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.

http://au.youtube.com/watch?v=Dx4FNtu5gWU

Yes, the Rock Band 2 drums are broken, much like their Rock Band 1 counterparts. You all remember my problem with returning kit after kit, only to have the new one be even more broken than the last, finally arriving with a working kit months after getting the game. Well, I think I’m going to have to go through the same process this time. I’ve already seen many many players on various forums with this problem already. And I called EA tech support who claimed to have not even heard of the problem yet.

Where did quality assurance go? Why am I paying hundreds of dollars for defective merchandise? This would not be acceptable in any other industry. I hope to goodness I can raise some awareness about this, because the ineptitude has gone on for far too long.

For starters, there is the sheer variety of ways you can play this game: by yourself with an AI controlled partner, local split screen, private co-op match with a friend over Xbox Live, or even a public game, enabling you to find someone to play with quite easily. EA Montreal did such a good job with the menu system and various co-op play methods that nobody should even have to play with the AI partner, except when going for the achievement requiring you to do so.

True, this game can be played lone wolf style, completely ignoring your partner, whether human or computer controlled. It really shines when you work together, however. While the Aggro system seems like a cheap gimmick at first, it quickly becomes one of the main strategies necessary to stay alive. One player can shoot at an enemy (among other methods) to raise their Aggro meter, making enemies pay more attention to them and letting the other player sneak around undetected. This encourages communication, and lets the players come up with unique and effective strategies for overcoming every obstacle. Other co-op moments range from amusing (the Back to Back bullet-time mode, which unfortunately is only triggered automatically at select points) to clichéd and rather pointless (the Step Jump, where one player must give the other a lift up to an inaccessible area – why not just put in some stairs or a ladder?) I would like to have seen more implementation of vehicles – Halo proved there is nothing more satisfying than gunning while your partner drives. All Army of Two gives us are a few brief hover boat sections which suffer from imprecise driving controls. Thankfully, working with your partner is overall rewarding and rarely frustrating.

Army of Two has its (very large) weak points, including the barely cohesive and overdone story, the extremely short play time (expect to get through the campaign in four to six hours) and lack of replayability. Sure, you could go through on harder difficulties and collect more money to upgrade your guns, but I imagine most gamers will not have much reason to play through it again. Despite these issues, I have to commend EA Montreal for letting you play a game with a real friend sitting right beside you. It’s a concept that is becoming increasingly lost with developers in this generation, and I hope to see more games following Army of Two’s example.

One last note: There is also the game-crippling update I downloaded near the end of the campaign, which erased all my money, upgraded guns, and achievement progress. I haven’t heard about this affecting anyone else, but it brings up an issue for a future post. Check back in next week to read about the decline of Quality Assurance testing in the gaming industry.

Controller Schemes: The Wii Wheel is fun. It’s just good old-fashioned fun. Is it the best way to be competitive in time trials and online? Probably not, although only time will tell. It is, however, a blast to use after the initial learning curve. I do wish the buttons were reassignable like in Brawl, but that’s only a minor annoyance. The Remote+Nunchuck scheme seems to be the best competitive set up, as it makes tricks very easy to perform and has the most intuitive button mapping. The Gamecube controller works in a pinch, but reaching for the D-Pad to trick is frustrating. The Gamecube controller is easily bested by the Remote+Nunchuck scheme. I have not used the Wiimote by itself, but I see no reason to try it when I have Wii Wheels lying around.

Graphics+Music: I will address these in one paragraph because I feel the same way about them: disappointed. Some of the new tracks look very nice, most notably Maple Treeway and Rainbow Road. Unfortunately, many of the older tracks are uninteresting and bland. Nearly nothing was done to spice up the backgrounds and roadways, and they end up feeling out of place next to the new tracks. The character models are horrendous. They look worse than the character models in Double Dash and almost as bad as those in Mario Kart 64. After the gorgeously rendered characters in Brawl, I was sad to see this large step backward. The menu graphics do their job, but are far from appealing. The music is typical Mario Kart music. Many old tunes return next to new completely unmemorable songs. None is orchestrated, and after the incredible soundtrack featured in Brawl, I couldn’t help feeling disappointed. Where are the classic Nintendo medleys? Why aren’t there multiple songs per track? Why is Nintendo still not orchestrating their music? There is no excuse for any of these things. Some would say I’ve been spoiled by the quality of Brawl. I say Brawl sets a bar that all future Nintendo games should strive to beat.

New Mechanics: The trick system is very fun. They are simple to pull off (with the right control scheme) and make searching for those hidden jumps even more rewarding. The bikes don’t take anything away from the essential “kart-ness” of Mario Kart. Look at Double Dash – we’ve been racing non-kart vehicles for quite a while now. Being able to pop a wheelie on straightaways but being easier to hit and not being able to get the super mini-turbo brings about an important tactical question and makes the selection between bikes and karts fun and competitive. The new turbos require no skill to get, unlike in the past few Karts, and subsequently feel less rewarding. In fact, the races seem less about skill than ever before, which brings me to my next point.

