Rock Band 2

[HAMMER FRENZY]

Anybody getting this? I am actually thinking about getting it, my lady wants to play it and I wouldn't mind playing some drums. I also heard that the guitar parts got a nice kick in the ass. I was way more into GH3 than I was the original RB.

[Ookii]

You know it baby.

[Samwise]

I'm planning to get Guitar Hero World Tour and then get the instrument-less version of Rock Band 2.  I believe this will get me maximum  for minimum cost.

[NiX]

Keep an eye on reports for the GH:WT instruments, Sam. I've been hearing the kick pedal is weird because of spring placement and the new "touch" guitars are a pain in the ass.

[Samwise]

I got to play with the GH instruments at PAX.  The drums are goddamn awesome, especially the pedal; even the diehard Rock Band fans there were saying so.  The only way it's "weird" is that it doesn't make your foot tired. 

I'm not entirely sure about the guitars as compared to the GH3 model, but I do know I like them better than the Rock Band model, which is the main consideration.

[bhodi]

Roommate brought home rock band 2 yesterday and we spent all Sunday playing it.

The song list is great, but you can find that online and decide for yourself.

They changed almost nothing with the gameplay. Hammer-ons have a white border on the edges to make them more obvious, and the multiplyer is at the center of your bar now. Pretty much everything else stayed the same in the mechanics department. They reworked some of the girl models to make them a bit prettier. Our bassist, "Isafella", is no longer a hideous woman-who-looks-like-a-dude, but is now just an ugly woman. You also still can't create fat people, only meth addicts.

I would say the tabbing for songs are better, particularly for the bass. Most songs are no longer strumming one note over and over again. As for difficulty, I was having some trouble on a bunch of the songs, but I'm not sure that the difficulty has been ramped up like it was from GH3->GH4. Maybe just a half-step. I think there are just more difficult songs available for download (snow, for example). Eye of the tiger, one of the first/easy songs on rock band 2, was very easy to play, even on expert (though it was still fun).

[Nonentity]

Livin' on a prayer is so much goddamn fun on Expert Guitar - that is all.

Okay, no, that's not all - I like how you can opt to go on the solo tour, which is the SAME as the multiplayer, so you can have friends drop in and drop out of your band.

The Challenge mode is the closest thing to GH-style song progression, if you play it for a single instrument, and it unlocks some songs pretty fast.

[Stephen Zepp]

I played for almost 11 hours yesterday. Freaking awesome ;)

I'm not the most skilled player by any means, but it felt to me as if they tightened up something in the scroll mechanic--just seemed more accurate to me.

Setlist is freaking awesome--I worked through solo base tour just to play it out and get songs along the way. Having the cars "Just what I needed" show up in a mystery set was pretty surprising! Once I got to Aqualung, I played it quickplay for almost an hour--love that song, even if they did give some of the piano parts to the base   

The one thing I've never liked about world tour mode (and still don't) is how many times going to a new venue, you get "surprised" by a song in a set--no one is ever going to go up on a stage and ask the audience "name a song we've never seen before and we'll play it for you!". In my opinion, World Tour should have an easy access "quickplay"mode for any song that can possibly show up in a set at that venue...give you a chance to at least see what difficulty level you might be able to play a new song on first time before you risk fans/money.

There have been some complaints with lag spikes in online world tour mode, and many think that seeing raw scores instead of stars isn't useful, but overall the game freaking rocks.

For the OP specifically, I can't say if it'll be "challenging enough" for you/schild, but for those that like to play songs instead of playing for scores, I'm loving it.

[Mosesandstick]

People are only going to get their hands on the new instruments in a couple weeks/days right?

I hate the drum's bass pedal - and I don't think shoving a metal plate on it is going to fix that its fundamentally different to a real bass pedal (as far as I can tell) and requires a different sort of action.

I'm worried about GH:WT's drum set as well - I don't understand how their bass pedal is going to stay in the same place.

[HAMMER FRENZY]

I picked it up, but I haven't opened it yet. I want to play it but I only have guitar. I want to wait for some decent drums to come out. I don't know if I want to wait till October for the GW stuff, but I am inclined to do so hearing all the positive stuff about the drums. I also heard that GH will have some effects stuff on the guitar and what not. I really don't want to have both but it seems that this will be what happens.

