Rock Band 2
- Take your band on an online-enabled World Tour mode, record albums, tackle the addictive Set Challenges, or even compete against other bands, either in your living room or halfway across the world, in the “Battle of the Bands” mode… plus all of the modes you know and love from the first Rock Band game!
- Rock Band 2 pushes music simulation farther than it’s ever gone with a tool that actually teaches you how to play the drums in real life – or you can just have fun jamming and playing along to songs like an animal in the Freestyle Drum mode.
Product Description
Rock Band 2 lets you and your friends take your band on an even more expansive and immersive world tour – in person or online – and continue your rock and roll fantasy. Harmonix, deliver Rock Band 2, the next step to the platform that lets audiences of all ages interact with music in an all-new way. Rock Band 2 lets players vicariously jam out as some of the best… More >>
Tags: MTV Games, Rock Band 2
Nintendo Wii | ed2yp79 2009/11/08
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By Kenya Goldsberry, 2009/11/08 @ 5:49 am
Rock Band II for the WII is fun and addictive but a step child to the others. Many small features (like crowd interaction) don’t exist or work as well. Very frustrating is that less than 10% of the 500 songs released on the XBox are released for WII. Most frustrating is that the game designers only release their music (punk and rock). There are 0/500 R&B and country songs. Rock has its roots in these genres. There are challenging rhythms missing for the drums and Rock Band’s bass guitar is also hopelessly not worth playing without it.
Rating: 3 / 5
By Michael Kerner, 2009/11/08 @ 6:01 am
There is no doubt that music games have really dominated with the Nintendo Wii this past year. While there were some bright spots that cma eout this past year with the Guitar Hero franchise. It really has driven more gamers into the need to rock out loud, brilliantly. But, for this past year, I really did wish that could’ve honestly been the same with Rock Band. After the first one which came out earlier this year, many Wii gamers were a bit dissapointed with not just the fact that weren’t as many of the features that matched the stamina of the PS3 and Xbox 360 editions, but the fact that it also lagged behind, with the missed opportunities of having any online gameplay, and the ability to download songs onto the Wii. Now, there is a second chance to see this Rock Band shine onto the Wii’s hearts, but is it worth it, or just a bunch of sour grapes?
Rock Band 2 for the Nintendo Wii tries to bring the appeal from what had occured strongly from the PS3 and 360 editions of Rock Band, and re-introduces the appeal for the Nintendo Wii. Mostly here, that is done as a much better job the second time around here. What has improved on the game well is not just the graphics, but with the ability of the Nintendo Wii to have the opportunity to download music and added contect onto the game for the system, which not only is a good thing, but it feels like it catches up and hopefully will let those Wii buffs, say I want to rock out loud.
The song play list isn’t as diverse as Guitar Hero: World Tour showed, but there are some great classics here like Bon Jovi’s Livin’ On A Prayer, Journey’s Anyway You Want It and guilty pleasures like Survivor’s Eye Of The Tiger and the Red Hot Chili Peppers 1991 mega-anthem Give It Away. Still there are a few surprises like Bob Dylan’s Tangled Up In Blue and the funky one-hit wonder of The Presidents Of The United States Of America with Lump. But with extra songs along the way, especially with 30 songs for downloading at the start and hopefully more later through the Wii shop, or Wiiware, there will be more joy for Wii gamers to rock out loud. The graphics improve nicely, while the gameplay feels like it is more interactive than before, through the new improved music equipment and gameplay. The graphics and control feels a bit more mainstreamed for those who want a second chance to jam to their favorite, who were either disgrunted from before with the original version and the idea of just buying those $30 track packs on discs seperately.
All in all Rock Band 2 for the Nintendo Wii, isn’t as diverse musically with the songs to strum to as was the case with Guitar Hero: World Tour, but the game itself has improved well, and gives Wii owners a fresh chance to hopefully see and thrive on the full Rock Band experience in a light it had missed out on before for the Wii. I liked the feel of it, but I hope there is more to come.
