From here:
Rock Band 2 will be compatable with all of the downloaded content from Rock Band, and you can also copy your Rock Band original disc songs over to the new one, so RB2 will have a huge library of music with more coming out every week.
The list doesn’t thrill me but it’s not too terrible. I wish they’d ahve more metal and prog rock because those are the most interesting to play generally. Some of it is too poppy (Alanis Morisette?) but with so much content there will be enough to like.
I wish they’d release some kind of additional discs for those of us with PS2s, though I understand why they don’t.
Well, they released it today. No wonder I’ve not seen it. Nifty. They love us “poor” kids after all.
What, no Freezepop?
That’s a massive list. I don’t care for most of the tracks, but with such variety, who would? When is RB2 set for release?
REALLY happy they set it up to be completely backwards compatible with rock band, both DLC and disc content!!! I cant write enough exclamation points! Seriously, very good decision. That plus it has a Modest Mouse song! Ok so its Float On but still…
September for the XBox 360, later for the others.
As far as I know, the instruments will also be forward compatable so that you could just buy the game disc. But the new instruments are supposed to be more reliable, and the drums are quieter and velocity sensitive. There’s also a third party drum kit that will be available that looks pretty cool.
I can’t decide what to do - I’ve wanted RB since I played it at my friend’s place, but I haven’t wanted to invest $550ish for one game (I probably won’t get much use out of a console). The 20gb version of the Xbox just dropped price and is $275 at target, but in less than a month they’re coming out with a new Xbox that runs cooler, is more reliable, and has a 60gb drive for $350. But if I’m going to wait till August for the Xbox, I might as well wait till September for the nicer Rock Band 2 instruments… hmmmmmmmmmmmmm.
I’ll be buying that premium drum set as soon as it’s available. It looks absolutely awesome, and I love that you can unplug it from Rock Band, plug it into a standard E-drum brain, and turn it into a set of standalone drums. Very cool. And the current drums drive me batty with their constantly breaking and dropping notes even when they ‘work’. So that’s the biggest feature I’m looking for.
As for the set list… Whatever. Really, the way the game has evolved the setlist is really nothing more than another, bigger song pack. I’ll play the songs I like (and there’s quite a few of those), and ignore the ones I hate. In Rock Band 2, there’s no solo mode like RB1 where you have to ‘beat’ all the songs. Instead, they’ve added solo world tour like the Band World tour, plus a number of ‘challenges’ that you can beat for high score leaderboards (for example, a ‘play all 70’s songs’ challenge, or an all-metal challenge). And downloadable content works just as well in tour mode as the on-disc songs.
Harmonix says that there will be 500 songs in total available at launch (you’ll also be able to import your current Rock Band 1 disc songs), so there won’t be a shortage of good songs to play.
Speaking of that… The Who 12-pack came out on DLC for Xbox yesterday. I’ve been playing it all night, and it’s a blast. And some of the best rock songs ever (Behind Blue Eyes, Who Are You, Baba O’Reilly, Going Mobile, My Generation, Summertime Blues, Eminence Front, a few others).
If they keep releasing packs like this, I don’t really care what’s on the disc. Except for one thing - if you want to play with others online, it gives everyone a large set of songs everyone else is guaranteed to have. It can be hard to find someone to play online who has the same DLC you do.
I like about half of those songs, and only hate a few. Hell, a lot of that stuff is what I listened to in high school. Anyone else around here graduate in early-to-mid-90s?
Presumably it’s Christmas for the rest of the platforms and since I bought Rock Band for my Wii a couple of days ago I’m already jazzed up for the sequel.
(FWIW I think that the Wii Rock Band got shoved out the door so they could day and date the track pack with the PS2 version on Sunday and have a few months of space between RB and the release of RB2. It explains why it was unnecessarily stripped down by the studio doing the port; if the PS2 can have a feature there’s no reason the Wii shouldn’t. It’s still a lot of fun but I’m hoping that by the time RB2 drops they’ll have finished it.)
I have to ask: am I the only person who hopes for older stuff? And by older I don’t mean 1980’s; I’d like to see more tracks from the sixties and seventies. And why haven’t they done Classical Gas for Guitar Hero yet? And what are these kids doing on my lawn?
The drum part for Sing, Sing, Sing would be a killer.
Yay Master Exploder!
That is all…