Rock Band 2: Looking Silly in Front of Journalists
I entered the Los Angeles Convention Center early today, opting to skip out on the Governor of Texas’ Keynote Speech (Is Texas releasing a new game? I don’t think so!) in an effort to get some hands-on time with the next iteration in the Rock Band series, Rock Band 2 at E3 2008. The PR folks outside of the MTV Games room were nice enough to squeeze me and Quarterplay’s Previews Editor Katie Lind into the first demonstration of the day, alongside the fellas at GiantBomb among others. What’d the developers at Harmonix have to say about the sequel’s enhancements? Rather, are they making good on the promise of Rock Band becoming a “platform” rather than an annual release? Hit the bump for all that juicy preview goodness.
So what makes Rock Band 2 worth your $60, especially in a year when so many other rhythm games are vying for you and your friends’ drunken weekday nights? For starters, RB2 comes with a hell of a lot of music behind it. Not only do you get the 84 songs that come with the disc, but you also get the literally hundreds of songs available as downloadable content.
What about my RB1 disc? Do I have to swap it into my system just to play those songs in RB2? Well, President of Harmonix Alex Rigopulos announced during the Microsoft Press Conference on Monday morning that “most songs” would be compatible. And that answer just wasn’t enough, so we put a more specific question to the Harmonix folks this morning: “What the hell does that mean?!” According to them, it means that due to licensing issues, you’ll be able to burn the RB1 disc to your console’s hard drive… for a “nominal fee… under $5.” Relax, relax, it’s just so they can keep everything legal. You could just go rent that disc otherwise (and you still can).
But are you going to have to re-buy a whole bunch more of silly plastic instruments? Only if you really want to. Yes, they are updating the instruments, though Alex Navarro from Harmonix told us “I believe all instruments that worked before will still work.” Which is good for me, as I clearly have no real ability using the Rock Band guitar as compared to it’s Guitar Hero 3 counterpart.
If you’re like me and bought the Rock Band drum kit just to learn some basic rhythm (and maybe to vent a little bit while playing “March of the Pigs”) you’ll be excited terrified to know that if you really want, you can make RB2 into a drum teacher. While they’ll be releasing an updated (and update-able) new drum kit, Harmonix is also partnering with Ion to release a full electronic drum set — you can unplug the damn thing and play a set for Nine Inch Nails at the Tweeter Center that night, if you’re so inclined. When you combine the Ion drum kit with RB2’s new “drum trainer” mode, you have yourself all the tools required to learn how to play the actual drums — starting with simple beats, moving onto simple fills and then “getting much more complex.”
Perhaps the most exciting new addition comes with the Battle of the Bands mode. Similar to what Bungie does with Halo 3, Harmonix will be adding new types of challenges weekly for players to test their chops against. What happens when you beat all your friends’ scores? You get to take on the world. (Hilariously, the QA team at Harmonix set a bar that cannot be beaten by the once/half hour demos the Harmonix guys have been giving at E3 this year.)
All in all, Rock Band 2 still holds onto it’s stance as a platform rather than an annual release, virtually guaranteeing their continued dominance in the multiple plastic instrument market. Now if only I could find someone to sing with my iconic group, The Iwo Jima Babies. What, too soon?
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