As in Rock Band Rock Band 2 allows up to four people to play along to some of the greatest rock songs of all time using plastic guitars, a drum kit and a microphone.  There’s an eclectic mix of tracks in this game, ranging from BonJovi to Smashing Pumpkins through Foo Fighters and even Squeeze.

Visually not a lot has changed from the initial release of rock band.  Rock band had a very unique look from the over the top character models, elaborate rock and roll wardrobe and its mix of officially licensed and fantasy styled instruments.  The same can be found in rock band 2 but this time the wardrobe is larger and more bohemian and characters are more polished.

One area which has received some attention is the on stage antics of your rock star.  Animations weren’t bad in Rock Band there were just very few of them.  In Rock Band 2 on stage actions are far more fluid and really home in on the action, if your drummer is going hell for leather the camera gets right into the action which adds a certain raw emotion to any song which is topped off with some interesting interactions between band members.

One visual addition which hasn’t really hit the mark are the segments where your band is chosen to shoot a music video.  The visual look is a nice change from the arenas/ pubs and clubs but the overall result is a psychedelic collidoscope of colour that is more a distraction than anything else.

But since you will be transfixed by the coloured buttons as they flash past on the fret boards the improved animations are only really enjoyed by non-participating gamers.

RB2 has a far broader range of musical styles compared to Rock band.  The eclectic nature of the music collection is both the one of the games strongest and weakest points.  From a musical stand point there are some tremendous rock songs, playing along to the Who’s “Pinball wizard”, Fleetwood Mac’s “Go your own way” and the Foo Fighter’s “Ever long” is extremely enjoyable.  However on the other end of the scale there are some musically horrible songs.  Songs by System of the down, Mastodon and Avenged Sevenfold are an attack on the auditory system.  Then somewhere in the middle there are obscure acts such as Paramore and Devo which are neither enjoyable to play nor listen to.

Now here is the biggest issue with Rock Band 2, in Rock Band challenging songs were actually musically good songs, failing time after time while playing Boston’s “Foreplay/Long Time” and Rush’s “Tom Sawyer” was tolerable because the songs weren’t terrible.  Unlike the songs in Rock Band 2 which tip the impossible scale.  The majority of the songs in the impossible category are bordering on sound pollution, I know this is mostly personal musical opinion and therefore redundant in the overall review of the game but if you dislike a song enough to quit a challenge then it will slightly taint your over all enjoyment of the game.

Rockband 2 has with in excess of 80 songs on the disk, personal dislikes aside the overall quality is solid.  If however 84 songs just aren’t enough for you, an additional twenty songs are available to freely download with a unique code.  Janet Jackson would have you believe “the best things in life are free”, however here that isn’t the case.  The 20 free songs are from lesser known underground indie bands, there is the odd enjoyable song but don’t feel do disheartened if you miss out.

If you aren’t satisfied with 100 plus songs, then to satisfy your music needs you have the ability to copy almost 100 percent of the content on the Rock Band disk to your hard disk for a measly 400 Microsoft Points, this is on-top of any downloaded content you purchased for Rock band which is fully compatible with Rock band 2.  It is rumoured that Rock Band 2 should have well over 500 playable tracks before the end of the year.  Now with so many songs there should defiantly be something for everyone to enjoy.

Rock Band split each instrument into separate individual solo tours in which your created rocker would be bound to a specific instrument.  Rock Band 2 removes the individual solo tour in favour of a World tour mode and further simplifies band creation and management by allowing rock stars to switch instruments at will thus addressing one of the major criticisms of the first game.

A small tweaking of the game difficulty settlings now allows even the most unskilled of rockers to rock on indefinitely, the game now lets you earn fans continually at the lowest difficulty setting, unlike rock band which forced you to move up through the difficulty levels to earn fans once you reach a certain point.

Ultimately the tweaks and tuning of the game play mechanics are only minor changes.  The biggest addition to the game is that your band is no longer restricted to local multiplayer for a complete band experience.  People can join your band online and you can join theirs.  Online is hassle free and for the majority of the time lag isn’t an issue.  However the enjoyment levels are greatly heightened when playing online with friends as joining a random band can be a sterile, soulless experience, though nothing can compete with a local 4 player band for pure unadulterated enjoyment.

Despite the game being release so quickly after the initial Rock Band two new game modes have been introduced. Battle of the bands is a single or multiplayer mode where you can play against other bands from around the world in time limited challenges.  These challenges also feed into the overall world tour, providing you have the required fan and star ratings to access the venue the challenge is being staged at.  One small complaint however is that you can be challenged to song challenges that may include songs that you don’t have, as challenges can contain songs which are from the Rock Band and downloadable content music catalogue. A nice touch with the battle of the bands mode is the continual ranking, comparing your rank to your online friends rank rather than the hundreds of thousands of global players.
Another addition is the Tour Challenges mode.  The challenges are a mix of solo and band challenges.  Beating challenges unlocks further challenges, challenges accommodate all content and new challenges become available when you download new songs.  Challenges are themed whether that is by band, album, time period or musical genre.  Tour challenge along with Battle of the band will add hours of additional game-play time and for rockers who want to tackle those hours in single sittings can do so with some bladder bursting 80 song marathons.

One of the infuriating problems with Rock Band was its brutal learning curve, moving through the skill difficulty levels was a daunting challenging.  Some of difficulty issues have been addressed with the re-tiering of song difficulty but moving from medium to hard or hard to expert is still harder than it should be.

Difficulties with the skill levels would cause some lesser skilled rockers to struggle on even the simplest of songs.  To overcome this, Harmonix have introduced a No Fail Mode.  The mode allows you to play very badly and still not affect the overall performance and enjoyment of the band.  No Fail Mode is ideal for those parties where a junior band member is just happy, manically hammering on the drums as opposed to keeping up with the note track.

A slick new drum tutorial in the form of a drum trainer has been introduced to help all aspiring drummers gain the skills needed to master what is arguably the hardest skill in Rock band.  The Drum trainer will teach you several common beats and also how to stay on beat while playing the fill sections found in the songs.

But the drum trainer is only training you to complete one beat loop for a set period of time whereas even the most basic of song will combine a series of beats.  If you are failing a particular song you would get better results using the practice mode, where you are able to select a section or all of a song rather than playing the same beat over and over like a drumming toy monkey.

Rock Band 2 less a full blown successor to Rock Band but more of an update, Harmonix have used Rock Band 2 to fix the mistakes in Rock Band and add a larger songs catalogue.

Rock Band 2 is like a bands second album, production levels have been upped and all aspects have been tightened up but ultimately it is more of the same.  The game doesn’t take any huge leaps on the innovation side but when the original concept is already such an acclaimed hit all that was needed was buffing and polishing.  Still there is enough to attract existing players and entice gamers who didn’t make the initial investment in the rock band lifestyle.

To avoid playing charades and board games this Christmas make sure rock band 2 is on your Christmas list.

Mark Craven

This review of Rock Band 2 was played using Rock Band hardware, with the game installed on the Xbox 360 hard disk.