There are a lot of other small tweaks in Rock Band 2 that fix the various little niggling problems that plagued the first Rock Band. A character is no longer limited to playing a single instrument, which makes swapping out profiles and setting up the game much easier.

You can also pick characters for computer-controlled musicians, so you can still see your full custom band play on stage when you are playing solo. The song selection interface has been completely revamped, and now mirrors the Music Store interface: selecting a song shows its album art as well as difficulty ratings for each individual instrument and full band. A small icon next to each song title indicates whether it is from Rock Band 1, Rock Band 2, or has been downloaded. 

There are a few new clothes you can purchase for your characters, and the on-stage graphics have gotten a small bump in quality. While the game interface has hardly changed at all, graphically speaking, hammer-on and pull-off notes are now more easily distinguishable from normal notes. Similarly, many songs now feature hammer-on and pull-off chords. When playing Band Quickplay, you can also now create set lists of up to 99 songs, letting you play through all of your favorite songs without having to return to the song selection screen in between. Also new is a drum trainer mode, which allows you to learn actual drumming technique in a series of lessons. 

Minor changes aside, the real meat of Rock Band 2 is its new song list. It comes with 64 songs on the disk, plus a voucher to download twenty free songs that will be released by the end of the year. The on-disc library is incredibly varied, including everything from Guns ‘N Roses to Modest Mouse to Beck to Bob Dylan. Harmonix clearly made a great effort to really showcase a diverse song list, and they have succeeded. Additionally, the upper-tier songs in RB2 can get incredibly difficult, easily surpassing the hardest RB1 songs on Expert guitar or drums. Many hardcore players complained that Rock Band was not difficult enough when compared to Guitar Hero 2 or 3, so it’s nice to see that Rock Band 2 steps things up a notch.   

If the 84 included tracks and hundreds of downloadable songs are not enough, you can choose to transfer over all but three of the songs from the original Rock Band for a mere $5. It’s frustrating to have to pay for what you already paid for, but the low cost and convenience make it well worth the cost. Between the two track lists and the massive library of downloadable content (all past and future DLC is intercompatible between the two games), Harmonix is touting that there will be over 500 Rock Band songs by the end of the year, which is certainly nothing to sneeze at. 

 
When you buy Rock Band 2, you are getting two things: a completely new set of songs and a collection of sundry features and fixes; 84 songs for the MSRP of $60 is still a heck of a deal, even before factoring in the other additions. While this game is an obvious ploy to draw attention away from the upcoming Guitar Hero: World Tour, it also cements Rock Band’s position as a solid leader of the genre. Above all else, Rock Band 2 is polished.

All of the sequel’s fine-tuned tweaks and changes result in a truly robust and full-featured experience. Where Rock Band was ground-breaking and innovative, Rock Band 2 perfects the full-band rhythm game experience.