Rock Band 2

My pre-thoughts before buying this game were centered around the available download content already out there, I mis-presumed that the content would be available for the WII straight after release, but I was wrong. Currently there are no songs available for DLC in Europe (And reading on the forums we are going to be geting a few tracks a week soon, but this puts us around 250 songs behind the US of A!)

However once you get passed this issue, the game itself is excellent.

Guitar Hero is fun, but RockBand2 takes it a step further giving you more feeling of being in a band (rather than just playing an arcade game for points - ala GH).

The songs that come with the game are excellent and varied enough to keep everyone happy.

The GH5 guitar works seamlessly with RB2 (the only issue I had is that I am very picky about my calibration, and even using the RB2 automatic calibration I am still not 100% happy, but this is just me, the Calibration settings are excellent (both automatic and manual).

The Tour is another great section of the game (which I didn't even realise existed for a few days, presuming Challenge and Battle of the Bands were the only options in the Band section.....big Heading at the top of the menu 'BEGIN TOUR' should have been a blatant giveaway but I just presumed it was the Menu Heading :)

Having played this for a full week, including many late late nights I cannot praise it enough. The Menus are well presented (and look great in HDTV mode on the WII). The ingame graphics aren't quite as beautiful as on the 360 but the camera work covers most of this by switching between styles (black and white, grainy etc) and lets be hones the most important bit is the Guitar track which you are concentrating on most of the time which looks great!)

I just wish more DLC was available as this was the MAIN reason I bought the game after seeing the amazing DLC content thats available to American WII users (Pearl Jam's new album etc, which apparently Europe will not be able to download until 2010!!!)

anyway, had this been included as soon as the European version was released then Amazon would not have had enough stars for me to rate the game, so I guess thats a good enough reason for it to have been delayed :)

A definite must buy, 5 Stars!

Rock Band 2 is my first RB-brand game after playing pretty near all the Guitar Hero games, so this review is mostly a comparison for anyone else moving the same way.

Now that RB and GH games have good cross-brand support for the peripheral controllers, playing both types of game is a worthwile thing to do as you don't have to pay for lots of different controllers. I've played the RB2 game with the GH3 Les Paul and the GH Metallica guitars and both work perfectly.

Playing the songs themselves in RB is a slightly different experience to GH. In general the RB songs have more chords to play and slightly fewer fiddly solos, so overall difficulty is about the same even though the feel is subtly different.

The career mode in RB has more going on than in the GH games. While in GH you just have to beat songs to automatically move on to the next venue, in RB you have to gain fans and cash as well as hire various promoters, managers and roadies to help you open up new venues. This has plus points and minus points: while there's more feel of growing a fan base etc, the fact you play more gigs to open up new venues means you have to repeat songs. This is OK if you like them all but gets less fun when you have to replay songs you didn't really like first time round.

RB 2 has a stronger support for downlaoding new songs than the GH series, a plus, but - and this is an irritating but - there are several in-game challenges which rely on you having downloaded certain tracks to complete them, which obviously costs.

So overall, RB 2 is no better or no worse than GH 5 for example: just different. For everything you'd prefer in one game, there's a balance with something you'd think isn't as good. It's definitely worth playing both brands.

Having been a Guitar Hero player for quite a while (GH III, Aerosmith, Metallica and 5) I was wondering how much better Rock Band could be. Having enjoyed The Beatles: Rock Band I thought I'd get Rock Band 2... of course thats not the only reason. I wanted Downloadable Content - something Guitar Hero is severely lacking right now.

I've been playing it for a month and while I can say the Guitar Hero 5 engine is better, but the overall quality of Rock Band 2 is better.

I find GH5s note charts clearer and the new menu and party play systems are great - giving it a hand over Rock Bands engine - but because of GH5s very poor set list and DLC (oh, and the skipping during gameplay) its really not worth the asking price.

Excellent gameplay, menus along with a great setlist to get started and already a great selection of Downloadable Content. Keep in mind though, the Wii PAL version (European) is currently behind all other versions (combinations of Console and region) in terms of Downloadable content.. such as the lack of Slipknot and Them Crooked Vultures. However, Harmonix have said they wish to match the DLC available on all other platforms by March and for that I forgive them!

Rock Band 2, The Beatles: Rock Band and Guitar Hero: Metallica are the only ones I play now, with RB2 left in the console.. and I look forward to the next titles beating Guitar Hero outright.