Graphics: B
Sound: B
Control: B
Fun & Enjoyment: B for solo play; B 1/2+ for multiplayer
Overall: B
Rating: 4 / 5
By Madelline, 2009/11/08 @ 6:01 am
The provided (and required) USB hub is the wireless transmitter (dongle) that comes with the guitar in Wii Rock Band 2 Special Editiion. You don’t need to buy a hub to play all three instruments that come with the game. It is provided.
But, despite coming with three different manuals, the game’s documentation never mentions how to physically setup the complete game. There is a game manual, a guitar manual and a drum manual. The microphone manual is one page of the game manual. The guitar and drum manuals are basically a numbered sequence of pictures. There is little or no text and no mention of how to use either instrument with other instruments in the game. No wonder people think they have to buy a hub!
We never opened the guitar box for the first week; we had so much fun with just the drums and mic. But, after using up the only two USB ports on the Wii for the wireless drums and wired mic, we wondered how it was possible to hook up three instruments. The guitar wireless dongle looks just like the drum dongle, but, it is also a usb hub. In pages and pages of documentation, the only clue about this is a couple of lines of microtype nearly hidden between the guitar setup pictures and several paragraphs of disclaimer gobbledygook.
We think it is cool that EA provides the needed hub. Too bad they don’t make its presence and its use more clear for the non-techie families the game is aimed at. So, we ding the game one star for this and the anemic song list.
If you like today’s pop radio scene, you will probably like the song list. If you don’t, like us, the song list will seem anemic. Even if you do like the list of included songs, that list is short, too short for the money paid. The song discs and online content that you have to pay extra for are more of the same, with a bare few good classics thrown in. My son summed up the content last night by saying, “Yeah, I’ve heard these songs, but I wouldn’t have paid to buy any of them!” A perfect description of the available songs for the Wii, right now.
EA could learn from American Idol. There is a reason AI is so successful. The songs the contestants are given to choose from are killer classics, not bubblegum or noisy junk. EA needs to provide more of the killer classics. The game is still fun to play even if you don’t like the songs (a drum riff is a drum riff). But it is even more fun to play with a song that you love. Our whole family joined in on the two (only two! Wha?) Steely Dan songs that we downloaded. That was when we discovered Rock Band. RB needs more songs like that.
Rating: 4 / 5
By James Donnelly, 2009/11/08 @ 8:14 am
I purchased GUITAR HERO WORLD TOUR back on Black Friday, and as much as I like the GUITAR HERO games for their decent catalog of songs, I’ve never been a huge fan of their on-screen interface. There’s a little too much graphic intensity on the game itself and it makes prolonged gameplay almost impossible without battling some intense vertigo. After about 4 songs (depending on length and difficulty), the walls start to breathe and the room starts to spin. I know that this is a pretty common issue with GUITAR HERO. And for the most part, I’ve never really been a huge fan of the songs that GUITAR HERO has offered. I think it’s a decent catalog, but it could be a lot better.
Then I got ROCK BAND 2. And that is how a music simulator game should be!
I had the first ROCK BAND for PS2, and I loved it comparitively to the GUITAR HERO games because of the plain facts that A: Most, if not all, of the songs were the original artists (which was lacking from about 90% of the first 3 GH releases) and B: The instrument interface is so much easier on the senses. I can play RB for literally hours without feeling the effects that 3-4 songs on GH would have. RB 2 is even better, and for the Wii, it’s just great having the wireless freedom.
Also, thru the Wi-Fi connection for the Wii, there is an amazing catalog of downloadable songs that include songs from the previous two RB TRACK PACKS, and it’s updated constantly. ROCK BAND was already, in my opinion, the best of the music simulators out there, and RB2 just solidifies it at the top of the heap. I mean, just for the fact that downloadable content includes songs from Nine Inch Nails, Boston, Stevie Ray Vaughan, and James Brown… well, that’s just eclectic enough to keep my interest!
Great game. Great playability. This is the way to go!
BRING ON ROCK BAND BEATLES!!!!
Rating: 5 / 5