Rock Band 2

Livin' on a prayer

I bloody love music games. I loved the music-maker in Mario Paint on my SNES. I fell head-over-heels for Taiko no Tatsujin, the silly Japanese drum game I played in arcades all over Japan, and on the PS2. I was enchanted by the original Guitar Hero volumes, even though my lack of coordination made it pretty much impossible for anyone else to enjoy the game whilst I had the guitar in my hand. I adore Singstar, dodgy scoring system and all. And I was positively salivating for the release of Rock Band, which finally allowed me to get the mic in my hand and make a worthwhile contribution to progressing through the game. When we finally got our hands on a copy, we played it all night. Walking back to my flat at 6am, I found myself still humming away, the visuals still playing brightly behind my eyelids. Like the rest of the world, I was hooked. And drunk, obviously.

Yet, to my genuine surprise, this review won't be a gushing tide of sickly prose written in pure wonderment at the marvel that is Rock Band 2. Who would have guessed?

Don't get me wrong. It's not that I don't like Rock Band 2, because I do. I really, really do. Everything that was great about the first one is back here in the second, and a good deal of improvements. For a start, whilst the microphone stays the same, the new guitar and drum kit are quieter, more sensitive, and less likely to fall to bits thanks to the metal reinforced kick pedal. If I happen to find a million pound note on my way home tonight, I'll also gladly review the flashy new premium drum kit complete with cymbals, the mic-and-Xbox360-controller-in-one and the lovely Fender Precision Bass replica also available, as all of them look stunning and very exciting indeed. But even without the fancy new sensitive peripherals, the scoring system also seems much improved, keeping up better with the notes in faster songs, and recognising vocal notes where it lagged slightly before.

Due to popular demand, the Tour mode is now fully online compatible, so online players can play together as well as against each other. And if a couple of your regular band members (read: mates who come round and sit on your sofa, drinking your beer and playing your games) are absent without access to a console, then you can design your own 'stand in' band members to fill in for them instead of the game automatically allocating random characters for you. Which essentially means you can still play without having that woman swaddled in decaying bandages plastered all over your screen against your will. Or you can have your own character swap instruments mid-game if someone drops out or when playing solo, which is another useful addition.

To improve the standard of gameplay, a new 'drum trainer' mode has been included in the practice and challenge settings, and, brilliantly, a 'No Fail' mode is included. This is great for playing with friends of wildly different ability levels, and invaluable if you play the game like I do, which is invariably in a rapidly progressing state of intoxication. The ability to still get through a seven song setlist or a particularly difficult or obscure song when completely bladdered gives RB2 a huge advantage over its arch nemesis, Guitar Hero World Tour. It's prettier too.

And the songs! Motorhead's "Ace of Spades", "Hungry like a Wolf" by Duran Duran, "White Wedding" from Billy Idol and - I'm so happy I can barely type it - Bon Jovi's legendary "Livin' on a Prayer" are all included in the 80 songs featured on the disc, with 20 free downloads thrown in. It seems like the song selection has been thoughtfully selected this time around to offer something for all instruments in each song, something that was hit and miss in the original Rock Band. Not to mention the fact that your downloaded content from the first game appears immediately in RB2, and for a small one off fee you can import all of the songs from Rock Band into the new game. Well, almost all of them; apparently "Enter Sandman" by Metallica, Iron Maiden's "Run to the Hills", and "Paranoid" by Black Sabbath are unavailable for transfer in all versions of Rock Band, and those of us in Europe aren't allowed to enjoy "Monsoon" by Tokio Hotel either. Spoilsports.

So what's the problem? Well, there isn't one really. It was supposed to be harder this time around, but my 'band mates' agreed that it actually seemed a smidge easier. But then I guess that's not really a bad thing. I could easily grumble about how impatient one can get to access the good songs hidden away as unlockable content, as you are forced to sing the same songs over and over to get through your challenges and progress further around the world and through the game, I suppose. I was dying to get to the real stars of the show, but RB2 makes you sing for your supper, or in this case, the opportunity to sing, or strum, or drum better songs. But of course that was the case with Rock Band, so along with it being an old complaint, we also have to remember that without these incentives, it wouldn't actually be a game - without its drive, it's just Singstar with more instruments. Nope, mustn't grumble.

Gosh, in all the excitement, I forgot to mention the new ability to have your band characters pose for photo shoots, then purchase actual posters or t-shirts with the images on them, and even actual figurines. Wow!

And here, sitting snugly beside the sarcasm, is the actual problem. No, not the figurines, but the lack of genuine excitement. Rock Band 2 is a great game, but it can't really compare to the ground breaking achievement of its predecessor, which earned Harmonix's founders a place in Time's 100 most influential people of 2008 list. Rock Band's creation was compared to the rise of FM Radio, CDs and MTV as one of the most important advances in musical entertainment in history, but if we try to think of its sequel in these terms, we can only compare RB2 to another FM radio station, or perhaps one of the huge number of cable music channels currently on offer. It's still more Kerrang than VH1, but it's not the staggering experience that we might have, perhaps greedily, hoped for.

It's fair to say that this game plays more like a giant expansion pack than a sequel, but that said, it's a brilliant expansion pack. For all our impatience and minor disappointments, I'll wager we'll all still be spending far too much time on our friend's sofa, drinking all his beer, and playing his Rock Band 2 well into 2009. Rock on.

85%

By Keri Webster