For those who have yet to play the first Rock Band, think Guitar Hero mixed with drums and singing. If you’ve never played Guitar Hero, it’s pretty simple: a music game where you play the guitar. It’s not much anything like actually playing a guitar, but it’s pretty easy to figure out. The basic idea is pretty easy to grasp: you make your own band and perform all around the world playing songs from many popular artists of the rock genres. You can play this game by yourself or with friends, though I must say right now this is probably the best multiplayer game you’re ever going to get, even better than the first one now that certain difficulty-challenged players can make use of new modifiers to help them stay in the game. The tour career is pretty straightforward: play around the world, get fans, make money, hire roadies, and just do everything that the best bands of the world have done. Quick Play is also available for people who just want to skip the confusion of the career and play songs on their own, without bothering with money and fans.

As with all the games in the Guitar Hero and Rock Band series, there are some songs that nobody wants to play. Some songs are just not fit for the instrument(s) of choice…and you’re going to have to play them, more than likely multiple times through career modes. But that’s okay. All games have that nowadays…just look at every water level known to man. On the flip side, there are a lot of fun songs that virtually everyone will love to jam to, regardless of instruments. It also includes easy songs that well-versed veterans will find themselves playing a lot. I’ve played Eye of the Tiger like six times already on Quick Play, including once on mic…and I never sing willingly.

The career is…well, long. Solo and Band careers are one in the same now, so you can progress through it alone or with bandmates. It’s not by any means a one-day affair like any of the other games’ Solo Careers, though…this’ll keep your attention for a few days at minimum. Of course, you can switch instruments as well, without having to worry about sticking to one instrument through the entire thing. Also, Guitar and Bass are seperated. Bass is, as usual, much easier than Guitar, so if you feel more comfortable with that over regular Guitar, that’s a good way to ease your way through the Career even on high difficulties.

I previously noted modifiers. Obviously, these modifiers allow you to change up some details of gameplay. Some you have to unlock through fret combinations, but some are already available to use. One notable one, the “No Fail” modifer, does as it promises: you can’t fail a song while it is active. So if you want to just rock out on drums and mic without fear of dropping out forcing your bandmates to struggle for dear life, this is the modifier for you. There’s Breakneck Speed (Hyperspeed for those familiar with that) that simply make the fret track come down faster, though staying with the song, and a few others. Some of these modifiers disallow certain functions, such as online play, saving, and obtaining achievements…so you can’t use them to cheat your way through the career.

All in all, this is definitely the funnest local multiplayer you can get on the Xbox 360. Great for friends to just get together and jam without having to actually fork over thousands of dollars for a full band’s worth of instruments. The solo play is also really fun, though it’s not nearly as satisfying as it is in a multiplayer experience. Any Downloaded Content that you have from Rock Band 1 will work with this, as well. Also, at some point, there will be a way to export most of the songs from Rock Band 1 onto your HDD for use on Rock Band 2, said to cost no more than $5, not to mention the game comes with a key to get 20 free DLC songs. So, there’s 84 songs on disc, 20 on the way in free DLC, 55 of 58 of the Rock Band 1 library (Run to the Hills, Enter Sandman, and Paranoid do not export), and however many DLC songs that you had gotten from Rock Band 1, all playable on this disc. Rock on!