Music Gaming Goodness: Rock Band 2 Rocks The House

The Songs

Obviously the game centers on the music. There are a few factors that go into a great sound track for a music game. First off, people need to be able to tolerate the songs they are hearing while they play the game. Aside from likability of the music, speed, complexity, and repetitiveness (or hopefully a lack there of), also play a large role in how fun the experience of playing the game ends up being.

There are actually quite a few songs that, while I had heard them before, I gained a real appreciation for them after playing them on Rock Band 2. If the beat or the melody or bass line or whatever is interesting and fun to play, the songs actually gain another attribute to the listener that can be positive or negative. It's sort of surreal and meta, but the special sauce on the music game genre is the fact that the music impacts the likability of the game while the game can also affect the perception of the music, creating a sort of echo chamber where appreciation for music is able to expand. Additionally, because of the way our brains access memories by association, hearing a song that was fun to play on Rock Band 2, whether you knew the song before you heard it in the game, can subconsciously enhance your enjoyment of the song.

But we're sort of getting away from our area of expertise here so let's bring it back home. As we mentioned, if you can't stand the songs, you probably won't want to put the time in to learn them and enjoy them in the first place. We feel the song list is very well rounded, has something for everyone, and features a couple songs that most people probably won't enjoy in order to add significant challenge to the game for those who've mastered it. Without further ado, here's the song list from Rock Band 2:

The Main Drag - A Jagged Gorgeous Winter
Motörhead - Ace of Spades '08
Grateful Dead - Alabama Getaway
The Replacements - Alex Chilton
Pearl Jam - Alive
Avenged Sevenfold - Almost Easy
The Guess Who - American Woman
Journey - Any Way You Want It
Jethro Tull - Aqualung
Joan Jett - Bad Reputation
Metallica - Battery
Steely Dan - Bodhisattva
Kansas - Carry On Wayward Son
System of a Down - Chop Suey!
Mastodon - Colony of Birchmen
The Offspring - Come Out and Play (Keep 'Em Separated)
Speck - Conventional Lover
Squeeze - Cool for Cats
Lush - De-Luxe
Disturbed - Down with the Sickness
Nirvana - Drain You
Beck - E-Pro
Foo Fighters - Everlong
Survivor - Eye of the Tiger
Dinosaur Jr. - Feel the Pain
Modest Mouse - Float On
Anarchy Club - Get Clean
AFI - Girl's Not Grey
Rise Against - Give It All
Red Hot Chili Peppers - Give It Away
Fleetwood Mac - Go Your Own Way
Cheap Trick - Hello There
Duran Duran - Hungry Like the Wolf
Social Distortion - I Was Wrong
The Muffs - Kids in America
Silversun Pickups - Lazy Eye
AC/DC - Let There Be Rock
Bon Jovi - Livin' on a Prayer
Presidents of the United States of America - Lump
Alice in Chains - Man in the Box
Tenacious D - Master Exploder
Jane's Addiction - Mountain Song
Lit - My Own Worst Enemy
The Donnas - New Kid in School
Bang Camaro - Night Lies
Panic at the Disco - Nine in the Afternoon
Linkin Park - One Step Closer
Blondie - One Way or Another
Lacuna Coil - Our Truth
Judas Priest - Painkiller
Dream Theater - Panic Attack
Interpol - PDA
Megadeth - Peace Sells
The Who - Pinball Wizard
L7 - Pretend We're Dead
Talking Heads - Psycho Killer
Elvis Costello - Pump It Up
The Allman Brothers Band - Ramblin' Man
Bikini Kill - Rebel Girl
That Handsome Devil - Rob the Prez-O-Dent
Steve Miller Band - Rock'n Me
Ratt - Round and Round
Guns N' Roses - Shackler's Revenge
Bad Company - Shooting Star
Breaking Wheel - Shoulder to the Plow
Beastie Boys - So What'cha Want
Testament - Souls of Black
Norman Greenbaum - Spirit in the Sky
Soundgarden - Spoonman
The Sterns - Supreme Girl
Bob Dylan - Tangled Up in Blue
Sonic Youth - Teen Age Riot
Rage Against the Machine - Testify
Paramore - That's What You Get
Jimmy Eat World - The Middle
Rush - The Trees (Vault Edition)
Smashing Pumpkins - Today
Devo - Uncontrollable Urge
Abnormality - Visions
The Go-Go's - We Got the Beat
Libyans - Welcome to the Neighborhood
The Mighty Mighty Bosstones - Where'd You Go
Billy Idol - White Wedding (Part 1)
Alanis Morissette - You Oughta Know


