Rock Band 2

Rock Band 2

As anyone who has pulled together a group of friends for a Rock Band party knows, strapping on plastic instruments around the warm glow of the television screen and pretending to be Nirvana, Blondie, Metallica and the Foos till the early hours is videogaming at its most social and, dare we say it, fun. Rock band 2 could have been Harmonix’s difficult second album but, by playing it safe, building upon the original, delivering one of the best new soundtracks in music game history and ironing out some of the first game’s foibles, they’ve turned out a blockbuster.

The news that music games are now the second most popular videogame genre in the world means that we probably don’t need to go into the basics. In Rock Band 2, you and up to three friends star in a virtual band together, playing drums, guitar, bass and vocals in time with famous tracks, like karaoke but with scoring. One of the main innovations with this sequel is the ability to play World Tour mode, the game’s main campaign, over Xbox LIVE. In fact, you can now play with any combination of local and online friends, giving a sense of purpose and progression whatever the set-up in your living room. Should you wish to, you can play through Tour Mode on your own too, although this will never be as fun as getting a full set of players together for the ride.

A Battle of the Bands mode provides a rotating selection of challenges ranging from achieving the highest score in a specified set of songs to getting the best streak of notes in a level. One of the best features of the game is to allow owners of the first release to import 53 of its 58 tracks (for a small price). If you add these to the 84 songs in this second game and you have a giant library of music to play through. With a number of tweaks to the interface searching through these tracks and filtering to find the ones you want is a lot easier than it was before, a welcome change to the original’s otherwise robust template.

The biggest treats are reserved for would be drummers who receive a Drum Trainer, an interactive tutor that will teach you how to play drum beats and up to 45 different fills with impressive flair. After all, while the guitar modes are completely abstracted from playing the actual instrument, drumming in Rock Band is very similar to drumming in reality. A 'No Fail' mode also allows players of any ability to play through tracks without penalty, encouraging complete newcomers to try their hand without embarrassing themselves. The result is a wonderful package, the most competent and complete music game on the market, one that caters to players of a huge variety of abilities and musical interests.

5 out of 5