Let me make one thing perfectly clear: Rock Band 2 is totally, utterly super-awesome.

With that out of the way, I'll elaborate a bit. Rock Band 2 isn't much of a step up from the original Rock Band. It is basically two simple things: a song list and fixes for a bunch of stuff that sucked in the original Rock Band -- and that's it. It is otherwise almost entirely unchanged. When you're in a song, playing along solo or with friends, the experience is basically the same.

As for the new song list, it's going to be a matter of taste, as usual. There will be some pleasant surprises, and you'll probably come away with some new favorite songs stuck in your head and under your fingertips. At least it's cost-efficient, coming out to 77 cents a song (even cheaper once Electronic Arts comes through with the promised 20 bonus songs, but there's no telling what they'll be or when they'll be released). Once again, Harmonix manages a broad appeal with its list of playable tracks, which will be equal parts "Oooh, that song!" and "Huh?" However, I have to ask: Of all the AC/DC songs in the world, "Let There Be Rock" is the one we get?

As for the fixes, yeah, they're great. But sequel-level great? It's the nature of the videogaming industry that the first game is the proof of concept and then the sequel is the polish. That's clearly the case here. Playing Rock Band 2 is partly an exercise in wondering why the heck they didn't do it that way in the first place.

For starters, the simple act of picking a song is dramatically improved (and it better be, considering Harmonix's announced goal of 500 songs by the end of the year). With the new sort options and filters, it's much easier to set up playlists. It's also easier to play in a social situation, which is how Rock Band plays best. The "no fail" mode now makes this officially the Best Party Game Ever (collect your trophy at the end of the review, Rock Band 2).

When someone invariably presses a red button after the playlist is set up, Rock Band will no longer back up and eat the play list. Now there's a helpful confirmation dialogue that says, in essence, "Hey, some idiot pressed a red button. Did you really mean to back up all the way before the play list got set up?" It's also harder for someone to charge ahead during band selection by thrashing fret buttons or slapping the drums before everyone's signed in. Progressing past the band member setup actually requires a press of the start button. Why the heck didn't Rock Band do it this way in the first place?

Also, no more band leaders. I'm pretty sure this is a good thing, but I can't be certain since I still haven't figured out how the whole thing worked in the first game. All I know is that it meant 5 minutes of mucking around with player profiles and characters after the 5 minutes of mucking around with USB hubs and instruments. It's a credit to the awesomeness of Rock Band that those 10 minutes of mucking around before you got to play were totally worth it, but now you can skip most of that mucking around. Why the heck didn't they do it this way in the first place?

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?

@@ 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.