Rock Band 2 (Xbox 360)

Why the heck didn't they do it this way the first time around?
9/15/2008 7:03 PM | 3 Comments | Page 2 of 3

The campaign progression is mostly the same, at least in terms of the World Tour mode. You can hire campaign managers to give you little shrug-worthy bonuses. Occasionally, you can shoot a music video for some random song or throw a wrench into the playlist for a bonus reward. The World Tour progression is gated a little more carefully, forcing you to earn a certain number of stars in a given city before unlocking its more difficult venues. Why the heck didn't they do it this way in the first place?

Although there are new venues, it seems like there are no new character customization options. However, you can create persistent band members to fill in for the slots without human players. This is a huge improvement for those of us who didn't want to share the stage with randomized freaks like crazy face-painted Goth guy with the spiky Mohawk, '80s-metal Road Warrior dude from the opening cut scene, and flannel-wearing Grizzly Adams mountain man. Why the heck didn't they let us do it this way in the first game?

Scattered among the World Tour venues (and also easily accessible from their own menu) are the new Battle of the Bands challenges. These are rotating challenges with high scores posted online. Some have special prerequisites like not using overdrive, having a certain number of band members, or going for the highest streak instead of score. But what makes them so insidious is that your score is constantly compared to the person who did slightly better than you on the leaderboard. In other words, there's always an ever-so-slightly bigger fish that you know you can fry if you just try a little harder. If you fell for this gimmick in Geometry Wars: Retro Evolved 2, it's going to get its hooks into you here, as well.

Probably the best new feature for the campaign a separate progression in the form of challenges. These dynamically created song lists are built from whatever songs you have available, often arranged in themes or by artist. They're even arranged by instrument, which addresses a problem in the original Rock Band. Let's say you wanted to know an interesting or challenging song for a particular instrument. There was no easy way for Rock Band to recommend something. But in Rock Band 2, if you want to see the best of, say, the bass songs, just try one of the bass challenges to see what Harmonix recommends. It's a much more natural way to arrange the songs than the contrived world tour storyline. Challenges even let you save your progress, making it easier to do the longer challenges over the course of as many play sessions as you like. You can even unlock all the songs just by playing the challenges. Why the heck didn't Harmonix do this in the first game?