Items and CPUs: The items are more absurd than ever before with Mario Kart Wii. Luckily, they can be turned down or even off in multiplayer, but to get through Grand Prix and unlock the hidden characters, you must deal with some of the worst rubber band AI the series has seen and grow accustomed to getting hit with a blue shell, lightning, red shell, and POW block all while mere seconds away from the finish line. This description mostly applies to 150cc, where the AI is at its most ruthless, but it still happens in 100 and occasionally in 50. Thankfully, not many people play Mario Kart for its single player racing.

Multiplayer: Better than ever before! CPU players can be on or off and adjusted in difficulty, items can be tweaked (although I’d like options to turn individual items on and off as seen in Smash Brothers), and now you can set a number of races from 2 to 32 and play through them all with Grand Prix-style point rankings. If you get tired of your friends, the online multiplayer is robust and I’m so thankful to be able to say, completely lag free. While I still can’t join a Brawl match online to save my life, Kart worked perfectly right out of the box.

Ghosts and Rankings: Time Trials have the best new addition to the series – downloadable ghosts and world-wide leaderboards. Not only that, but your best ghost is saved automatically for every single tracks in the game. You can upload ghosts and send “Ghost Challenges” to your friends. And you can download and race the ghost of the current world-wide record holder for every track. This system will keep Time Trials fun for a very long time.

Overall Impressions: I am quite happy with this game. After looking past the sub-par graphics and music, I have found a highly enjoyable racer – decent alone and amazing with friends. The wonderful online component will keep this Kart fresh for quite a while. It’s no Smash when it comes to longevity or depth, but I wasn’t expecting it to be.

It seems that Sony and Microsoft are only doing their jobs halfway. If you promise backward compatibility, follow through on it. Especially when consoles use the same media format (DVDs), more consoles should follow Nintendo’s example. Either ditch backward compatibility completely, or make the new system entirely backward compatible. Nobody likes an unfinished job.

Now to discuss a few gaming news tidbits:

Still Alive is free as DLC today for all you Rock Band owners, so don’t miss out on that. I’m really happy to see free Rock Band DLC, and I’m excited about the possibility of regular free DLC. Even a song or two a month would be a really great way to for Harmonix to show appreciation for the fans.

I am full of anticipation for Mario Kart Wii. The more I read about it, the more I want it to come out already. I am glad you can control it with either Gamecube or Wii controllers – it’s nice to see that even Nintendo isn’t solely relying on the Wiimote gimmick. Also, I applaud Nintendo for putting 32 tracks in the game, 16 of which are fully updated remakes from older games. This is a very smart idea in the development sense, because the hardest work, which is the track design, is already done! Compared to creating a track from scratch, graphically updating an old one is much easier and less time consuming. It’s also great fan service, and as Nintendo fans, we’ve come to expect that.

Also, this has got to be one of the best April Fool’s jokes ever. Half of me wishes it were real…the other half shudders at the thought.

First of all, there is no DLC whatsoever. Harmonix states in the article that they “wanted to wait before we explored online functionality for Rock Band,” but since Wii games can not be updated or patched in any way, this effectively means no DLC until Rock Band 2, if there ever is one. Oh, but of course the Wii version comes with five bonus songs not found in the 360 or PS3 version! Why not make it 20 bonus songs? Why not 40? If you can’t give Wii owners DLC, give them DLC that’s already been released for the 360 and PS3, but put it right on the disc! These songs are already finished, and since there will be no Wii DLC revenue, putting more songs on the game disc does nothing but increase value of the game with no extra cost to Harmonix. And surely the disc has the space because “there will be no character creator.” Nope, you can’t even use your Miis. So there will be no money, no shop, and only pre-rendered background videos like in the PS2 version.

Are you Wii owners ready to suck it up and get the 360 version yet? If you aren’t yet, maybe the fact that you can’t use your Guitar Hero III guitar with Rock Band will change your mind. True, this is Activision’s fault, but being forced to use the Stratocaster when you have a great wireless Les Paul sitting right there is just no fun. I also enjoy that in response to the question about changes to the peripherals, Harmonix mentioned the white drums. While Harmonix is changing the drums, improving their accuracy and functionality should be the main focus over changing the color scheme.

Last but not least, the game only runs in 480p, which is, of course, the maximum resolution of the Wii. After playing in 1080p, though, any game just looks awful in 480. So, as with pretty much any game that has been released on multiple platforms, there is no reason to get the Wii version.

I have been a Nintendo fan for a very long time now, and I admire and respect Nintendo’s commitment to innovation. There comes a time, however, when a company must not only innovate, but also keep up with other trends. The crippled Wii version of Rock Band is not entirely Harmonix’s fault; much of the blame lies with Nintendo and their refusal to adopt what should be standard features, such as a robust online network and internal hard drive. I’m just happier every day that I bought a 360 in addition to my Wii.