Harmonix Does It Again 

Published September 16, 2008

Harmonix and MTV Games' follow-up to the pop culture phenomenon Rock Band seems to stem almost completely from the wish lists of gamers who fell in love with the first game. World Tour playable online?Check. Playlists? Check again. Automatic support for downloaded songs? You guessed it. Check.

Make progress on your Tour at last over Xbox LIVE.

Chances are if you asked for it, Rock Band 2 delivers. Let's look at the game's most anticipated new features and eagerly awaited refinements.

Every day, Harmonix posts new challenges that pit all the bands across the vast expanse of the Rock Band 2 community against one another.

Note Charts

Nothing affects gameplay in a music game like note charts. They are the foundation on which the rest of the game is built and in this regard, Harmonix has clearly matured even beyond their stellar Rock Band efforts.

The handpicked songs highlighted in Rock Band 2 sport a great deal more variety and less tedious repetition. This might have a little something to do with fewer punk songs and more metal making the cut, or it's simply that Harmonix has mastered the art of laying down a note track that's a pleasure to play.

Tour Mode
What was once Band World Tour is now simply Tour mode as you can play solo or with friends. Most exciting, you can finally invite friends over Xbox LIVE® to participate in your own Tour. While the body of the Tour remains largely the same (play through sets to unlock new venues and new songs), there are a number of noteworthy upgrades:

Quite a cast of characters.

• No leader: Your band is no longer tied to any one band member, so no matter what instrument you feel like playing, you can always tackle Tour Mode with your band of choice.
• Challenges:Challenges take place apart from the classic, venue-hopping, globe-trotting Tour gameplay, and typically incorporate a set of songs with a theme or an instrument-specific challenge. For example, Solid Beats focuses on moderately difficult drum songs. Play and beat the early Challenges to unlock access to more difficult challenges and even to unlock new songs.
• DLC challenges: Challenges even incorporate original Rock Band songs and downloaded songs to create custom challenges just for you. Did you download the Cars album? Get ready to tackle a nine-song Cars-only challenge.
• Easier mystery list: Anyone who spent more than a few hours in Tour Mode remembers the agony of the Mystery Setlist, wondering in horror if "Run to the Hills" or "Flirtin' with Disaster" would pop up. Now, they're assigned a base difficulty, so you have at least a rough idea of what lies ahead.
• Band profile: This nifty menu breaks down your band's highlights: their logo, how many fans they've earned, the ability to assign stand-ins when your bandmates aren't around, your top-scoring songs, and even how you've fared in Battle of the Bands challenges.

BattleTime!
While technically a part of Tour Mode, Battle of the Bands is very much one of the game's most innovative new features. Every day, Harmonix posts new challenges that pit all the bands across the vast expanse of the Rock Band 2 community against one another. Simply play the challenge and see just how you stack up against the Xbox LIVE faithful.

Whenever you participate in a Battle of the Bands, you'll see a "Tug of War" meter at the top of the screen showing how you stack up against whatever band stands ahead of you on the Leaderboard.

Foot pedal 'tweeners giving you trouble? Hit the Drum Trainer.

Battleof the Bands challenges aren't based solely on attaining the highest possible score either. For example, the Impossible Battle currently on display requires every player to play on Expert, while also eliminating the use of any Overdrive. Likewise, the Bass Groove Battle obviously requires a bassist, is played solo only, and your rank is based not on points, but your longest note streak instead.

Drum Trainer
Aspiring drummers can take heart with the Drum Trainer in Rock Band 2, a must-play training mode that houses nearly every beat-type you're likely to encounter. In all, there's 76 unique beats to master here at anywhere between 60-180 beats-per-minute. Select a beat and the training session will cycle it through endlessly so you can learn at your own pace.

You'll also find a Fill Trainer, which offers 45 "real" fills to learn so you don't go thrashing away at the drums at random when it comes time to use your Overdrive. You'll be surprised just how professional your fills sound even when using the simplest techniques.

Finally, there's Freestyle Mode—no doubt the most anticipated feature for already-expert drummers—allowing you to queue up any song you've got on your hard drive and play along.

While these features headline what's new in Rock Band 2, they don't tell the whole story. There's the No Fail feature allowing even the most inexperienced player to play along without fear of rejection, truckloads of new clothes, hairstyles, tattoos, and instruments to kit out your character, vastly improved sorting options for finding songs, and a great deal else besides.

Of course, then there's the game's real stars, the bands, which include such rock gods as AC/DC, Social Distortion, Billy Idol, Elvis Costello, Guns N' Roses, and Pearl Jam, to name just a very, very few.

Now there's really just one question. Are you ready to rock?

Article by Ryan Treit