Gamers Month - Rock Band 2

Rock Band 2



Developer: Harmonix Music Systems
Publisher: MTV Games
Distributor: Electronic Arts Distribution
System: Xbox 360
Release: September 2008

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Rock Band, much like Harmonix's prior gaming efforts, is really nothing more than a glorified WAV player. Let's get that part out of the way right now. It is a barebones, simplistic and borderline archaic waste of time. But I, along with millions of others who have purchased this game, can vouch for the fact that it exceeds its premise and becomes a package of party magic waiting to be experienced by you and your friends to peel away hour after hour from your life. If you have no friends, stop reading right now; you will only be disappointed and possibly suicidal.

A brief history on the developer: Harmonix Music Systems was founded by two MIT colleagues: Alex Rigopulos and Eran Egozy. They began their foray into rhythm games after the runaway success of games like Dance Dance Revolution and PaRappa The Rapper in Japan and began development on Frequency in 1999 to be released in 2001. A sequel called Amplitude was released in 2003. Both of these titles were criminally overlooked. However, Harmonix really came into prominence when, in 2005, they developed Guitar Hero. While being a simple rhythm game with a phenomenal rock soundtrack in the gaming vein of their prior efforts, it was its bundled guitar controller that set it apart from every other similar game on the market. That particular game spawned a sequel that surpassed the original in gameplay and all things looked good for the talented Boston natives. However, at the time, Activision (acting as publisher of the series) took the project from Harmonix and decided to stamp it with the almighty dollar sign. Development duties were handed over to Neversoft, they milked as much advertising dough as they could and then the tit grew sour. Guitar Hero III and every subsequent game since then, despite having mixed reviews, was mostly panned by fans of the series claiming it no longer "feels like Guitar Hero". Harmonix then went on to develop Rock Band and added a whole "band" set of peripherals. Neversoft, hot on its heels, copied the same model with Guitar Hero: World Tour (Their title was release just a little over a month after Rock Band) and the rest, as they say, is history.

So the one question we always seem to hear is the perennial: "Which should I choose? Rock Band or Guitar Hero: World Tour?" I'd like to give you a definitive answer but, in my experience, it lies mostly on your loyalties to either franchise. From the viewpoint of this humble reviewer, I didn't see Neversoft as a true musical development machine when the took over the series with the third installment and they don't show any signs of improving it in the near future. To me, the series took a turn for the worst when 50-year-old, suit-swaggering musical halfwits tried to come up with catchy-ass compilations of what they thought the cool kids were into, whereas Rock Band has always been, first and foremost, about the music and the immersion of all players involved. Up until its release, there had been the obvious developer predecessors like Guitar Hero and Karaoke Revolution, Konami's Guitar Revolution, to cite a few examples, although we'd never really been exposed to a drum game in the North American home console market. (To my knowledge, DrumMania was only released in arcades) However, when all those elements were combined into one neat little package, the game became a juggernaut of player immersion. Play the game by yourself and you're bound to have a good time, yes. However, play this game with a group of friends and something really magical happens.

You start out by creating your characters, form a band, give it a name and then you're on the road touring the world with only your mom and your talent to help you and your band on your rise to fame. You have your guitar player, your bass player, singer and drummer and, while requiring a bit of practice to synchronize your whole crew, you're really all immersed into the experience that you have a band playing on stage. If one of you starts slacking, you start to notice and the whole band suffers because of it. This becomes especially apparent if you have a good sound system: Bassist misses a few notes? Your entire groove just drops out of the track and you might actually get lost. Drummer misses a few swings? Your entire "heartbeat" is just gone. Guitarist screws up part of the solo? You done fucked up, son. Don't even get me started on the singer. It's always his fault we suck anyway.

Unison is key and soon you begin to quibble just like your real-life rock gods! Add some intoxicants to that mix and all the joy and politics of being in a band bubble straight to the surface with fury: Everyone wants to play the drums, NO ONE wants to play the bass, the guitarist always gets the hot chicks and pays for all the drugs but, if we all fail out, it's ALWAYS the singer's fault; no questions.

Of course, none of this would be much fun if there wasn't a good song selection to choose from and, at the time of its release, just between the first two Rock Band games (I count the first game's track list in here since the 360 version has the option of purchasing a "transfer key" from Microsoft to copy all the on-disc songs from the first game into your hard drive, thus adding them to your library in this game) there were 148 songs with a total of 500 available for download by the end of 2008; as of this post's date, there were 663 songs available for Rock Band and the list grows weekly. (Full list here) These songs range from anything to grunge, indie, punk, pop, metal, blues, glam, southern rock, classic rock, funk, emo, prog, etc. and these are carefully chosen to ensure that, not only is every genre well-represented, but that the challenge level is accessible to all players instead of becoming a note-mashing contest where songs are padded with extra notes just to increase their difficulty; which is really what the Guitar Hero series has become at this point. It helps when a good portion of the in-house developers who work at Harmonix are also real musicians who are in currently active bands, working producers and music critics. The online support for the game is also phenomenal. Aside from having the developers constantly releasing weekly downloadable releases and posting news about upcoming releases, there is the Rock Band community (Look me up! My handle is ISlangKnowledge and my band's name is Schlock Mariachi) to help you with a number of things including, but not limited to, organizing Battle of the Bands contests, postings seeking band members, finding random people to jam with or just plain discuss the music you love.

This is a game made by music lovers for music lovers. There are no "boss battles", "bonus stages" or "extra lives" in here. That kind of content is irrelevant when your sole desire is to rock out. The only things you have are cities all over the world to visit as you dominate it with your rock prowess and the option to buy clothing for your band to match that fiery stage presence. This is a world that lives and breathes rock and the game ensures you feel this from the first time you and your friends strum, sing or swing your first note to the time you put down your respective instrument 8 hours later, sweaty, intoxicated, exhausted and only left with the desire for more energy so you can keep going for "just one more song".

For those who have rocked out, I salute you.

Jam it back in, in the dark.