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 3 of 3

The mark of a good sequel is whether you could imagine yourself going back to the play the original. Rock Band 2 is decisive on this front: There's no way you'd ever want to go back and play the original Rock Band. This is partly because you don't have to. For a $5 fee, payable in Microsoft points, you can port over all the songs from the original Rock Band (well, all but three that fell victim to some sort of legal kerfuffle). The entirety of Rock Band, with its fixed campaign and interface, is subsumed by Rock Band 2.

(This actually brings up a curious point. All you need to import all the Rock Band songs is a disc, and you only need it once. Rent it or borrow it from a friend and your $5 secures you 51 original Rock Band songs!)

The gameplay is mostly unchanged. You'll see some drum solos that work exactly like the guitar solos. It used to be unclear what you were supposed to do when there wasn't a melody. For all I knew, the so-called "talky bits" -- and the entirety of "Sabotage" -- required various rituals involving virgins and chicken blood in order to keep one from failing out. Now they seem to have virtually no requirements at all. It's as if Harmonix just threw us a gimme.

Right now, the Rock Band 2 hardware is sold separately, with plans for a package deal later this month. The drums are a must-have. The pads have more give and are less clackity. After these, the original drums feel like whacking on plywood. Furthermore, the new drums are wireless and they come with a metal bass pedal. As someone who broke two pedals in the original Rock Band before upgrading to a third-party metal pedal, I have to wonder why they didn't do it this way in the first place.

As for the new guitar, that's not quite such a sure thing. If you like the Stratocaster design, at least this one will (hopefully) avoid the inherent problems with defective strum bars. But it does still have that fluid strum bar that doesn't click and recessed fret buttons that make it harder to position your fingers by feel. Whether you like those features is a matter of taste. It is, however, wireless. Why the heck didn't they do it that way in the first place?

All this wondering about why they didn't do it this way in the first place is ultimately pointless. What matters is that they're finally done it this way. Rock Band 2 is the game the original Rock Band should have been, and it's loaded with songs, songs and more songs. As such, it's totally, utterly super-awesome, and I have the sore forearm, aching right quadriceps and drumstick-blistered fingers to prove it.

This review was based on a retail copy of the game provided by the publisher.