MTV Multiplayer » Small But Key ‘Rock Band 2′ Details

Posted by Stephen Totilo on 8/21/08 at 11:09 am.

'Rock Band 2' Earlier this week I had another one of my personally disturbing “Rock Band 2” demos, where I learned some new details about the upcoming MTV-made game.

Note that the “RB2″ demos don’t disturb me because the game is unsettling, but because the powers that be at MTV stage these events on a floor in the VH1 offices where I used to work. Oh, the joy of returning to an old office. Why not set the next demo in my old middle school, MTV people? I’m sensitive about revisiting my past. OK. My fault, not theirs.

Anyway, here are some key things I learned about the game:

The kick-pedal doesn’t fall off – Not only are the new “Rock Band 2″ drums wireless, but when you lift them off the floor, the kick-pedal doesn’t fall off. As “RB2″ public relations man John Drake noted, this is an advance that will be appreciated by people who don’t have a permanent spot for their video game drums in their place of residence and need to move them a lot.

The new drum trainer mode includes garbage can sounds — “RB2″ includes a mode that teaches drum-playing by looping a beat, scrolling required notes and calculating a percentage of player effectiveness for a set beat pattern. Players can set the beats-per-minute and choose for one of 76 beat progressions, emulating riffs of everything from swing music to metal. Or you can use a fill trainer, which teaches 45 effective ways to wail on the drums during a fill. Several drum-set sounds are available for the trainer, including… an overturned trash can.

Daily ‘Battle of the Bands’ challenges might incorporate DLC - Drake said that the developers of “RB2″ studio Harmonix hope to provide a new Battle of the Bands challenge every day (including Sundays, he hopes, after we reporters grilled him on that). These challenges can only be created by developers and will present such trials as The Stalker Challenge (best band performance in Blondie’s “One Way Or Another” and two other stalker-sounding songs) or a Steely Dan battle that requires entrants play solo, on expert, but with the no-failure option that will let them play to the end. Each Battle runs for a set number of hours or days. Each of a player’s performances is ranked in an online leaderboard and in a Battle history. The Battles will sometimes include downloadable songs. If they do, the player will be told this once they try to enter the Battle.

I left the demo with a preview copy of the game and will have more impressions once I dig into it.

The “Rock Band 2″ game and instruments will be available on the Xbox 360 on September 14 (but not in a bundle until a later, unannounced date). Wii, PS2, and PS3 versions are expected later this year.

Filed Under: Music Games, Rock Band