Rock Band 2 - Game Only (Xbox 360)

I bought Guitar hero 4 before this game came out, and I really wish I hadn't! With it's massive range of songs, massive amount of downloadable songs from the Rock Band shop, which is up-dated with new songs to purchase much more regularly than GH4 AND the added bonus of being able to transfer all songs from rockband 1 onto it. You will definitely not be complaining that there aren't enough songs! However this does cost, a song from the rockband store is usually 160 Microsoft points, and to transfer all of the rockband 1 songs to rockband 2 will cost you 250 Microsoft points, however this can hardly be considered steep seeing as there are over 50 songs on the game, you will also obviously have to own, or know someone who has a copy of Rockband 1 in order to do this. The other down side to the song transfer is that for 'copy right' reasons, 4 songs cannot be copied over to Rockband 2, including Metallica Enter Sandman! Down to the gameplay, as this was the first Rockband game that I had played I was surprised at how quickly I adapted to the rectangle stlye notes instead of Guitar Hero's circles. I soon realised that the rectangle notes are far better to the circles and much more precise. The only real flaw that I found in the gameplay was that the 'Hard' difficulty was much easier that GH's Hard and although this meant that I could just go up to the 'Expert' difficulty instead I found that as the game progressed some of the much harder songs were too hard on Expert but boringly slow and easy on Hard. One other excellent feature about this game is the stars in the top right. Instead of just showing the amount of points you have during a song, this game also shows you are what star you are on throughout the song which I found very helpful in not only guaging how many stars I was on, but also how far through a song I was. As for the online there is a good variety of game modes to keep you busy once you have completed the huge career (which includes an 84 set songlist, which cannot be saved and completed at a later date, yes that's 84 songs in a row!!!!). The only problem I found on Xbox live is that if you are looking to play in a full band online with random people, you will be waiting ages to start because no one ever wants to sing!! Overall an excelent game and well worth a buy, also if you have the Guitar Hero controllers, they are compatable so there is only the cost of the actual game to cover!

If I was writing a review of just the game I would use phrases like 'loads of fun' however this is more about buying Rock Band 2 and also the perils of it being preowned. The online store, which is fairly essential (as you only start with a handful of songs) has blocked owners of Rock Band 2 to all recent songs because they have changed the licensing. For this reason alone I then bought Rock Band 3, I didn't want to buy it as I probably only know 3 songs on it. I was comforted that I could import all my songs from Rock band 2; or so I thought. Each Rock Band 2 copy has a unique "use once" code that gets you 20 more songs and is used to import the songs into Rock Band 3. Being preowned its has probably been used and so you're out of luck. So if buy this then bear in mind there's no recent access to the online store and there's a good chance you can't import your songs into Rock band 3.

Before buying Rock Band 2, I had bought 2 other games in the Guitar Hero series, and thoroughly enjoyed them. The only down side to them was the amount of songs, and length of the game. Rock Band 2 however has TONNES of songs, and I'm still actually completing the world tour! Which seems to go on forever. It has some of the same songs as Guitar Hero: World Tour, but along with a load more. And of course you can download more from Xbox live, which is always good if you get bored of the selection. The only downside, is that the new instruments aren't out yet, so I play with the ones from GH:WT. I think this game is fantastic as a party game, or with 2 players or more. It can just get a bit tiresome and boring if you're on your own.

now first things first i own guitar hero 2,3 and world tour and rock band 1 and 2 so i think i have the right to say that rock band 2 is by far the best out of ALL of these titles, the great thing for me is the amazing amount of downloadable content that has songs for every music fan from indie to metal, but the thing i really do love about this game is the fact that if u rent rock band 1 and are willing to pay a few microsoft points (about 600 i think?) you can get nearly every song from the rock band tracks on rock band 2 doubling your library instantly, there are about 6 songs missing but when you have over 100 more to choose from to be honest who cares? Now the things that set this game apart from world tour : - Drums, yes thats right i said it the drums on rock band are better even if they dont have the symbol i just feel they are more realistic in the difficulty as i can complete guitar hero world tour on expert but can only do rock band drums on hard.... - Downloads, world tour has Travis Barker and Oasis but other than that it has nothing that rock band does not and plus rock band has full albums and a lot more tracks. -Guitar, for a so called 'guitar hero' game you dont have to be that good to complete it i found the expert career so easy compared to guitar hero 3 whereas i cant complete rock band 2 on expert -No fail mode, this is an amazing feature by the rock band team allowing any person to play no matter how bad they are making it alot more fun for the whole family making it light hearted and easier to move up a difficulty level if your bored. I hope this helps anybody who cant choose between the two although guitar hero is 'supposed' to have better drums they really are not it looks flash but it all truth they are pretty rubbish if im honest, buy rock band 2 you will not regret it i promise you.

Received an Xbox 360 game from this seller to play it and find that the disc is unreadable due to an unmissable circumference scratch. Awesome.

Graphically not as good as Rock Band 3 (RB3) - I'm not too keen on having my characters looking like cartoons. But in terms of game play, and number of venues I have to say the game play is in a number of ways better than RB3 with the exception that RB3 has better song organisation with reviews and play count etc. So, having got a little bored with RB3 (I bought and played RB3 (and RB and Lego RB) before RB2), RB2 has breathed new life into the game for me and this is despite the weaker graphics and song organisation as I only really miss my band's ability to alternate between male and female vocalist depending on the gender of the song that I'm playing (a feature I've only found in RB3 where my drummer is female and my vocalist is male with them switching automatically depending on the song).

I chose to rate it 3 stars because: 1) song choices (The songs you hardly know are easy and the ones you do are quite hard) 2) When you get DLC from rock band 3, the downloaded songs will come up in the rock band 2 playlist but you will be unable to play them. 3) Better if you play with 2 people or more as it can get quite repetitive if playing solo I liked the game as I love the rockband series and some of the songs are my favourites, especially master exploder by tenacious D. I dislike the game, as now I have rockband 3, I can't play my DLC content on this game. I would recommend this game to any rockband/guitar hero fan but try to play in a group (much more enjoyable)

Well, as a guitar player - not an especially good one, I'd add - I was looking for a little more challenge out of this game than the casual player, and found the opening levels a little too easy. Also, having a Guitar Hero Controller, I can't comment on the "solo" sections, which are designed to be played on the rock band guitar controller, except to say that I've either pulled them off or limped through mst of them on "hard", so the Rock band strat isn't necessarily a compulsory purchase if you already have GH. In general however, I'd say this game is better looking, more versatile and has better tunes than GH3 and having played both, and being more of a casual gamer, I find myself more inclined to play Rock Band than comparable GH titles. I don't personally own GH World Tour or Greatest Hits and I've yet to play Band Hero or GH5, but this is easily more fun and a far better multiplayer game than its rival contemporaries. God knows what the drumming's like.