Music Gaming Goodness: Rock Band 2 Rocks The House
by Derek Wilson on October 24, 2008 1:25 AM EST- Posted in
- GPUs
The Instruments: The Guitar and Mic
While the original Rock Band hardware will work with Rock Band 2 (which is nice), Harmonix did see fit to release updated versions for Rock Band 2. We'll start with the new guitar. Here it is:
Hold your computer upside down to look at it if you're left handed.
The first thing people will likely notice is that it looks very similar to the first Rock Band guitar. The changes are mostly tweaks that improve the feel of the guitar when playing. The fret buttons feel a bit better to press down, and the strumbar feels more solid as well.
Not really sure what all that means? Let's take a look at the make up of a guitar controller.
These are the fret buttons. You hold them down when the game tells you too.
This is the strumbar. You "pluck" it ... like a string?
In order to play games with a guitar controller, a fret button (or two or three ...) is held down and then the strum bar is either pushed up or down to simulate "playing" the note. This can take some getting used to for people who haven't played guitar before. It imitates the way playing a guitar requires strings to be pressed down and then plucked to get different sounds. Guitar controllers are a little more forgiving with the timing of things, but the general idea is there.
We haven't sticker'd up our new one yet.
Not all guitar controllers are created equal though. The Rock Band and Rock Band 2 guitars are only slightly different. But there is a much larger gap between the design of the Rock Band series of guitars and the Guitar Hero guitars. Some of the differences between the Rock Band and Guitar Hero guitars lead people to favor one style or another.
Pretty little maids all in a row.
In our opinion, the Guitar Hero strumbar is better as it has more tactile feedback. Many people prefer the way the buttons on the GH guitar are raised (making them a little easier to "find" if you get lost), but the RB and RB2 guitars are slightly more realistic in their design (with RB you feel ridges where frets with buttons slightly indented between as opposed to the raised and separated buttons on GH guitars). The kicker for us is that the Rock Band guitars feature buttons that are much easier to push down (the require less force to depress). This is a major plus, as playing fast or for long periods of time can be very difficult with the GH version (until you build up some major hand strength anyway).
The really new feature of the Rock Band 2 guitar is a built in camera and mic that can be used for automatic calibration. While automatic calibration is a great idea, there are some issues. But we'll cover that in the next section.
The guitar is wireless, and that's great, but it doesn't feature a rechargeable battery pack. It simply uses AA batteries. Wireless controllers just scream out for rechargeable batteries, especially when you've got the ability to charge over USB with the XBox 360. There is just no excuse for this.
Regardless of automatic calibration people are going to be polarized, and if you like one style of guitar controller you'll probably hate the other. For those who prefer the Rock Band guitar, the Rock Band 2 guitar is definitely improved, but not improved enough to warrant upgrading simply on the merits of the new version. At the same time, there's no reason to pick the older version if you need to buy a new controller.
The mic is still just a USB mic. It's not that great, and it isn't wireless. While everything else has the wireless option now, it's sad that we still have to be tethered to something with this one. But it does have a nice long cord and isn't going to really weigh you down that much. There isn't much interaction with the device really necessary, as it's just something you sing into.
It might be nicer not to require a controller to be used with it. Maybe Harmonix build a minimal range of buttons on there in the future to enable volume control and navigation around the screen a little easier. And then it'd be wireless and have more function. I wouldn't mind seeing a "premium" style mic with these sort of options. But for now, we're just stuck with a simple straight forward USB mic.
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Myrandex - Friday, October 24, 2008 - link
Umm I don't think rockband implies talent.I have no musical talent, and nor to I desire to obtain any musical talent. I can't even read sheet music when someone was teaching me, and it didn't bother me in the slightest bit.
The point of RB is fun. That's it. I used to think that all of these types of games were lame, until a friend brought over Guitar Hero 2. We played it until 3 am, and afterwards I realized that these games were fun (until you had to play lame songs, which is still a fault).
And I agree that this game is to music as FPS is to Military Training; after an intense CS session I certainly am not ready to head to cs_iraq and preventing the terrorist from setting us up the bomb!
explovewhisper - Saturday, December 7, 2019 - link
Rock Band was released on November 3, 2009 on the Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, and Wii consoles, supports all existing Rock Band instruments https://nhacchuong68.com/Myrandex - Friday, October 24, 2008 - link
Good article...I love RB and RB2, although I will admit with some of the songs I just think "WTF is this song doing in here" and here are SOOO many songs that I want to play on there that are not available.
I wish that there was some way to import songs into the game and define the tracks (or even let the game automatically decide that, although that'd take a lot of programming and remove a profit area from Harmonix with DLC), because frankly even the songs that are on DLC aren't the ones that I want to play. Sure some are there, but not the ones that I crave to play. And I am sure that there are plenty of other people in the same position as myself, and I am also sure that plenty of other people would not like the songs that I want. Thats the joy in everyone having their own invidial tastes (Rammstein is the band that I'd love to see more than anyone else on there for example)...
I remember 1 song on RB2 on expert on guitar was seriously just the green button at a certain interval that was not difficult at all (a lame rappish type song)...it didn't belong there at all! I fell asleep playing it on expert :-/
I don't play the drums often, but I will admit that the pedal from RB1 does frustrate me and the lack of an adjustable chair makes playin git uncomfortable (long legs makes it hard to hit the bedal properly because my knee will be bent at a less than 90 degree angle), so I pretty much just play guitar (or base). It is still fun though and I'd recommend it to anyone.
Jason
webstorm1 - Friday, October 24, 2008 - link
I have a PS3, and there is an option to queue songs for multiple song downloads. You can select Download in the background, so you don't have to wait for any song to download before moving on. Then you just go to the game navigation menu (can't remember the exact name, but it's the one you would use to actually start a game from) and select each song after it has downloaded to install it. I'm guessing this is an Xbox 360 limitation in the online service, so it may even be fixed if anyone cares to do so.Myrandex - Friday, October 24, 2008 - link
I couldn't quite figure out on page 1 what the author was trying to say for "You what you would if you..." slightly under the picture.Jason
Gary Key - Friday, October 24, 2008 - link
Corrected now, had a HTML tag error there...Devo2007 - Friday, October 24, 2008 - link
Instead of saying "The Premium Drum Kit" I think you should specifically mention that it's the ION Drum Rocker somewhere in the first half of page 5 -- it made things rather confusing when you kept saying "Premium Drum Kit" and then randomly referring to the kick pedal as the "ION Kick Pedal."DerekWilson - Saturday, October 25, 2008 - link
thanks for the advice. i updated the page.Diosjenin - Friday, October 24, 2008 - link
I have to thank you for the thoroughness with which you've dissected the drum kit(s) in particular. I don't actually own either 1 or 2, but I've played the first one a few times and the critiques you gave of the first set I feel are quite accurate, so I certainly trust the critiques you give of the new one(s).I do have to ask - is there an option to designate the hi-hat as the leftmost 'drum' rather than the one second from the left on the non-premium kit (where I presume you can just switch the pads)? If there's an option in either 1 or 2 to change this, do let me know, but I haven't ever played on a system where that's been the case, and not being able to play with my right arm crossed over my left remains my primary qualm with the drum setup as a whole - even above the horrible bass pedal feel and construction...
DerekWilson - Saturday, October 25, 2008 - link
you can't reassign pads and must rely on what the programmers defined for each song.this is definitely the most frustrating thing for me. having the flexibility of the premium kit here is nice as you can, for whatever song, make it "right" usually by switching the plugs in the brain for the yellow and red pads.
it still just makes me want to buy a real electronic drum kit and a kickbox though.