The four of us that made up the GamersInfo.net crew, as it were, at E3 all went to see Rock Band 2 on Thursday morning. The Harmonix guys were all recovering from having seen The Who the night before, you know, the event that we weren't invited to and we had to wait for them to re-record a bit for G4 before we could go in since we're just print. But hey. We finally got in.
If you've played Rock Band, you know what the deal is all about. Why would you get Rock Band 2? More songs, better instruments, a better menu interface, and the ability to bring in the songs that you had in the first game. Consider it an upgrade. With the rabid following that the first game had, it seems to be a clear-cut "must buy" if you were a fan of the first game.
If you're not familiar with the first one then it might take some describing and selling.
Basically, what it boils down to is that Rock Band 2 is a rhythm game. Up to four players can play at once - one singing (where you also have to worry about pitching your voice up and down along with the music), one on drums, and two on guitar. The notes come down the screen and you have to hit the right buttons and strum along with them on the guitar or hit the right drums on the drumpads.
They've upgraded the instruments from the first game using ones with better components. The guitars are less flashy, with quieter buttons and a "less mushy" strum bar, along with an autocalibration tool to help set it up tow ork right with your TV. They're intended to look more realistic. The drums have softer, quieter, bouncier drum pads, which are velocity sensitive, and a stronger pedal.
If you're like me, and actually have played drum set for reals in "the real world" that your friends have told you about, you can buy (assuming you have room to store it) a $299 electronic drum kit (the Alesis Ion drum set). It comes looking like a drum set, with two cymbals, and a third cymbal for $49. You can add in a drum "brain", like the DM5, for about $350, in order to make it an honest-to-goodness electronic drum set and not just a video game peripheral.
But there's something dare I say ironic about a rhythm game where you play drums. Drums are, well, a rhythm instrument, and while pressing colored buttons on a plastic guitar neck while strumming a solid bar might not teach you how to play guitar, you're basically learning how to play drums if you drum while playing Rock Band 2. Realizing this, they've added in a drum training section to teach you how to play the basics of drums, as well as how to do fills, etc., in order to both teach more people how to play correctly and so that people don't suck as much in the freestyle sections.
The new version of Rock Band 2 will include 84 songs on the disc, all of them masters. It'll have the first song from AC/DC, a debut song from Guns 'n' Roses, and the first song from BOb Dylan. You can export most of the 58 songs from Rock Band 2, and while there have been 162 downloadable songs for Rock Band 1 since it came out (with over 15 million downloads), they're promising to have 500 songs by the holidays.
The menu system has been overhauled. Now you can build your own setlists, for one thing. Also, the menus are much easier to move through even when you have lots of songs. Setlists can also be selected to be geared towards specific instruments - if you're trying to play through only playing on the drums, for instance, you can pick out a drum-focused setlist.
World Tour has moved to be online with additional cities and venues. There will be new battles for Battle of the Bands with real time feedback and it will be tied to gamertag, so you can always see who is doing the best in the world and on your friends list.
Finally, for the people who just want to drink and play and have fun with their friends in the game two new modes have been added. "No Fail" mode will disable achievements and the such, but you will not have to worry about new players getting dumped out of the game for messing up too much. If you've all had too much to drink to play you can set the game to "jukebox" mode where it'll just play the songs, showing your characters, and give you a chance to relax and just listen to the tunes.
I'm a 29 year old senior network and systems engineer for a consulting firm in the DC area. I'm mostly into MMOs and FPSes (on the console), and I'm a big pro football fan. In my other spare time I like to write and tend to read copious amounts of history and military sci-fi. I'm also into cooking and bad action movies.
