The greatest rhythm game to date!
Overall, the game is quite fun. I found the drums best. The drums have four drum pads, and a foot pedal. In the game it tells you which pad to hit because everything (including the guitar) is color coordinated. For example, when a red note comes, you would hit the red pad. If a yellow and red note came at the same time, you'd hit both pads at the same time. You know when to hit the foot pedal because a yellow line will come to you to represent that the pedal is to be pushed. The guitar has 2 sets of 5 frets that push and strum according to the color coming towards you on the screen. The guitar also includes a whammy bar that changes the sound when pushed. The first sets of frets are the ones that are most often used. These are larger than the second set. The second set is closer to the body of the guitar and has much smaller buttons which are used for solos. During solos, you can press these buttons and you won't need to strum. The microphone is used for singing and is the simplest piece. It has no buttons on it, all you have to do is sing. In case you don't know the words or the tune, the game will display the lyrics, and will show how high or low you need to sing by a bar. That bar moves up or down depending on how high or low the singing should be. There is also an arrow that is moved up and down according to your pitch and is set on a line so that when the lyrics come towards it, you sing as soon as the arrow touches. If you are having troubles reading all the lyrics, you don't have to sing the lyrics but just the tune. Singing is the easiest to learn but is the hardest to master if your voice has a small pitch range.
The game itself has four different levels: easy, medium, hard, and expert. Easy is good for beginners, and for the experienced players, expert will be fun. No matter what skill level you are, you should be able to play the game, and gradually improve. If you play Easy enough, you should get good enough to play Medium, and then hard, and so on. It gets quite addicting especially if you're into rock music. Playing guitar in Rock Band is easier in terms of notes than in Guitar Hero 3. However, the new guitar seems to be harder to play with for most people. So, if you have one, you can plug in your Guitar Hero 1, 2, or 3 controller instead, as those seem to feel a bit more comfortable.
Gameplay: 9
The graphics are very impressive for a PS2 game. They aren't exactly necessary in this game, though, because most of the time, you're looking at the notes that you're trying to play, not the background. However, when you do have the time to look up, you'll find the graphics very pleasing to the eye and has the band members using motions incredibly similar to that of real life. I liked the way the notes are displayed. It looks like you're scrolling up a fretboard (from a guitar) with the notes coming towards you. You need to hit them when they come to a certain point. The only thing that I don't like about the graphics is that the notes are rectangular. I like the Guitar Hero notes more because they're circular. Other than that, the graphics were done very nicely.
The sound quality is great. The sound quality had a very well blended sound of all the instruments unlike the Wii version of this game which is only mono sound. The PS2 version has 58 songs in total. Some of them include: Dani California, Won't Get Fooled Again, Green Grass and High Tides, and Enter Sandman. All the songs (on the main list) are famous songs or by a famous artist. In the options menu, you can turn up the microphone volume so that your voice is louder, adjust the sound effects such as the crowd, and even turn off the vocal track! Perhaps the one of the coolest options was to change the guitar effects. This way, when playing a solo or when you activate overdrive (the equivalent of star power) the guitar track changes sound completely making the game more fun and creative.
Graphics: 9, Sound: 9
This was a really fun game, and will provide you with many hours of entertainment. I would recommend getting it, if you like rock music, and especially if you liked any rhythm games like the Guitar Hero series or Elite Beat Agents. Basically, Rock Band is an improved and better version of Guitar Hero. It's easy to unlock all of the songs but it's one of those games where the point isn't fully to beat the game. The point is to keep replaying it and replaying it. It's not one of those games that you put on the shelf after you beat it or even before you beat it but rather one that you regularly have in your PlayStation 2. This game is one that you will be playing over and over to play through all the fun songs and if you want, beat your friends at. This game is 3 times longer than the Guitar Hero series. Once you beat one instrument on say, medium, you might go on to play drums and beat that on medium. Otherwise, you would continue to play the instrument on hard mode until you beat every single instrument on expert.
Playtime / Replayability: 10
Overall, it's a very fun game, but also quite expensive. For the PlayStation 2 version of this game, it will cost you about one-hundred eighty Canadian dollars. It's expensive but worth it. The gameplay still retains the fun of the Guitar Hero series and also triples it by adding more instruments. The song selection is much more playable than that of Guitar Hero 3 because all of the songs have a much better beat to it. You'll find yourself in beat to this game in no time. If you don't have this game and you have a PS2, Xbox360, PS3, or a Wii, I strongly recommend buying this game. The Wii version is about ten dollars more than the PlayStation version, but has 5 more songs (Roxanne, Dirty Little Secret, Roam, Rockaway Beach, and Don't Look Back in Anger.) However, the PlayStation 2 version is compatible with the PlayStation 2 Guitar Hero guitar, while the Wii's (Guitar Hero) Les Paul guitar is NOT compatible with Rock Band. If I was picking between the Wii and PlayStation 2 versions of the game, I'd pick the Wii version because of the bonus songs.