PlayStation 2 Game Recommendations | mariteaux

[#] Rock Band 2 (MTV Games, PlayStation 2, 2008)

Going out on the console that birthed them with a bang.

The original Rock Band for PS2, while still fun, was definitely a cut down experience from its seventh gen variants. It seems Harmonix and Pi Studios were determined to give the ancient PS2 a farewell tour worth paying for, though, because Rock Band 2 is truly excellent. Really, all that you lose are the character creation, DLC, and online play, a shame indeed, but completely understandable. Everything else though, the improvements to the Tour modes, no fail and hyperspeed modifiers, even a drum trainer and freestyle mode to give you beats to practice outside of songs and just plain jam on your plastic kit with, respectively, are all here and all very nice.

The original game's campaign was rather inflexible, either a solo tour for a single instrument or a band tour for multiple (and no bass in Solo Tour! what the fuck), but here, you make a band and change instruments and difficulty at any time. Yes, if you've got friends who are only around some of the time, your save isn't locked to their availability. And you can play bass by yourself now! (Given how difficult these songs get on guitar, thank you. Also, I just love bass.) You're also not limited to a tiered setlist; instead, you get to "tour the world" playing sets in major cities, not just adding a cheeky bit of nonlinearity to the formula, but also decreasing the odds you get stuck on any one song.

Between World Tour and the Play Challenges (themed setlists for "2000s hits", "prog", "challenging basslines", and so on), this is not the kind of game a seasoned rocker can just blow through. The songs also get bonkers more difficult than the first game, almost exhaustingly so, and those marathon setlists, the longest of which lasts six hours in all, are no joke. Thankfully, you can save during most of them, and play each one on any difficulty you feel up to. With all its improvements and maybe the most legendary lineup of bands ever compiled, Metallica, The Who, Talking Heads, Bon Jovi, Soundgarden, Linkin Park, Blondie, Testament, all the way down to my weirdo indie favorites like Lush and Silversun Pickups, even on PS2, Rock Band 2...uh, rocks.