Rock Band 2 (360) - Review
Harmonix’s and MTV Games’ Rock Band was a stunning success last year, beating the Guitar Hero to the punch at incorporating several more instruments besides just guitar into the music game set. Now, less than a year later, we’ve got Rock Band 2 (at least, those of us on Xbox 360s), and while it’s denoted as a sequel, it’s better to think of it as a version upgrade; there’s no major changes to gameplay (unless you never had the opportunity to play in Band World Tour mode before), and the set list is full of 84 new songs, so it may seem like simply a quick way to chug out a new title. But Rock Band 2 is very very polished, and a few new features and some tweaks to gameplay really make up for all the small failings that were in Rock Band. But more importantly, add in the fact that while there may only be 84 songs on disk, you have your DLC library as well as most of the original game’s songs available to play, making this title one that will continue to expand week after week.
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Guitar Hero: Aerosmith is the second expansion/spin-off of the Guitar Hero, the first being the rather dismal Guitar Hero Encore: Rocks the 80s. This time around, RedOctane and Neversoft have focused the game on the career of one of rock’s more influential bands, Aerosmith, providing a song list with more than half the titles from the band, the rest from groups that Aerosmith based their style on or similar genre-wise. While the game shows a lot more effort by the developers than Rocks the 80s, the fact that the game is short is a major problem, and likely puts this in the rent column for all but die-hard Aerosmith fans.
(2 votes, average: 4.5 out of 5)
Guitar Hero is produced by Red Octane, makers of quality Dance Dance Revolution pads and other console controllers, and Harmonix, who have produced Frequency, Amplitude, and the Karaoke Revolution games, and both companies do an outstanding job in their respective field. As a result, Guitar Hero may be the best music-based game to date by any company, certainly allowing you to rock out to a great selection of songs.
When it was announced that Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock was no longer in the hands of Harmonix but now in Neversoft’s court, I was a bit worried about the game series. While Neversoft is capable of game development, their design philosophy, taking the Tony Hawk series as the guide, is a bit stale, without only incremental increases in gameplay, while the attitude they add to the games is just not my thing. In more regards, Neversoft did not fail in their work on Guitar Hero III – the game plays just like the previous versions and attempts to add something new, but it doesn’t quite have the touch of refinement that I found Guitar Hero II had, and other new aspects of the game can be hit or miss. It’s still a Guitar Hero game, and it still can be fun, but it feels like only minimal additions were done as to make sure Neversoft had the game down and that we’ll likely see more monumental changes come Guitar Hero IV.
Ok, no stones please: I never played the original PaRappa the Rapper or its sequels, mainly because I wasn’t into console gaming at that time; I might have played it once or twice as demos or at a friend’s place, but my experience was limited that I can’t remember much about it, though have heard plenty. But I know this is considered a historically good title and was excited to hear news of its remake for the PSP.
Boogie, developed by EA Games for the Wii, is a rhythm game that combines two elements: dancing to music by moving the remote in time with the music, and singing in a similar fashion to Karaoke Revolution using the microphone provided by the game. The game’s mechanics are generally ok, but suffers quickly getting repetitve and lacking any real difficulty. The song selection is also ok, but is more heavily weighted to newer songs of today that may be unfamiliar to some gamers. The idea is interesting, but really doesn’t end up as well as other rhythm games out on the market presently.
Once Guitar Hero II came out, Activision suggested that they would continue to develop the series, not only into Guitar Hero III, but also as genre-specific expansions. Guitar Hero Encore: Rocks the 80s is the first of these expansions, and while it delivers the strong gameplay that the series still has, it feels like a quick modification of the existing Guitar Hero II engine with the addition of several tracks from the 1980s, doing minimal work to improve the appearance, and yet still end up charging a new game price for it. Additionally, the shorter set list, while containing some notable 80s entries, is lacking in punch and really doesn’t help to make the game a must-have at the moment.
