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Rock band rocks
Simply said, this game is hours of fun, and brings new music into the game, which adds some great stuff to the repetoire.

Calibration Issues... Game Has Potential
I have been a huge fan of the Rock Band series since the first game was released, so of course I picked up RB2 as soon as I could. I popped it in the 360 and starting playing with my brother and a friend of ours and all three of us immediately noticed timing issues with the songs. We went to the new calibration system to fix it and discovered that there was a radical shift in the calibration settings, as opposed to RB1. In RB1, the player could choose the type of TV they were using and it would calibrate accordingly, however with RB2, the player hits the pads/strum bar in time with a metronome to determine the "lag factor." This is supposed to be more accurate, but the audio/video calibration numbers have been different for me every single time, and none of them are the correct settings. I looked up "Rock Band 2 calibration" on Google and found numerous threads from people experiencing the same problems that I am, with very little results, and no fixes from Harmonix.

As a music veteran of almost ten years, I'm very disappointed that I am unable to play even the first few songs on the set list, and I will most likely be returning my game for either a new copy or a complete refund. If the new copy is experiencing the same lag issues as the previous version, I will most likely be switching to Guitar Hero World Tour when it is released. Furthermore, the track listing for Rock Band 2 is lacking in quality. However, the GH:WT set list seems to be about the same. Regardless, I'm still short $64.94 with hardly any noteworthy satisfaction from the sequel to a great game.

Like an Updated Rock Band
Rock Band 2 easily follows closely to it's predecessor. Much like the first game the menus and venues are relatively the same. Given some new songs, and some slightly enhanced visuals and modes, one wont have a hard time switching over.

Infact RB2 is a pinch easier on the timing window for hammer ons and pull offs. If this turns one away the difficulty has been raised to offer more a challenge, songs like Judas Preist's "Painkiller" and Metallica's "Battery" are quite the uproar. Luckily their still is a handfull of easy songs, and of slight difficulty.

RB2 versatile rocking track list feels a little blue. Many awesome songs, but so many filler alt rock bands that don't really live up to a Rock Band feeling swarm the game. It's not even so much the songs are bad, they just really don't fit the experience all too well. Atleast one has the option to transfer all RB1 songs to their HDD for use in RB2. As good as a boat load of new tracks smell it has a slightly offending odor to it. One must pay a light fee, and a few tracks aren't available. This is due to a licensing issue.

Rock out at a party with this stellar title, play at home and crank the speakers, download some tracks and invest some time in good qaulity music. Rock Band 2 is finally here.

This version lacks the 'gear' to immersivley play, but one should already of had access previously if purchasing this variant. Inside the booklet of the game contains a code which allows access to 20 free songs from the Rock Band site, as of now the songs have still yet to appear. Rock Band 2
features a strong online community and an even strong dowloadable content (DLC) basis. Every Tuesday songs are released, upon paying for them you can have access to entire albums! Harmonix has also allowed for single players to play World Tour mode, this is much like the multiplayr aspect of the previous game. 'Touring' locations all over the world unlocking new songs and venues as one progresses, you can even join up with your band to continue.

Overall Rock Band 2 is great, only main issue is unlocking every song is a bit tedious. The equalizers on certain songs sound poorly mixed.

The evolution of a platform
The prime difference between what the folks at Harmonix and the people at Neversoft/RedOctane are doing with their perspective games comes down to very important semantics. Neversoft's Guitar Hero series is a franchise. Harmonix's Rock Band is a platform. It's a huge distinction and the truth is that Rock Band's method benefits the consumers a lot more.

So when you're purchasing Rock Band 2, you'll getting a lot more value than you can imagine. Sure there's the 84 song (all master cuts) list and the 20 additional free bonus songs coming really soon, but what's important to note is the promise that Harmonix is keeping with: Rock Band is a platform, meaning every song under the Rock Band umbrella (with a few unfortunate nixes) will work with their games. So not only do all the songs you've been downloading for a year work, but also all but three songs in Rock Band 1 can be ripped to your hard drive (for a nominal $5 for licensing fees). This is a phenomenal value that values the customer more than paying for individual "expansion" packs that have no connectivity to one another. Platform versus franchise.

Alright, so there's a huge value here. But once you dig into the actual game, there's some good and some blah. Harmonix revamped the touring mode so that, regardless of playing single or multi, you have one World Tour. Previously, songs unlocked in solo play would show up in the multiplayer; here, though, regardless of whether you're playing by yourself or with friends, you're unlocking songs as you travel throughout the world. It's a lot more fun and emphasizes group play.

One of the issues I've run into is that the people I play Rock Band with aren't the best of players. We do it for fun and we'd invariably run into a brick wall in the tour where they'd have to move up to the next difficulty and couldn't. So far, we haven't run into that situation and have gotten a lot more out of touring that we used to. I hope this continues as this is the most exciting and fun aspect of the game.

Other game types have been included, as well. Your band can do the "Tour Challenge," which basically throws various set lists at you to get through. These set lists can be songs from a specific band or songs difficult on a certain instrument or songs of a certain theme, etc. A second game type is "Battle of the Bands" and puts your band against another band virtually, with a leaderboard to track your progress.

If you're looking for more character customization options, you'll probably be disappointed. There's a few more new hair types and a couple more faces, but for the most part it feels like the first Rock Band. This is a common thread throughout Rock Band 2: it feels a lot like the first Rock Band. It's more of a slow evolution. By far the best changes are ones that should have been in place the first time around, namely the fact you don't need a band leader and that you can have one character play any of the instruments. This is probably my favorite part of the new game (minus the songs).

But the songs are the real showcase. There's a lot of diversity here with a lot of new bands, some oldies and everything in between. But most of the songs are a ton of fun to play, which is the most important part. If you have Rock Band, this is a no brainer as the gameplay modes are more fun and you're not losing songs. If you're new, this is a terrific place to start. Many many hours have been logged so far and I can't wait for more.

Let There Be Rock
This game is beautiful. Literally and figuratively. I find myself admiring the menu screens because the color and artwork is so well put together.

The songs are good, for the most part. I suppose part of it comes down to personal preference, but the songs by Testament and Metallica I could have done without, as well as Drain You by Nirvana and the Beastie Boys track.

However, those are rather small annoyances in the context of the overall game. Stuff like Lazy Eye by Silversun Pickups alone make it worth having. Before this game was released I was planning to buy both it and Guitar Hero: World Tour. And I still may, but now I just am wondering what the point would be? There's no way GH: WT's tracks are going to match Rock Band's.

Anyways, back to the review. The game intelligence is fantastic. It reads if you have downloaded songs, and then uses them for some of the song sets. New the game are Challenges, which is basically just a tiered set of song sets. But it's cleverly done. For instance, I have downloaded quite a few Who songs, some by Oasis, and The Smashing Pumpkins, so when I reached a certain tier, there were four new Challenges to play, the Oasis challenge, the Smashing Pumpkins Challege, a Who's Next Challenge, and a Who's Live At Leeds challenge.

Also, it's much more fun now that you can play Tour mode with just one person. I have probably logged over 20 hours of total play so far and I still haven't unlocked all of the songs. There are a LOT.

And the promise of 20 more within the next couple of months will be fantastic.