The Wii version of Rock Band 2 is just about perfect!

User Rating: 9.5 | Rock Band 2 WII
Let me start this review with a bit of history about myself and the Rock Band series: I started with Rock Band on PS2, then got a 360 and played RB on that system, and had been enjoying the sequel immensely until my 360 fell victim to the dreaded Red Ring... As we all know, the PS2 (and Wii) version of the original Rock Band was one of the quick & dirtiest, featureless ports ever. No World Tour, no DLC, no character creation, no online... but the gameplay was as solid as ever... Rock Band 2 on the next-gen systems was more of a refinement than a true sequel, finally allowing us to make setlists in quickplay and change characters and instruments with more (much-needed) flexibility, while still being able to play all the songs from the first disc...

Rock Band 2 on the Wii is nothing short of a revelation! It has all the important features of the next-gen versions intact: character creation, setlists in quickplay, Band World Tour, online play, and DLC! No one should really miss the tattoo or logo creator too seriously; the only thing this game lacks is the ability to export RB1 songs onto an SD card. In fact, one advantage of the Wii version is in the ability to pick and choose among the 20 free songs, while PS3 and 360 owners get them as a single pack. Anyone who's ever played a random setlist including "Young" "Magnetic Baby" and "The Feeling" knows what I'm talking about...

EA, Harmonix and Pi Studios deserve the highest game design praise for making this game so full-featured while working around the Wii's limitations and taking full advantage of its often-overlooked strengths. The characters and venues look surprisingly good, if not as smooth and detailed as in the other full versions. Still, we're not playing to look at the venues, are we...? What's especially nice is that the Wii version links to the official RockBand.com website, displaying your bands and characters in photos using HD models!

I give this game pretty much the highest score possible. Its few limitations (no exporting RB1 tracks, friend codes for online band play...) are the fault of the hardware and not the game designers, who have clearly put their full efforts into this version. In comparison to the competition, it should be acknowledged that Harmonix support pretty much all music controllers available for the Wii, while Activision does not.

Rock Band 2 for Wii is pretty much as good as it can possibly be; let's hope the support for this platform on this system continues to be of such high quality!