Rock Band 2 More Impressions

Well now I’ve had a good amount of time to play in the various modes, so you know what the drill is!

First – things they did not change/fix from Rock Band 1:

There is still no combo meter during the song or after any song but the last in setlists. The glitch where you start a setlist with a singer of ether gender and keep them throughout the setlist even if the vocalist changes gender is still present. There is a severs lack of new clothing/pre created band stand ins, although I already love some of the new ones. Overall, nothing game breaking, just a tad dissapointing.

World Tour is now about a billion times more fun, thanks to the ease of which friends online and off can drop in and out at any time without any of this messy leader business. Moreover, any character can play any instrument at any time with just a few button presses – no more creating 3 characters.  Also, thanks to the inclusion of RB1 DLC and the expanded setlist, World Tour does not force you to play the same couple of songs over and over until you get sick of them. I played for 4 hours last night and only had to replay one song once.

Quickplay is now much worse off – despite the more intuitive menu, it no longer saves number of stars or even top scores for each instrument. All it saves it one top score – whether it’s one person on medium drums or a full expert band. So say goodbye to working on gold starring everything on Ex[ert guitar – you’ll never know which ones you have and haven’t done unless you track each song down in World Tour. The ability to make setlists is a nice bonus, and for the party game crown, Quick Play is just about perfect.

The Drum Trainer is amazing. As a drummer of 11 years, even I learned a thing or two, and I know it will be invaluable to aspiring drummers – whether on a plastic set or real one. The fills and beats are real world drum beats that apply to the game and can be played exactly the same on a real set. The menu system is intuituve and fluid and I heartily support Harmonix’s efforts on this mode.

Create a character still had only about 10 pre-made faces, all of which lack a certain human aspect, and I really wish they would let you customize facial shape, but that’s grabbing at straws. Everything else in the character creator is top notch.

Now the most important part – the music! While I truly don’t like some of the tracks, I can see Harmonix did a great job of making this a “something for everyone” list. Some great party favorites, hits and obscure songs from every decade, and some blisteringly hard tracks make for a well rounded experience. Each gamer will have their own list of hated and loved tracks, and each track would be in some gamers top or bottom tracks in the game.

Thank goodness for the inclusion of Hyperspeed though. I’m glad to see one of my main complaints about Rock Band 1 addressed.

Overall, more than just an expansion to Rock Band 1, but less than a full sequel. As far as the World Tour and Challenge mode (just a rehash of world tour – linear setlists yay!) go, I can’t help feeling like we’ve done it all before. Being an avid rhythm gamer, I don’t mind yearly updates with nothing but more songs. But if you’re going to include a main game mode that is meant to be the meat of the game apart from quickplay, certainly some more could have been done to spice it up. I would have liked to see the tiny RPG element (hiring crew) fleshed out a little more and have a little more impact on gameplay. But in the end, a satisfying experience (apart from the broken drums) that I can’t wait to spend the next few months playing.