Online play and how to break
Online play has been revamped too with real-time tug-of-war battles. Ok, well they’re not real real-time but a recording of your opponents progress all the way through a song… a bit like the ghost car in a racing game. You download that and then play the same track and you can see how you’re doing against their effort at every stage of the song. You efforts are then uploaded to a local leaderboard of the friends you’re doing battle with, which can be further uploaded to a wider leaderboard and even a global one, by comparing your success at a song with everyone else… all the more reason to rehearse!We were in a relatively small room here at Games Convention so the acoustics were always going to be a problem, especially as we weren’t allowed to turn it up for a proper rock out. But this is where the new, quieter instruments came into their own as no matter how hard I wailed on those drums, we could all clearly hear the music. I’d say that the new Rock Band 2 drums are at least 75% quieter than their predecessors, and I didn’t hear a peep out of Iain’s fret keys. But then again, I hardly heard a peep out of Iain at all as his strum bar was broken… luckily for us the ‘No Fail’ option was turned on. And no, the ‘No Fail’ isn’t a debugging tool, it’ll be in the final game allowing you and your band to practise together as a group or for you to have a laugh at with inexperienced friends without crashing out and burning the whole band.
All in all, Rock Band 2 is looking like being every bit as worth getting as the original Rock Band, in fact, it’s even more of an essential purchase as nearly all of the gripes with the original Rock Band have been fixed… but for us PS3 owners all of this is a pain in the arse as there’s still no definite UK launch date for the original Rock Band on the PS3. Perhaps more galling is that there’s a rumour going around the press room of an ‘end of September’ release for Rock Band 2 in the US… so not only is the UK behind by months for Rock Band but possibly by a whole bloody generation of game too… My suggestion is to show your displeasure by waiting for Rock Band 2 or importing it from the US. But then I’m a fickle, mood-swinging drummer and can sulk as well as the next man.
Check back soon as we take our Rock Band 2 thoughts with us in the realm of the Guitar Hero World Tour.
