PS2 Game Recommendations | mariteaux

[#] Rock Band (MTV Games, PlayStation 2, 2007)

A slimmed-down, yet still highly enjoyable, experience.

The transition to a new console generation always presents a challenge for developers. Their ideas can be realized in IMAX at long last, sure, but the old hardware is still selling great, and you can't just leave it behind, can you? Credit the always-inventive Harmonix for coming up with a compromise for Rock Band: rather than risk playability getting the four-player madness of the next-gen versions going on the aging PS2, this version uses pre-rendered video backgrounds that ensure the game plays silky smooth no matter what's happening on stage. It does mean a loss of a lot of the next-gen features, but it was absolutely the right move.

If you don't know what Rock Band adds over Harmonix's previous Guitar Hero, you get to play with a band of up to three other people, adding a drummer and vocalist into the mix of guitar and bass. There really is something infectious about the co-op music game experience, especially when you get such a great library of iconic classic bands (The Who, Kiss, The Rolling Stones, David Bowie, Boston, The Clash, Bon Jovi) and more modern ones (Radiohead, Garbage, Yeah Yeah Yeahs, The Killers, Nirvana, Soundgarden) to go through with your friends. Sadly, I've gotten to experience it very seldom in my life, but highly recommended if you can get a band together.

For what the PS2 version specifically loses, your World Tour mode effectively consists of the same tiered Career mode as their GH games, just without earning money. The only thing to unlock here are more songs, hardly a bad thing, though I did have to use a downloaded copy when my childhood one froze up during a bonus track and I couldn't unlock the rest. The Practice Mode, due to using its own audio, is also severely limited and only provides you one slower speed (!) and no way to practice sections full speed (???). They did what they could to fit this on a dual-layer DVD, I guess. It's not the ideal way to experience Rock Band at all, but even cut-down, it's still a hugely good time.