GameSpy Review of Rock Band 2

Technically, the latest game out of Harmonix and MTV Games shouldn't be called Rock Band 2. The more appropriate title would be Rock Band v2.0, as it's more like a massive content patch than a true sequel. But in this case, that's fine with us: with a whopping 84 songs on-disc, online and solo support for a revamped World Tour, a new "Battle of the Bands" mode and full compatibility with hundreds of existing downloadable tunes, it's a no-brainer for any Rock Band fanatic.





The Comeback Tour





The gameplay, of course, hasn't changed. Using special controllers, Rock Band 2 lets you play one of four instruments – guitar, drums, vocals and bass – by pushing buttons (or singing or hitting drum pads) in time with notes scrolling down the screen. You can play by yourself, or in any combination of up to four players. By now, the formula has become so commonplace that it barely deserves the explanation, but for people new to the series (or who've been intimidated by the games in the past), Harmonix has added a "No Fail" mode that's perfect for parties – just rock out and you don't have to worry about how well you're doing.





At the heart of Rock Band 2 are three gameplay modes: the "World Tour," "Battle of the Bands" and "Tour Challenges." The tweaks to World Tour -- the lone mode returning from Rock Band -- are the biggest news: full support for online play, as well as the ability to play through the full tour as a solo act. You pick a home city, get some starter gigs and quickly unlock other cities and bigger venues, and even though there's a core path leading you to the "Rolling Stone Rock Immortals Challenge" in Shanghai, you're given a huge amount of freedom to define how you get there. And even then, you may not even have completed 20% of the World Tour events, so you can continue in a quest to amass fans on the leaderboards after you've achieved Immortal status. (Good luck with The Endless Setlist 2, a marathon event in which you'll play all 84 on-disc songs in one session).










The most highly touted new feature is the Battle of the Bands, and it's a most welcome one. On a daily basis -- and Harmonix has already been populating these pre-release -- you'll find new events for you and your band to participate in. For instance, you might be competing for highest score on a single song, or the longest streak, or the most total stars for a specific setlist. Special rules can be invoked, like requiring a drummer or that everyone play on Expert, or turning on "No Fail" mode so everyone can compete. The coolest aspect of the Battles is that the score directly ahead of yours is shown live while you're playing, with a little meter showing your relative progress against theirs. In effect, these battles will give players a fresh competition to take part in every day, and so far, it's been a fantastic addition to the game.





The other new feature is the Tour Challenges, which are sort of like Battle of the Bands events that you complete solo. Here, you'll find things like a beginner set of drum songs, or a Grunge set, or an '80s set. These challenges are sometimes dynamic: if you add DLC to your library, it automatically gets added to some challenges (like a Rock-Pop list or a '70s set). And if you miss the old linear progression, there's a set of Marathon challenges that unlock all 84 songs in sequence, for you to play on any instrument(s) or difficulty. The Tour Challenges aren't quite as exciting as the World Tour and Battle of the Bands, but they're a nice twist on the old linear setlist.





There are a few small tweaks to score tracking in Rock Band 2, some which are welcome, others which are not. In Rock Band, your career score would only reflect songs played in the linear campaign, ignoring World Tour or Quickplay. Now, high scores are captured from a variety of modes (including World Tour) and displayed in the Quickplay screen as well as the Leaderboards. The disappointment is that there's nowhere to view the star ratings associated with your high scores. Star ratings generally put each score in context and help players decide which songs they're doing the best (or worst) on, and they're sorely missed; we'd love to see a patch add a little orange-button option to toggle scores and star ratings at the main scoreboard.









In terms of gameplay, virtually nothing has changed in the areas of guitar and bass. The only real addition is "hammer-on" chords, which allow you to slide from one chord to another without strumming, and there are a lot of places in Rock Band 2 where it feels pretty natural to do so. There was a bit of a hubbub recently when the solo to "Bodhisattva" was shown with a flurry of hammer-on chords, but they work just fine. Drums also haven't changed much: other than the addition of the occasional solo section -- which works just like guitar solos, with a % meter and a bonus at the end -- there's nothing new here, just the challenges of learning to coordinate the kick pedal with the rest of the pads. (We'll talk about the new hardware later in this review.)





The biggest change comes in the vocal section of the game, where "talkies" (rapping or spoken word sections), which often proved impossible to hit in RB1, are now much more manageable. In the past, we'd have perfect runs ruined by a simple "hey!" or "whoa!", but they're vastly improved in Rock Band 2. This also seems to apply to DLC or songs imported from Rock Band 1 (which we'll explain shortly): on our first attempts, we got Expert 100%'s on both "Sabotage" and "Next To You," the former of which was previously a chore just to survive, and the latter took the community nearly a year to perfect due to a simple "Ow!" With the talkies fixed, the vocal game as a whole becomes much more enjoyable, and we suspect a lot of people will spend more time with it this go-round.





