by Eric Abent

Created on: October 11, 2009

Once again, ladies and gentlemen, we find ourselves preparing to rock. Developer Harmonix has given yet us another dose of its widely successful Rock Band, and man is it wonderful. Rock Band 2 allows players to once again jump into the shoes of a cover-band legend, and playing covers has never been so much fun (or easy, for that matter). Available on Wii, PlayStation 2, and Xbox 360, Rock Band 2 is a musical journey that grabs your by the collar and refuses to let go until your face has been significantly melted.

Harmonix, sticking to the creed "if it ain't broke, don't fix it," borrows much from the original Rock Band for the second installment in the series, but the various tweaks and changes they have made make it seem like an entirely different game. An updated World Tour mode makes it easier to play with a gig with you friends; before, if you wanted to play some songs with your bandmates, you would all need to pack into the same room and play on the same system. But no longer, for if your bandmates aren't readily accessible, you can now choose to play World Tour mode over the Wii Network, PlayStation Network, or Xbox Live. This is a welcome change, since few living rooms were designed with the intention of accommodating a faux-rock band, instruments and all.

With the advent of Rock Band 2 also comes the inclusion of the sparkly-new Drum Trainer, designed not only to help you hit flying colored gems better, but also to make you a better drummer in real life. Included is a beat trainer, to help you learn some of the trickier beats drummers all over the world know and love, a fill trainer, to teach how you play some really sweet drum fills both in Rock Band 2 and real life, and a freestyle mode. On the surface, the freestyle mode of the Drum Trainer may seem to be nothing more than a cool little gimmick, but the rabbit hole goes just a little deeper than that: if you happen to have a hard drive handy for your PS3 or Xbox 360, you can load your favorite songs onto it and play them while you're in freestyle mode, attempting to drum along as the song plays. If you happen to be a drummer in real life instead of just Rock Band life, you may find this little mode to be quite the nice addition to the Rock Band series.

Rock Band 2 also features an updated character creator. While you aren't able to transfer your characters from the first Rock Band over to the second, the character creator comes with all of the options the first Rock Band did, so you can recreate

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