More Rock Band 2 Details and Songs Announced

Gamespot got a chance to have a hands on with Rock Band 2 before all of the big announcements are made at the upcoming E3 conference.

Here are some of the highlights;

More Tracklistings

Starting off with what everyone seems to be interested in, 10 songs (out of the 80 plus songs on the disk) were announced and they were;

“Ace of Spades” — Motörhead
“Everlong” — Foo Fighters
“Pinball Wizard” — The Who
“Panic Attack” — Dream Theater
“Any Way You Want It” — Journey
“Chop Suey” — System of a Down
“Kids in America” — The Muffs
“Give It Away” — Red Hot Chili Peppers
“Hello There” — Cheap Trick
“Pump It Up” — Elvis Costello

We have plenty more information after the break, so read on…

Rock Band 2 will also feature an online World Tour play mode which means that you will be able to connect with your friends online to compete in the band career mode. In recognizing that it might also be difficult to find the same people at the same time to complete a career mode, Rock Band 2 world tour gets rid of ‘band leaders’ and allows a band’s roster to be changed at any time without having to start a new band.

Harmonix also took the time to reiterate that Rock Band 2 would be backwards compatible with all of the songs from the first Rock Band. All of the songs on disk and all of the DLC’s will be available for Rock Band 2

Rock Band 2 will also let you create a setlist for quickplay mode. Instead of picking the songs you want to play one at a time, now you can create a setlist and rock out without interruption.

Rock Band 2 will also feature 2 more new gameplay modes - Tour Challenges and Battle of the Bands.

Tour Challenges replace Solo Tour from the first Rock Band and will feature a nonlinear path which will see you unlocking new challenge groupings as you go. Tour Challenges can be performed solo, or with up to 3 other band members. The other band members can be either online or local, or any mix thereof.

Battle of the Bands will also be available for 1 to 4 players, also with any mix of online and local players. Battle of the Bands is a tournament that will put your band against other bands online. Harmonix will be creating new Battle of the Band tournaments every day for bands to compete in.

Instruments

Starting off with the drums we’ll mention that the Rock Band 2 drum set will have the same number of pads as the original, and the original drums will work with Rock Band 2 without any problems.

The major change to the drums comes in the form of velocity information, so they will be able to detect how hard they are hit and the sound produced in the game will reflect that.

Responding to concerns about the original drums, the new drum set will be quieter when playing them and they will also have more “bounce”, making them easier to play.

Not much more information came out about the guitar since we last reported on it, but Harmonix did say that it will have an auto-calibration feature that will automatically synch the guitar to your television to minimize lag.

For more information on the Rock Band 2 guitar, refer to our original article on Rock Band 2 - Rock Band 2 News

Expect much more information to sneak out in the upcoming days as big announcements are made prior to and at the E3 conference starting this weekend.

We also expect to have the first gameplay trailer for Rock Band 2 up this Friday, so stay tuned!

Source: Gamespot - Rock Band 2 Hands-On

Related Links:
Console Hero - Rock Band 2 News