Music to the Masses





Arguably Rock Band 2's biggest selling point is its music library. While Rock Band shipped with 58 songs, Rock Band 2's disc contains 84, and another 20 free songs (exact date and titles unannounced) are scheduled to be made available to download shortly. It's a fantastic collection of songs (all master tracks, no cover versions), covering everything from classic '60s and '70s hits from The Who and Fleetwood Mac to '90s grunge like Nirvana and Soundgarden to modern hits. There's pop stuff like Modest Mouse and The Go-Go's, but then there's also an infusion of metal, including Metallica and Megadeth. There's also the surprise appearance of a new Guns 'N Roses track, "Shackler's Revenge," which will likely receive mixed reviews, but has enough twists and turns to make for a fun gameplay chart.












If Rock Band 2's library isn't good enough, the game is also fully compatible with all the downloadable songs released for Rock Band to date -- a list that's well over 200 songs. For a small fee ($5), it's also possible to import your Rock Band setlist as well, and so you can quickly find yourself with over 300 songs in your Quickplay screen.





There was a complaint lodged at Rock Band 1 that the game was too easy, and it was a valid one – Rock Band's Expert tracks were often less challenging than "Hard" tracks in the Guitar Hero series. To address that, Harmonix hasn't changed the relative difficulty of the tracks, but they have used the larger library to add some harder metal songs at the top of the list. Several songs like "Battery," "Panic Attack," and "Painkiller," are arguably harder than anything in Rock Band 1. Add in the Rock Band engine's smaller timing windows (compared to Guitar Hero III's super-relaxed engine), and there's plenty of challenges.





With all of these songs, Harmonix has completely revamped the song selection process. No longer do you have to scroll through 200 songs to play "Zero." Instead, the game now sports the same selection interface as the in-game music store, where you can quickly sort by song, band, difficulty, decade, or where it came from (RB1, RB2 or DLC). Once you've selected a sort method, you can quickly jump from one category to the next, so if you're trying to add "Who Are You" to a setlist (yes, you can define a list of songs to play in a row), you can sort and skip to the W's in a matter of seconds. You can argue that Harmonix hasn't done everything perfectly with Rock Band so far, but in terms of its music library, they've totally nailed it.









While the basic gameplay screen and interface hasn't changed in Rock Band 2, some of the graphics have been tweaked. There are sleek new band introductions, as well as many new arenas or video shoot locations with crazy effects (that are pretty cool-looking, but at the same time can be incredibly distracting while trying to focus on the notes). Character creation remains largely the same as before – there's an extra category of clothes to choose from, and more flexibility to create band logos and tattoos, but most of the time, it looks like the same cast of characters as before.





One nice touch is that there's a little more flexibility in the band management process. If you're playing solo, you can use other player-created characters to fill out the rest of your band, so you're not always stuck with Lumberjack Guy as your lead singer (all those characters return and have names now). There's still the wacky little dance where you're going through a ton of menus to just get a song started, and having hyperactive band members WHO CAN'T STOP PRESSING BUTTONS OMG will still make a mess of trying to get a song started, but it's at least slightly improved from before.





Aside from the online support for the World Tour, Rock Band 2 also includes the same multiplayer modes as before: Score Duel and Tug of War. Not much has changed here: in Tug of War, players trade phrases back and forth to try and swing a meter to their side of the screen; Score Duel is the more "pure" mode where players of the same difficulty and instrument fight for the high score. The modes work just fine, but with the game so new, it's hard to tell if the biggest issue from Rock Band has been addressed: factoring disconnects into a player's TrueSkill rating (which is how the leaderboards are ordered). Score Duel can be a bit of fun, but it was frustrating to have players continually disconnect when it was clear they'd lose – which didn't give the leading player credit for a win – but we won't be able to tell if that's been addressed until more people gravitate away from World Tour and Battle of the Bands in the coming weeks.










The Hard Stuff





Although it's technically not factored into this review score (which only covers the software – the special edition bundle won't be released for a month), it's worth noting that new guitar and drum controllers have been released alongside Rock Band 2. In both cases, each offers a decent improvement over the initial hardware -- just the fact that both are wireless is a huge bonus -- but we're not ready to put either into the category of dream hardware.





The new mock-Strat certainly looks cooler, with a realistic wood-grain finish, and consensus here at GameSpy HQ is that the new strum bar and fret buttons are vastly superior to the initial model. For our money, however, we're sticking with the GH3 Les Paul models, which are completely compatible with RB2 (although there's an Achievement that requires using the Strat's solo buttons). As far as the new Rock Band 2 drum kit, there have been varied reports that the new model may suffer some of the same hardware glitches as before, but we've yet to see them in our own new kit, which has been working fine, although we're far more interested in checking out the super-deluxe ION kit that goes on sale this week. The best advice we can give is to wait it out – we'll have further reports on the hardware in the coming weeks.





The Final Word





All of the above is just an elaborate way of saying: if you've been playing Rock Band regularly over the last 9 months, then you'll find a lot of welcome features -- and tons of more music -- in Rock Band 2. If you're a casual fan, bringing it out at parties and such, it's still largely the same game, and you'll have to decide if the new music and features are enough to warrant picking it up. But if you're a Rock Band lover, then Rock Band 2 is just what you're looking for – we expect it's going to get constant play here for many months to come.



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