BingeGamer's New to the Series Review: Rock Band 2
New to the Series Review: Rock Band 2
Rock Band 2 is the sequel to one of the few rhythm based games that have become quite popular as each day passes. If you have somehow been able to avoid playing these types of games for this long, Rock Band 2 might just be the start of a beautiful relationship, keep reading to find why.
Basically, Rock Band 2 is fun in a box. It takes what makes most Nintendo Wii games do, bring fun, especially people in the same room together and don’t mind looking a little silly. You can go playing songs in the game solo or bring it out at every gathering, from the instruments to the music choices, it really has something for everyone.
The geekiness of something like dance dance revolution is not present when you are pretending to solo on a plastic guitar, for some reason people accept it and love it. The concept is simple, notes fly on the screen, you hit the corresponding button on your guitar or drum. vocals are scrolled across the screen, say the right words and hit the right tune to win.
In Rock Band 2, you can play alone or have friends jump in whenever during your tour, and even take your band online to play against or with others. There are challenge modes on top of the tour, lots of leaderboards to try and out-do everyone on your friends list, and good ol score duel battles. Though this game can’t be beat as far as multiplayer goes when you have friends over, I do want to mention the solo modes should get some loving for not being a boring list of songs you have to play in order, but an actual solo tour you can choose which locales you want to pursue your band’s career.
With so many of these new types of games available, the choice of what to get right now is fairly easy for me to say, Rock Band 2. As an entry to the rhythm based games, I feel that it is a great starter, it fixes most the small flaws the first title had, and has the larger amount of songs for you to start with. In fact, pay $5, rent Rock Band 1, and you can put all those songs from that disc on your hard drive (The math: 84 Rock Band 2 songs + 55 Rock Band 1 tracks + 20 More free tracks coming from Harmonix shortly = 159 f’n songs, and that is not counting whatever DLC you will pick up….and believe me, you will pick up DLC).
Drums are wireless with this sequel, the masses agree the Fender Stratocaster is better than the Guitar Hero X-plorer, and the mic.. well it’s a well working usb microphone. You might think the mic is the last thing choice to pick what you want to play when with a group of friends, but once that fear passes, you wont want to ever let go of the mic (you will truly understand why the Japanese love karaoke).
Other than describing the technical stats for the game, it comes down to the gameplay is simple, and fun. If you have any love for any sub-genre of rock, Metal, Classic, Punk, Pop, any love at all, you owe it to yourself to have fun with some plastic instruments, and Rock Band 2 provides it with ease. It is also note-worthy, for those who think this game would be good for when drunk people around, they included a “No Fail Mode” just in case you are too inebriated to hit every beat they will let you keep playing till the song is over…if only all games had this mode.
