Music Gaming Goodness: Rock Band 2 Rocks The House
by Derek Wilson on October 24, 2008 1:25 AM EST- Posted in
- GPUs
Final Words
So. What's the verdict?
The kick pedal still sucks for the standard drum kit, the difficulty ratings are nearly useless, online play leaves a little to be desired in that the system doesn't penalize people who drop out enough, there are still parts of songs that don't get translated into doing something (with double kick pedal songs going way over the top), and automatic calibration isn't as consistent as we would like. It's almost like a glorified expansion pack that offers some refined bells and whistles and doesn't require the purchase of the original game.
But it really is a great game in spite of all that. One we wouldn't want to do without, especially when playing with 1 or 3 friends who also like music games.
If you own Rock Band with all the instruments, you can spend $60 for 84 songs plus expanded online play, a better (but still lacking) interface, and a few neat extras. At worst, it's just shy of 72 cents per song, which isn't a bad deal even if you aren't crazy about all of them, and at best you'll have a lot of fun with all the additional features and options.
For gamers who haven't purchased the first game and really want to play immediately, skip the first and go straight to Rock Band 2. And then "find" a Rock Band disk somewhere and import the original songs. They charge you five bucks to do so, so we've got no qualms recommending it.
For everyone else who might happen to be sitting on the fence when it comes to music games, there is a an unknown looming out there in the distance. With the monetary investment it takes to get one of these games that comes with some sort of makeshift drum kit, no one is really going to want to pick up both Rock Band or Rock Band 2 and Guitar Hero World Tour kits. Yes, the Rock Band and Rock Band 2 drum kits can be used with Guitar Hero World Tour, but you lose the use of one pad, so it will change the experience a bit. There are certainly some unique things that Neversoft is trying out that could add a lot of value to the game, but we've had our hands on Rock Band 2 and know it's fun.
Our recommendation for the most part is for people who don't already have a Rock Band drum kit sitting around somewhere to wait and see what Guitar Hero World Tour ends up being like. These games are definitely investments, and the release is right around the corner. Certainly you won't go wrong with Rock Band 2, but it isn't the be all end all game that it could have been. There were improvements made, but it is fundamentally the same game it was before. Guitar Hero has a chance to capitalize on this, and we're not going to jump the gun on recommending one over the other until we've got both in our hands.
If you don't look at it like a one over the other situation, then, by all means, pick up Rock Band 2. You won't be disappointed. Yes it could have been better, but that doesn't mean it's still not awesome.
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Myrandex - Friday, October 24, 2008 - link
Umm I don't think rockband implies talent.I have no musical talent, and nor to I desire to obtain any musical talent. I can't even read sheet music when someone was teaching me, and it didn't bother me in the slightest bit.
The point of RB is fun. That's it. I used to think that all of these types of games were lame, until a friend brought over Guitar Hero 2. We played it until 3 am, and afterwards I realized that these games were fun (until you had to play lame songs, which is still a fault).
And I agree that this game is to music as FPS is to Military Training; after an intense CS session I certainly am not ready to head to cs_iraq and preventing the terrorist from setting us up the bomb!
explovewhisper - Saturday, December 7, 2019 - link
Rock Band was released on November 3, 2009 on the Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, and Wii consoles, supports all existing Rock Band instruments https://nhacchuong68.com/Myrandex - Friday, October 24, 2008 - link
Good article...I love RB and RB2, although I will admit with some of the songs I just think "WTF is this song doing in here" and here are SOOO many songs that I want to play on there that are not available.
I wish that there was some way to import songs into the game and define the tracks (or even let the game automatically decide that, although that'd take a lot of programming and remove a profit area from Harmonix with DLC), because frankly even the songs that are on DLC aren't the ones that I want to play. Sure some are there, but not the ones that I crave to play. And I am sure that there are plenty of other people in the same position as myself, and I am also sure that plenty of other people would not like the songs that I want. Thats the joy in everyone having their own invidial tastes (Rammstein is the band that I'd love to see more than anyone else on there for example)...
I remember 1 song on RB2 on expert on guitar was seriously just the green button at a certain interval that was not difficult at all (a lame rappish type song)...it didn't belong there at all! I fell asleep playing it on expert :-/
I don't play the drums often, but I will admit that the pedal from RB1 does frustrate me and the lack of an adjustable chair makes playin git uncomfortable (long legs makes it hard to hit the bedal properly because my knee will be bent at a less than 90 degree angle), so I pretty much just play guitar (or base). It is still fun though and I'd recommend it to anyone.
Jason
webstorm1 - Friday, October 24, 2008 - link
I have a PS3, and there is an option to queue songs for multiple song downloads. You can select Download in the background, so you don't have to wait for any song to download before moving on. Then you just go to the game navigation menu (can't remember the exact name, but it's the one you would use to actually start a game from) and select each song after it has downloaded to install it. I'm guessing this is an Xbox 360 limitation in the online service, so it may even be fixed if anyone cares to do so.Myrandex - Friday, October 24, 2008 - link
I couldn't quite figure out on page 1 what the author was trying to say for "You what you would if you..." slightly under the picture.Jason
Gary Key - Friday, October 24, 2008 - link
Corrected now, had a HTML tag error there...Devo2007 - Friday, October 24, 2008 - link
Instead of saying "The Premium Drum Kit" I think you should specifically mention that it's the ION Drum Rocker somewhere in the first half of page 5 -- it made things rather confusing when you kept saying "Premium Drum Kit" and then randomly referring to the kick pedal as the "ION Kick Pedal."DerekWilson - Saturday, October 25, 2008 - link
thanks for the advice. i updated the page.Diosjenin - Friday, October 24, 2008 - link
I have to thank you for the thoroughness with which you've dissected the drum kit(s) in particular. I don't actually own either 1 or 2, but I've played the first one a few times and the critiques you gave of the first set I feel are quite accurate, so I certainly trust the critiques you give of the new one(s).I do have to ask - is there an option to designate the hi-hat as the leftmost 'drum' rather than the one second from the left on the non-premium kit (where I presume you can just switch the pads)? If there's an option in either 1 or 2 to change this, do let me know, but I haven't ever played on a system where that's been the case, and not being able to play with my right arm crossed over my left remains my primary qualm with the drum setup as a whole - even above the horrible bass pedal feel and construction...
DerekWilson - Saturday, October 25, 2008 - link
you can't reassign pads and must rely on what the programmers defined for each song.this is definitely the most frustrating thing for me. having the flexibility of the premium kit here is nice as you can, for whatever song, make it "right" usually by switching the plugs in the brain for the yellow and red pads.
it still just makes me want to buy a real electronic drum kit and a kickbox though.