The first thing that really jumped out at me regarding this game is that, graphically, it's not improved over Rock Band at all. There are a few new venues to play at, a few new costumes for your created band guy, and the default characters from the last game now have names, a la Guitar Hero. So we're down to Rock Band 1.8.
There are no new mechanics involved with the core gameplay. With the last iteration, there were some major innovations, most notably the "band" thing, but also smaller things, like the solo buttons on the Rock Band guitar. This time around, there's not a single innovation to the way the game plays once you're actually in a song. Rock Band 1.7.
So, what is new? Well, the songs for starters. There are 80-something new songs to play with, plus, for $5, you can move over all the songs that came on the Rock Band 1 disc. It uses about 1.5GB on the 360's hard drive, but it's worth it to play with double the tunes. Add that to the downloaded content, and you have a very large setlist.
The menus have been changed and are better-organized. The one that stands out to me the most is the song-selection menu, which is very close to the Rock Band Music Store menu from the previous game. You can see Artist, Title, Ablum (with the album cover), then a difficulty ranking for all the instruments individually and the band as a whole. Very spiffy. Rock Band 1.75.
The biggest changes come about in the new Tour mode. Last year's game provided a very linear structure. Play and pass these 4 songs then move on to a new venue. This year, each venue has a list of gigs. Once you've earned enough stars, you start unlocking new gigs in various locales around the globe. It's nice because if there's a song that you just can't beat or one you just hate playing, you don't have to beat it.
The new setlist feature is very prominent in the new Tour mode also. Most of the challenges that are presented involve playing a setlist, which is just 2 or more songs played back-to-back without going back to the menu to select more songs. It provides a fun challenge, and it feels like you're actually playing a concert rather than just a one-shot gig. Some of the challenges are required in order to progress (like you need a plane to jump from America to Europe and vise versa), and they're not "choose your own songs" setlists either. There will be some songs that you just have to learn to play. Rock Band 1.8.
I have not had any time to experiment with online play, so I'll remain mum on that topic.
Overall, it's not a bad game, but some people I think will not want to shell out $60 for what is essentially just more songs. I would have preferred that this was just made available as downloadable content that ran less than $60. Anyway, I wouldn't really call it a sequel. Rock Band 1.8 seems to be adequate.
I've got no review on IGN to point to, so:
Score 8.5/10.0
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