Quantum Wallpapers

It rarely happens that the title of a game is so straight-to-the-point as with Rock Band 2 (and Rock Band).  The concept behind Rock Band 2 is simple to explain, and is hidden in the game’s title: Form a rock band with up to four players, and try to become the ultimate rock band. Or just have a laugh.  It’s a simple concept, but Rock Band presents it nearly flawless.

Music games are hot since Guitar Hero entered the scene.  When Harmonix and EA (re-)entered the scene, there was only one real competitor; Guiter Hero.   Rock Band changes things; though. Both sides constantly seek for ways to improve their games.  Which is basically what Rochk band 2 is.  Harmonix and EA took all the elements that worked well from Rock Band, blended them with some new elements and improvementes, and here we are now.  Rock Band 2 shares a big part of the DNA -of the original game, but it’s the improvements that’ll make it worth buying again.

Like I said, the goal of Rock Band 2 is to form a rock band with which you play a bunch of songs in your progress to (music) world domination.  To do that you’ll be using the plastic instruments that are sold with the game as a bundle, or seperately.  Those instruments are, in case you didn’t guess it already, a guitar, a drum set, a microphone and an optional bass guitar.  I didn’t get the chance to test the instruments, though.  At the time of this review they were nowhere to be found – that’s a downside of living in belgium).  No reason to worry, though, you can still use your “old” Rock Band instruments.  And if you need an extra guitar or bass guitar, then you can use the guitars of Guitar Hero 2 / 3  / 4 as well.  To be honest, I don’t see one good reason why someone who owns Rock Band would buy the Rock band 2 instruments again.  Back in the days I payed a solid 180 euro’s for them…

So, playing music on some plastic instruments, how hard can that be, right?  Well, if you grab your instrument for the first time (or your drum sticks), and you never played the old Rock Band, I suggest that you at least take a look at the tutortials first.  The tutorials are pretty  extensive; but completely optional.  There’s a tutorial for any type of instrument, with a detailed explanation how to score maximum points. But if you’re too impatient, or a fan of the “no way, I want to do this shit right now!!” methodology, then why not try the Quick Play mode? Choose a song, gather your band members and go for it!

But the highlight of the game is, beyond any doubt, the Tour Mode.  The concept is, once again, simple.  One of the players creates a band, and comes up with a band name and a “starting location” for that band.  If you didn’t do it before, you can go into the editor and create characters which you can use on-stage.  THere’s quite a few options to create your character (face, hair, make-up, lenght, weight, name, place of birth) but most if the options will be rather familiar for Rock Band players… because they’re the same options from Rock Band, who they’ve given a facelift.  Graphical progress was definitely made here.  And let’s be honest, who really wants to configure his character for hours? Especially when the other peole in the room are holding plastic guitars or drum sticks which can be used as melee weapons?

When creating your characters, you’ll notice an important difference.  Rock Band 2 got rid of the concept that you had to create a character for each instrument in the game.  Let’s say that, today you feel like drumming. So you’d have to make Joe the Drummer.  But tomorrow, you want to play the guitar.  In Rock Band you’d have to create Joel the Guiterman, which was sometimes a pain in the ass.  But this time, one character can do it all. Guitar, Bass, vocal or drums? No problem!
Which brings us to another novelty.  The single player mode as we knew it was deleted.  In Rock Band, the single player mode consisted of 4 different “careers”, one for each instrument, in which you had to play through the songs form easy to hard – Guitar Hero 3 style.  Which could be INCREDIBLY BORIBF!!   This time around, one player can play Tour Mode alone, even if other people played in his band before.  The “band leader” also is no longer; any of the characters of a player can be used to “host” the band the player created.  But it gets better.  You can also get rid of the random computer characters who “filled up” the missing slots in your band. How? Well, you can use other characters you or other players created and make them play in your band. Finally, no more weird ass punkers while playing “When you were Young” van The Killers!

The gist of the tour mode is still the same; you’re trying to make a career and try to unlock more venues and stages to play at.  You’ll unlock vehicles which will bring you to new places, and you can now buy staff members which all offer you specific bonuses (or you can decided to keep your mother on your staff, but she’s a good for nothing butch. And taking your mother on tour is WAY UNCOOL).  Then there are the special events; like charity events (you gain more fans, but no money), the sellout concerts (you get a shitload of cash, but no fans. Because you’re a sellout.)  But top of the bill are the few video clips that you can “record”.  I don’t really know how to describe them; without using the word awesome.  They’re awesome.  I still haven’t unlocked one, but when I saw my co-reviewer play one, I said, and I quote “What the hell are YOU doing? I wanna do that shit too!.”

Let’s talk music now.  I can’t be really specific on this part; Rock Band offers a whole bunch of songs which come from different segments from the Rock Scene.  Some are well known and recent, others will be old but still enjoyable.  Metal, Rock, Alternative rock, pop-rock… it’s all there.  And if the songs on the disc aren’t enough, there’s always Xbox Live or PSN to buy more songs. MORE!!  You can buy small bundles or even full cd’s.  My co-reviewer bought a Foo Fighters cd and a Killers Pack, and I’m still looking for a band to spend my money on (and even then, I’ll hesitate because I’m cheap).  The lists of available songs grows every day; each time I go to the market place of Xbox Live I’m spammed with new Rock Band 2 content.

But for just 5 euro’s (800 points?) you can add 80 songs to your collection, if you own Rock Band.  All you’ve got to do is buy a license in Rock Band 1, and the songs will be immediatly made available for Rock Band 2.  Downloaded songs will always be available for Rock Band 2, by the way.

Yep, they sure are commercially talented at Harmonix / EA (but I’m sure that you knew that about EA).  Something which costs you nothing, but which is pretty cool, however, is signing up at http://www.rockband.com.  There, you can connect your Xbox Live / PS3 account, which will allow you to create wallpapers of your band(s) and characters, as often as you want.  There’s a ton of options to make them, too. See the image to the left?  That’s the resized version of one of my wallpapers. Looks pretty good, if I say so myself.  Of course, there’s a “catch”: you can buy posters and other merch of your band. I’m not even kidding.

Conclusion: Possibly the best party game ever. Definitely the best “music” game ever.