Whew, like I said, I am coughing up a lung at the moment, but the show must go on. If out of every review I've ever done this one ends up the most disjointed and makes the least amount of sense I apologize in advance. This review shouldn't be that long anyhow, if you've never touched the Guitar Hero or Rock Band franchise, then this review isn't your cup of tea anyhow.
So in this game just like the last you play music and you play one of four instruments, unless you're the type that likes to sing and play guitar or bass, I've never tried but I definitely should, songs like Modest Mouse's "Float On" I wouldn't even have to gander up at the lyrics, they've been imprinted on my noodle from repeated listens before they were even in the game. So anyway you play any one of the 84 tracks that are on the disc and rock out by yourself or with band members you enlisted over XBL or just some local buds all rocking out together. If 84 songs for some reason aren't enough, there are another 20 coming down the pipe shortly that will be free as well, my guess is that they'll be from Harmonix artists like Freezepop, Anarchy Club, Bang Camaro etc. That's not a bad thing, the in-house bands that exist at Harmonix know how to write good stuff.
One of the biggest features is that the Tour Mode is finally online, that was my biggest complaint with the first one, because I didn't have a steady stream of people over to play and jam out with me I couldn't even touch that mode. So, in this mode you travel from city to city, venue to venue playing setlists and gaining fans. Along the way optional challenges arise, and you can hire personnel like band managers, roadies, sound guys, and the different ones you come across have different attributes about them so you may actually prefer one manager over another. There's also Tour Challenges and a Battle of the Bands, both of which are constantly updated with new challenges week to week, it's a great idea and while I think it would be really cool to have two complete bands competing against one another straight through XBL, I'm sure technically that would be a stretch to pull off so online leaderboards will have to do, it's still satisfying to see your ridiculous band name, like Flight of the Ebony Woman posting a score that slaps you in the top #200 out of thousands of bands. Just knowing that others who play the challenges may run across my band makes me laugh.
Lastly there's still a training mode as well as a Drum Trainer which helps people play lots of drum beats and fills at various speeds. This will definitely help people get over the hurdle of playing the drums if they feel they have no rhythm. Oh, and if for some reason they really have no rhythm at the end of the day you can turn on special features, one of which is No Fail, I can see this being a mode widely used at parties where people playing the game may be also having some booze. No longer do the drunks have to fear that someone will fail the band as a whole and ruin the moment.
Since I have the original Rock Band instruments I can't really comment on the new stuff, but I've heard it's much improved and finally all wireless. Also a quick comment on those who own the first game, for 400MS Points you can transfer all but three songs from the Rock Band disc onto your hard drive to use in Rock Band 2. So if you're in that boat and aren't the kind to go and buy weekly DLC, you'd still have a total of 159 songs to play.
Alrighty people, I have spoken enough, I'm surprised my fever and coughing has allowed me to type all that I have, and I think it even makes sense. Bottom line, if you own the first Rock Band, go out and get Rock Band 2. If you don't have Rock Band, go buy the big Rock Band 2 bundle.
Final Verdict: Buy
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