Music Gaming Goodness: Rock Band 2 Rocks The House

Leeway, Forgiveness, and Accuracy

One change that we have mixed feelings on is the fact that Rock Band 2 is quite a bit more forgiving than the original. If you get a little sloppy on your timing, the game will still give you credit for playing correctly. You still can't totally miss something or add in an extra hit anywhere, but if you are a little late or a little early with something, RB2 is more likely to give you the benefit of the doubt.

This is good in that it can make the game less frustrating, but we were a bit worried it might take away from the experience if there weren't a real strict requirement to be on beat. Thankfully the change is subtle enough to be helpful while not just handing over victory. You still have to be fairly close on timing, but the extra wiggle room can come in handy.

There are some limitations to this added flexibility though. In songs with 16th notes or triplets, there still isn't much that gets by without being fairly accurate. Additionally (on the drums anyway), if two things need to be hit at the same time, then they really need to be hit at the same time. In other words, while timing for the hits might have some leeway, the game expects you to do things simultaneously more ... simultaneously ... where appropriate. This keeps the difficulty for songs with rolls nice and high.

Overall, we are happier with the leniency of Rock Band 2, but we still have some complaints when it comes to adding things in that aren't there. Some songs still leave out notes, and it can get frustrating for people who actually know how to play the songs. We still really want to see a music game where people can add things in on beat that fit the song without being penalized.

We aren't asking for the allowance of random hits anywhere, but things that actually fit. In our vision, if we were to set the difficulty to hard but play all the notes in the expert track, we would expect not to be penalized. Like wise if the game is set to expert but we decide to play reality, we'd like not to lose points. If the developers aren't going to map all the notes to something in the game, musicians shouldn't lose out for it.

Sure there are some tracks where doing everything would be fairly near god-like, and most likely very frustrating for mere mortals. But if every other note of a 32nd note roll is left out for the sake of playability, the game should really know what is acceptable in terms of going beyond the required notes.

The worst offender is the kick pedal really. There are a good number of songs in Rock Band 2 that are actually played with 2 kick drums (or a double kick pedal). Translating this down to a single pedal is really annoying. One hit on the kick translating to two just throws me off, even if it is the only way to actually get the song to sound right without requiring people to do impossible things with one leg.

It's possible to add a double kick to the game though. For those who really don't mind spending money to do this, you can get a Roland TD-8 and a kickbox with a double kick pedal. It doesn't add any functionality to the game, but being able to use both feet to do some of the things the game expects of one might be a nice option.

We would love to see some sort of double kick option that would throw all the notes at you if you plugged in a second pedal. Of course, this is some crazy hard stuff to do when playing real drums, but isn't that part of the fun? Maybe with the next version.