But that's not where it ends. For owners of Rock Band (or those who can get their hands on a Rock Band disc), all but three of the original songs are able to be imported into Rock Band 2. This really just copies the songs to the hard drive of the console and allows Rock Band 2 to treat these tracks in the same manner it would downloadable content. Of course, this costs $5. This is basically a re-licensing fee that authorizes the copy of the tracks to the hard drive. This is likely there to get around the potential for people to "pirate" songs by sharing Rock Band discs without paying for the song contained therein at all. This way, even though people have to buy their music twice, there is no way record companies will miss out on at least a portion of their royalties.

To extend this a bit further, as an added bonus, any Rock Band downloadable content can also be accessed via Rock Band 2. So for gamers who have been into Rock Band and purchased songs, Rock Band 2 will allow you to continue to enjoy these all under one upgraded roof. Thankfully, it is free to use your Rock Band DLC with Rock Band 2.

Anyway, here is the list of Rock Band songs that can be imported into Rock Band 2. The three that are not allowed to be used with the new game are: Enter Sandman, Paranoid, and Run to the Hills.

Jet - Are You Gonna Be My Girl
Sweet - Ballroom Blitz
Soundgarden - Black Hole Sun
Ramones - Blitzkrieg Bop
Hole - Celebrity Skin
Smashing Pumpkins - Cherub Rock
Radiohead - Creep
Red Hot Chili Peppers - Dani California
Fall Out Boy - Dead on Arrival
Kiss - Detroit Rock City
Blue Öyster Cult - (Don't Fear) The Reaper
The New Pornographers - Electric Version
Faith No More - Epic
Molly Hatchet - Flirtin' with Disaster
Boston - Foreplay/Long Time
The Rolling Stones - Gimme Shelter
Queens of the Stone Age - Go with the Flow
The Outlaws - Green Grass and High Tides
OK Go - Here It Goes Again
Deep Purple - Highway Star
Garbage - I Think I'm Paranoid
Nirvana - In Bloom
Foo Fighters - Learn to Fly
The Hives - Main Offender
Yeah Yeah Yeahs - Maps
Mountain - Mississippi Queen
The Police - Next to You
R.E.M. - Orange Crush
The Strokes - Reptilia
Beastie Boys - Sabotage
Weezer - Say It Ain't So
The Clash - Should I Stay or Should I Go
David Bowie - Suffragette City
Nine Inch Nails - The Hand That Feeds
Rush - Tom Sawyer
Aerosmith - Train Kept A-Rollin'
Stone Temple Pilots - Vasoline
Bon Jovi - Wanted Dead or Alive
Pixies - Wave of Mutilation
Coheed and Cambria - Welcome Home
The Killers - When You Were Young
The Who - Won't Get Fooled Again


If all that weren't enough, at some point Harmonix will be releasing 20 free songs via its online music store. No word on what or exactly when yet though.

The music store has been revamped and integrated into Rock Band 2 a little better by the way. It's an improvement over the original Rock Band method of dealing with DLC (exclusively through Microsoft's interface). Now we can preview songs and look at their difficulty rating before we buy them. It is still unfortunately not obvious which songs that were part of packs are already owned, so you still have to be careful not to buy the same thing twice. The only other real down side is that you can't do anything else until a song is finished downloading. There's no way to cue up multiple downloads and let it go: they all need to be done individually and sequentially. Which is a pain in the butt if you want to buy a lot of songs at once.

Anyway, we are happy with the improvements made to the online store, but there is still room to make it better next time around. In addition to tweaking the issues we've already pointed out, we would also like to see longer previews or previews of multiple sections of songs that highlight interesting bits of the song for different instruments. Oh, and better or more accurate difficulty ratings.