[Jerrith]

Got it at midnight from a local Walmart.  Played a ton of guitar on Sunday.  Today when I got home from work, the Ion Drum Rocker I'd ordered had arrived.  Set that up (which does take awhile) and started playing drums - it's really, really nice - so much better than the stock RB drums.  Finished with some Guitar to get further in the world tour.  Found a spot with Alive which I'd been meaning to learn the words to, and so I switched to vocals, and realized that characters can now move freely between the instruments (neat). :)  While there a couple minor things I'd have done differently, Rock Band 2 is really, really good. 

One nice thing - I have the RB1 songs exported plus every piece of DLC.  It makes the random song selection seem more interesting / random because with so many choices, you likely won't know what gets picked all that well - or you'll say things like "Oh, that's a neat one that I haven't played in awhile.", etc... Sure there are some that aren't great but the variety is really impressive.

The *only* noteworthy complaint I have is that it seems to be impossible to find the new RB2 instruments.  I've tried a few places around here - nobody has the guitars (what I want) and only one place had drums (a GameStop, and they only got two sets).  One GameStop said they should have a couple guitars any day (they have shipped) so, I'm checking. :)

[Xilren's Twin]

Picked this up last night; the fact that you get your DLC automatically, can export all but 4 songs from RB1 to RB2 for like 5 bucks, plus the instruments being backwards compatible made it a no brainer.  Even if there were no changes to gameplay, you could look at it as buying 100 new songs for 60 bucks (including a new Guns and Roses one; why didnt i know this ahead of time?).  In many ways, this is an expansion pack to an existing game, not sequel.  I am curious to see how many people actually try the "performance" mode where you have to play straight from memory with no onscreen clues.

In looking through the info, the seem to be suggesting you can actually learn to play real drums from the tutorials in RB2.  Any comments on that?

[OcellotJenkins]

This game is near perfection in all areas.

-Note charts are have improved considerably; are interesting and fun.  Blows GH3 out of the water.
-Ability to queue up custom setlists using RB1, RB2, and DLC songs with the new sorting interface has improved "party mode" exponentially
-There are now a near infinite number of challenges and events for both solo and group players
-As others have said, compatibility with older instruments and even other games' instruments is a major plus

This really has become THE platform for rhythm games.  I don't see how the competition is going to hold up to it.

 

[Jeff Kelly]

I hope they don't take another year to release this in Europe (as RB1 did)

[Nonentity]

http://www.joystiq.com/2008/09/16/declaration-of-independence-reading-gets-perfect-vocal-score-in/

Hi-larious.

[Stephen Zepp]

Got it at midnight from a local Walmart.  Played a ton of guitar on Sunday.  Today when I got home from work, the Ion Drum Rocker I'd ordered had arrived.  Set that up (which does take awhile) and started playing drums - it's really, really nice - so much better than the stock RB drums.  Finished with some Guitar to get further in the world tour.  Found a spot with Alive which I'd been meaning to learn the words to, and so I switched to vocals, and realized that characters can now move freely between the instruments (neat). :)  While there a couple minor things I'd have done differently, Rock Band 2 is really, really good. 

One nice thing - I have the RB1 songs exported plus every piece of DLC.  It makes the random song selection seem more interesting / random because with so many choices, you likely won't know what gets picked all that well - or you'll say things like "Oh, that's a neat one that I haven't played in awhile.", etc... Sure there are some that aren't great but the variety is really impressive.

The *only* noteworthy complaint I have is that it seems to be impossible to find the new RB2 instruments.  I've tried a few places around here - nobody has the guitars (what I want) and only one place had drums (a GameStop, and they only got two sets).  One GameStop said they should have a couple guitars any day (they have shipped) so, I'm checking. :)

I do wish that they allowed you to select which DLC should be included in randomized sets. I bought both the Cars and the Who full albums, but hate some of the songs on each (and can't play others at Hard/Expert). Nothing sucks more than to get a randomly generated super-hard song that you a) don't like, or b) can't play. It's even worse when both are true.

I went so far as to spend a minute or two trying to figure out how to unload songs I never play off my HD, but didn't see any obvious way to do that.

Honestly though, I think this goes back to how I play this game differently from some (many?)--when I'm in World Tour/Band mode, I'm not trying to "beat a game", I'm trying to put on a good show that's fun to play--it's why I hate randomly generated "surprise!" setlists anyway. Fortunately, I've been able to ignore most of them and still get enough stars per venue to advance :)

[Nonentity]

Got it at midnight from a local Walmart.  Played a ton of guitar on Sunday.  Today when I got home from work, the Ion Drum Rocker I'd ordered had arrived.  Set that up (which does take awhile) and started playing drums - it's really, really nice - so much better than the stock RB drums.  Finished with some Guitar to get further in the world tour.  Found a spot with Alive which I'd been meaning to learn the words to, and so I switched to vocals, and realized that characters can now move freely between the instruments (neat). :)  While there a couple minor things I'd have done differently, Rock Band 2 is really, really good. 

