Mailman Chris here, taking time out from doing the all important election work to talk about something you really care about… Video game reviews. I’ve got two for you this time. One is the awaited sequel to the wildly successful Rock Band and the other is the much-anticipated new Star Wars: The Force Unleashed. I’m starting with Rock Band 2, if you gotta’ learn about the power of the Force Unleashed, click here. (But you better come back, sucka’).
I’ve been waiting for this one with baited breath. Well, not really, since I don’t really know what that means. I guess I could say I’ve been waiting with tobacco-tinged breath. Either way, Rock Band 2 launches to huge amounts of hype and I was there in line along with everyone else at midnight. If you’re familiar with the game, the mechanics haven’t really changed. If you’re new to the format, it’s simple. Colored bars come down the screen in time with popular music and you spastically gesticulate on a plastic instrument while you imagine you’re on stage at the Forum, all in the effort to earn pretend money and pretend fans.
Huge fun for all. Now that we’re all on the same page, let me tell you why you should buy this game….
The career mode that existed in the previous version is gone. Now replaced with a challenge mode that can be played with 1-4 people. It also introduces you to the varying levels of difficulty on each of the 4 instruments. (Yes, this time they allow you to be the solo Bassist in all your 4-string glory) All other roads lead to “World Tour”. This is the big “band” mode that you can now play solo, with friends in your living room, or in any Xbox connected home in the world. The band function is more detailed this time out. Allowing you to choose a name and make a logo for your band that shows on your drumhead, and on huge banners that hang behind your characters on the stage. The character editor is rich and allows for multiple choices of looks and styles. It finally allows you to assign set players to the band but lets you have substitutes as well.
The online play is much improved and connections don’t seem to hang as much. This mode takes you from a fledgling band in a single city to a platinum-selling, jet-setting, Rolling Stone honoree. They’ve introduced several new functions including a drum trainer to teach you the intricacies of the standard drumbeats and specialized drum fills. With a metronome up to 200 beats per min, it should prove to challenge anyone who isn’t Neal Peart…. They also brought in a new “Battle of the Bands” function where they post several challenges a week, you post scores against other “bands” across the country, and the best fake bands can win real prizes from Xbox and the game producer, Harmonix.
They’ve also added some automatic cheat codes, including one to turn on “No Fail” for when you have young kids (or old parents) who can’t manage to play but want to do so without spoiling the fun for everyone else. Of course, that option would also work for times when a bunch of movie geeks get together to record a movie commentary and end up failing miserably on moderately difficult songs due to their intake of alcoholic beverages… (I don’t know what you’re talking about – AD)
The real selling point of any music game is the music and this time they went all out. With an eclectic choice of tunes spanning 5 decades, it easily is the most diverse music genre game to date. Some brief examples would include: 60’s - Bob Dylan, The Who, and Norman Greenbaum (‘Spirit in the Sky’). The 70’s- Cheap Trick, Bad Company, AC/DC, Blondie, and Journey. In the 80’s- The Go Go’s, Ratt, Bon Jovi, Duran Duran, and Survivor. For the 90’s – Grunge is alive and well with Red Hot Chili Peppers, Smashing Pumpkins, Nirvana, Alanis, Pearl Jam, Alice in Chains, The Offspring, and some small band named The Foo Fighters.
The nearly finished decade of the 2000’s are represented well by The Donnas, Disturbed, System of a Down, and an appearance by the first song from the band calling themselves Guns N’Roses, ‘Shackler’s Revenge’, off the much delayed ‘Chinese democracy’ album. A full list of the initial 84 song titles can be found at xbox360achievements.org. The only thing they didn’t include is horrible cover bands as all songs are the master recordings. The version for PS3 and Wii will have another as-of-yet announced 20 songs included on disc upon release. 360 users will get those same 20 songs at that time as a free Xbox Live download. Harmonix has been amazing with releases of new music every week since the game came out almost a year ago. Games cost $1-2 apiece or are sometimes sold in sets of 3 for $5 or whole albums for varying prices (usually equivalent to $1-2 as well). They make it easy to find and purchase new stuff through an in-game store that uses MS Points (for the Xbox version at least)
The game is extremely fun and well worth purchasing. Its available now on the XBox 360; the Playstation 3 and Wii later in October. If you don’t already have the instruments, either wait until October to get the bundle or look for store bundled packages with the original. You also may want to seek out the original game on Craigslist since they included the option of porting over all the original songs to the new game (which when added to the downloadable content songs makes a massive 400+ song set list), meaning you should be able to find copies of the original going up for sale cheap. If you have the first game and your instruments work well, stick with buying just the game as the instruments didn’t improve much and are not that different from previous versions.
All in all, the game is kinda like sex. It’s good, even on your own; but much better in a group.
