Rock Band 2: The Same Game But $60 + New Achievements?

As seen in the Rock Band 2's opening cinematic the big draw to the hotly anticipated sequel is 'Battle of the Bands.' In the original Rock Band, the players could form a band and "rock the world" by forming a band with, but not all necessarily needed, a bassist, a drummer, a singer, and a lead guitarist. The only showing of the players' skills were displayed via leaderboards. Now in Rock Band 2 the 'gamers' can take their skills and put it to the test against other Rock Band players. This improvement is nice but the problem arises that the player cannot quickly get a battle set up, but instead the battle of the bands consists of bands posting scores and trying to better each other. 1 The battle of the bands mode is not wasted, but instead a great way to avoid the annoyance of waiting for the other band to play their 'gig' then you play your 'gig' and so on.
While adding a mode (Battle of the Bands) Rock Band 2 drops single-player career mode and replaces it with a single player Band World Tour. If you have not played the original, Band World Tour mode allows you and a few buddies to join up and start and band, obtain fans, and as the slogan goes, 'rock the world.'Though I feel this drop of career mode was not a disappoint because the player is not required to always have multiple people to play Rock Band.
For music games the biggest concern is music, "Oh, I am going to buy Rock Band because it has Tom Sawyer..." Two series, Guitar Hero and Rock Band (with the addition of Konami's Rock Revolution this year) have been competing for the music game consumer's money. The consumer mainly wants a music game with good music.
Harmonix's Rock Band 2 has almost eliminated this complaint. Rock Band has a lot of tracks. With the 84 tracks in Rock Band 2's disc alone sums up to more music than in any of the Guitar Hero games. Also the consumer can transfer 55 of the 59 tracks from the original Rock Band to Rock Band 2 for a measly price of $5 or 400 Microsoft Points for the license charge. 2 Not included in the transfer is the hard rock or metal songs such as Metallica’s Enter Sandman, Tokio Hotel’s Through the Monsoon, Black Sabbath’s Paranoid and Iron maiden’s Run to the Hills. But, did I mention the Downloadable Content (DLC) that not only works on Rock Band but works on Rock Band 2 as well? Harmonix promises to have over 500 tracks including Rock Band 1, 2, and DLC by the end of the year. 3 Currently Harmonix has over 200 songs readily available. This slew of Rock Band tracks almost eliminates the complaints. Whatever the consumer wants in a song may eventually show up as a DLC or in a future Rock Band game. A list of the songs available can be viewed at IGN.
Maybe after the music in a music game the consumer looks at the instruments. The instruments of Rock Band 2 are the same as Rock Band, but they are much sturdier and are wireless. Harmonix hopes that the problems will not arise with the equipment like last year when much of the equipment, the drums and guitar, was sent to Harmonix to be fixed. The guitar features a better strum bar, but is still a similar guitar to last year's guitar. 4
The Guitar
The drum set is similar as well, the pedal is reinforced so the pedal does not break, the drums are not as loud as the first, and the drums are velocity sensitive (the sound is louder or softer depending on how hard the player hits the drum). 5
*Image not created by me

The consumer can purchase a premium Ion drum set for $300, but I will not go into that set because it is not the official drum set of Rock Band 2. 5
The game is very similar to the original in terms of game play. Some of the graphics are different and there have been some additions to Band World Tour such as making a music video and hiring managers. But, as the old saying goes, "If it ain't broke don't fix it." Rock Band 2 is spectacular, they have added one small feature that really is important, being able to play with friends in the same band over live in 'Band World Tour.'
I have purchased this game already, have already put hours into my band (The Bandanna Banditos), and got a free t-shirt (Hooray!). I did avoid the premium pack of all the instruments, because I already have the Rock Band instruments. The Guitar Hero: World Tour instruments look more appealing to me. I give this game a water concentration of 90! Harmonix delivers rock god powers a second time!


By the way, my favorite song is Charlene (I'm Right Behind You) by Stephen and the Colberts it is currently a free DLC.