One nice thing - I have the RB1 songs exported plus every piece of DLC.  It makes the random song selection seem more interesting / random because with so many choices, you likely won't know what gets picked all that well - or you'll say things like "Oh, that's a neat one that I haven't played in awhile.", etc... Sure there are some that aren't great but the variety is really impressive.

The *only* noteworthy complaint I have is that it seems to be impossible to find the new RB2 instruments.  I've tried a few places around here - nobody has the guitars (what I want) and only one place had drums (a GameStop, and they only got two sets).  One GameStop said they should have a couple guitars any day (they have shipped) so, I'm checking. :)

I do wish that they allowed you to select which DLC should be included in randomized sets. I bought both the Cars and the Who full albums, but hate some of the songs on each (and can't play others at Hard/Expert). Nothing sucks more than to get a randomly generated super-hard song that you a) don't like, or b) can't play. It's even worse when both are true.

I went so far as to spend a minute or two trying to figure out how to unload songs I never play off my HD, but didn't see any obvious way to do that.

Honestly though, I think this goes back to how I play this game differently from some (many?)--when I'm in World Tour/Band mode, I'm not trying to "beat a game", I'm trying to put on a good show that's fun to play--it's why I hate randomly generated "surprise!" setlists anyway. Fortunately, I've been able to ignore most of them and still get enough stars per venue to advance :)

You have to go into the Dashboard, to the System blade > Storage > Game, pick Rock Band or Rock Band 2, and then just delete out the songs you don't want.

[Jerrith]

I do wish that they allowed you to select which DLC should be included in randomized sets. I bought both the Cars and the Who full albums, but hate some of the songs on each (and can't play others at Hard/Expert). Nothing sucks more than to get a randomly generated super-hard song that you a) don't like, or b) can't play. It's even worse when both are true.

I agree, a way to deselect songs for random play would be nice.  They did add one nice feature in that some of the random sets in the band world tour are difficulty level locked - "Challenging Mystery Set" etc...  On guitar, I don't really run into the cases you mentioned.  With so many songs, I'm ok with giving things I don't like another chance, should they happen to come up (since it's probably been a long time since I last played it), and for can't play, that's exactly one song "Snow (Hey-oh)" at the moment, which means it's a good chance to practice it, fail, and then take the minor fan hit.

Honestly though, I think this goes back to how I play this game differently from some (many?)--when I'm in World Tour/Band mode, I'm not trying to "beat a game", I'm trying to put on a good show that's fun to play--it's why I hate randomly generated "surprise!" setlists anyway. Fortunately, I've been able to ignore most of them and still get enough stars per venue to advance :)

I think that's what it really comes down to - are you having fun playing these songs?  If not, they should probably be removed (or ignored, since as you pointed out, you can avoid the mystery setlists).

I did run into one other thing last night that annoyed me, but perhaps it's realistic:  I was 4k fans away from my next staff member, and went to play one more song.  Got the option to play something else (the new Paramore song) for a Hot Topic promotion.  Sure, sounds good...  Played it, gold star'ed it.  Lost 40k fans.  What?!?  A warning would have been nice.  Most of the you'll lose fans options have them, but not this one.  Made me wonder, did I lose even more fans by getting gold stars? It's insignificant (in terms of fans) in the end, but it's the only place I've felt "cheated" by the game.

[bhodi]

I hate random setlists. All my friends hate random setlists.

Oh look, green grass high tides followed by run for the hills. Fuck you, Rock Band.

Random setlists should be random until you select it, and then it should say "Your fans have chosen THIS LIST:" and give you the option to cancel out or pick again, even if you lose fans. There's nothing worse than getting to the last song and having it whip out Snow.

[Big Gulp]

Finally got it.  I've just gotten the band back together, and Xenu & the Body Thetans can rock once more!

[WayAbvPar]

Having some folks over for a bachelor party in about a month, so I will definitely pick it up before then. Sounds like all the changes they made were for the good. Nice when that happens.

