigger and better gigs. New for Rock Band 2, however, is the addition of band-selected extra staff, like a publicist, marketing guy, or stylist. A band can keep one of these extra staff on retainer at any time, which will confer specific effects: A stylist will earn you more fans at the cost of some of your money, while a marketer will do vice versa. In essence, the staff allow players to customize the prequel’s “wild card” moments, where a random event would allow players to trade money for fans, risk a bigger payoff on a better performance, and more. As a result, the world tour now has a handful of new “wild cards,” which have gotten far more creative and provide for some extremely interesting off-the-cuff challenges. Without warning, the game will offer events like taping a music video, or an opportunity to bitch-slap a specific band member by swapping the setlist with much harder songs for his instrument.
The “wild cards,” as before, offer the occasional way to change up the game, but the addition of the staff is a much more effective way for players to customize their game experience, which is ultimately Rock Band 2’s biggest improvement — its efforts towards customization. While it’s impossible to compose a music selection that will please every Rock Band player in the world, the gameplay experience that surrounds it can, in fact, be customized and altered in nearly every conceivable way, and should please absolutely everyone. Anybody can go through Rock Band 2, in any combination of players and objectives, for a completely tailored experience. World tour mode is finally online, allowing persistent bands beyond geographically convenient players. Don’t have friends? World tour can now be played completely solo. Need to grind money or fans for achievements? Check out your staff members. Don’t care for the rigmarole of the world tour campaign but still want to unlock songs? Try challenge mode, which provides themed setlists without any fuss, and delivers custom challenges based on your DLC, providing an experience tailor-made from the music you love. Playing with beginners or kids? No-Fail mode. Playing at a party with dozens of people? Quickplay now no longer needs more than one person signed in, and quick setlists can be thrown together at a glance. And did we mention no-fail mode?
Throw in Battle of the Bands, a robust online competitive mode with unique tasks, themes, and conditions, and even the leaderboard-obsessed will find something new to love in Rock Band 2. In fact, Rock Band 2, is a near-perfect upgrade to its predecessor in almost, almost, every way. Needless to say, of course, the one omission we could find was the one that really stuck in our craw. You see, a helpful technological improvement that has been made to Rock Band 2 is an auto-calibration system in the new guitar: a built-in microphone and lens will allow the game to sense the delay coming out of your TV and sound system, and adjust the game to be in perfect sync. We’re assuming this is fantastic, but unfortunately, we reviewed the game on our aging Rock Band 1 equipment, and didn’t have the auto-calibration system. Unfortunately, the game seems to assume you will have it, as it has taken out the automatic lag settings from the last game — previously, you could simply choose an option like “Plasma TV” or “DLP” and the game had pre-set settings for you. These have been removed for some reason, and owing to the differing musical sensitivities of our bandmates, we’ve had a hell of a time trying to agree on the proper amount of lag.
Assuming you have the new guitar or better bandmates, of course, we completely and fully recommend an immediate purchase of Rock Band 2. It’s the best DLC bundle/game upgrade Rock Band has ever seen.
Rock Band 2 is available now for the Xbox 360, and will be available for PS3, PS2, and Wii soon.
September 15th, 2008 at 9:42 am
What happened to Juke Box mode?!
Is it still in and unlockable? If so, nobody has found it yet!
That was what I was most looking forward to.
September 15th, 2008 at 11:40 am
Ah, I forgot to mention that: Harmonix sent us a letter with our review copy, stating that Jukebox Mode is still very much in the works, but it’s not QUITE ready yet. They didn’t want to put in a half-assed version, so it didn’t ship with Rock Band 2, but it’s intended to show up in a future patch.
Hope that helps — thanks for reading!
September 15th, 2008 at 4:33 pm
Excellent!
It’s easy enough to “fake” it with the cheat codes they have now, but I’m glad we’ll still be seeing it in the future.
September 16th, 2008 at 4:46 pm
Whoops. I guess they changed their mind.
http://kotaku.com/5050614/rock-band-2-jukebox-mode-died