[OcellotJenkins]

The only thing lacking in my opinion is a way to see your high scores and number of stars by instrument and by difficulty.  When they replaced the old Solo Tour with Challenges, that was lost.  People on the official forums are up in air about it in a big way.  The consensus is that they should either patch back in the Solo Tour or add some additional stat information to the Quick Play list.

[caladein]

http://www.joystiq.com/2008/09/16/declaration-of-independence-reading-gets-perfect-vocal-score-in/

Hi-larious.

RB Vocals have always been a joke so I'm not surprised.  It's a lot like how guitar is a recorder to a real guitar's clarinet so the realism/difficulty/snob-factor gap is probably to be expected.

The more annoying problem with talkie parts in RB is that some parts were just outright broken ("Next To You" and "Hand That Feeds" come to mind).

Overall though, still very much .

[Jerrith]

I did manage to get a RB2 strat.  It's great - better than the RB1 strats (wired and wireless) in many ways, with just one flaw.  The back button is much less accurate for purposes of activating overdrive.  Sometimes I push it, and nothing happens.

However, someone just pointed out that it has a port that you can hook up a bass pedal to, and use that to activate overdrive instead.  Going to give that a try and see if that makes up for it. :)

[Samwise]

I'm worried about GH:WT's drum set as well - I don't understand how their bass pedal is going to stay in the same place.

It somehow moves around less than the entire RB drum kit does, despite not being anchored to the rest of the kit in any way.  I can only imagine it's got nanoengineered gecko foot on the bottom or something.

[AcidCat]

Is it just me or is E-Pro ridiculously hard to sing for being one of the starter songs?

[Special J]

Picked it up a few days ago and am really enjoying myself.  The gameplay obviously hasn't changed much but I like the new features.  World Tour is way more flexible and combined with the online tour, is great for someone like me that can't often get a competent 2nd player around, let alone 4.  Transferring your old songs over is huge plus for me.

At worst I got 100 or so songs and an update for my money.  I wasn't so sure about the song list originally but it's grown on me.  Ace of Spades - yeah!

Just need to go back to RB1 to beat 3 songs on Hard.  88% through on GGaHT. 

[Azazel]

I hope they don't take another year to release this in Europe (as RB1 did)

Could be worse. It's still not released in Australia.

Have I mentioned FUCK YOU EA lately?   

[Big Gulp]

My one gripe so far is in how they implemented your band roster.  I love being able to fill up my band with premade characters, but I wish they had alternate male/female singers.  Watching my male lead singer singing "We Got the Beat" is disconcerting.

[Big Gulp]

Watch your ass, Charlene!

[Special J]

My one gripe so far is in how they implemented your band roster.  I love being able to fill up my band with premade characters, but I wish they had alternate male/female singers.  Watching my male lead singer singing "We Got the Beat" is disconcerting.

Yeah, or when the game keeps putting in a dude to sing Lazy Eye.

What?

I agree with the earlier post about not seeing your high score by instrument.  I guess the way around it would be make four bands.  Or 16 if you want to break it down by difficulty. 

[Morat20]

Hey, I don't have Rock Band (just got the 360) -- I was going to buy Rock Band 2 in order to get the upgraded instruments. Is that a good plan? Are they compatable with the new Guitar Hero stuff?

Should I get the GH band kit instead, if they are compatable?

[Samprimary]

Rock Band 2 is pretty tits and I've done a good job keeping it as full of Skynyrd as I can manage.

[Samwise]

Hey, I don't have Rock Band (just got the 360) -- I was going to buy Rock Band 2 in order to get the upgraded instruments. Is that a good plan? Are they compatable with the new Guitar Hero stuff?

Should I get the GH band kit instead, if they are compatable?

It's all supposed to be compatible this time around.  I would recommend holding off on buying the RB2 instruments, at least until you've had a chance to try both out.  I might want to take another crack at them just to make sure, but based on my first impressions I'm 95% sure I'm going to be getting the GH controllers and buying the instrumentless version of RB2.

[Big Gulp]

It's all supposed to be compatible this time around.  I would recommend holding off on buying the RB2 instruments, at least until you've had a chance to try both out.  I might want to take another crack at them just to make sure, but based on my first impressions I'm 95% sure I'm going to be getting the GH controllers and buying the instrumentless version of RB2.

Also, if you haven't gotten the original Rock Band yet when you buy Rock Band 2 for the low cost of renting the original game and $5 in MS bucks you can transfer all the songs from the first game over.