Rock Band 2 Moves Forward in Ways Both Big and Small

Yesterday revealed what will be one of the biggest advancements in Rock Band 2, in how the ability to import your songs from RB1 works. But that’s not the only improvement, as it happens. Looks like there are other changes which are considered “small but key:”

The kick-pedal doesn’t fall off – Not only are the new “Rock Band 2″ drums wireless, but when you lift them off the floor, the kick-pedal doesn’t fall off. As “RB2″ public relations man John Drake noted, this is an advance that will be appreciated by people who don’t have a permanent spot for their video game drums in their place of residence and need to move them a lot.

The new drum trainer mode includes garbage can sounds — “RB2″ includes a mode that teaches drum-playing by looping a beat, scrolling required notes and calculating a percentage of player effectiveness for a set beat pattern. Players can set the beats-per-minute and choose for one of 76 beat progressions, emulating riffs of everything from swing music to metal. Or you can use a fill trainer, which teaches 45 effective ways to wail on the drums during a fill. Several drum-set sounds are available for the trainer, including… an overturned trash can.

Daily ‘Battle of the Bands’ challenges might incorporate DLC – Drake said that the developers of “RB2″ studio Harmonix hope to provide a new Battle of the Bands challenge every day (including Sundays, he hopes, after we reporters grilled him on that). These challenges can only be created by developers and will present such trials as The Stalker Challenge (best band performance in Blondie’s “One Way Or Another” and two other stalker-sounding songs) or a Steely Dan battle that requires entrants play solo, on expert, but with the no-failure option that will let them play to the end. Each Battle runs for a set number of hours or days. Each of a player’s performances is ranked in an online leaderboard and in a Battle history. The Battles will sometimes include downloadable songs. If they do, the player will be told this once they try to enter the Battle. — MTV Multiplayer

So, do any of these things improve your opinion of the game, or desire to get it? Me, I’m just happy the drums won’t fall apart. Too bad I already have the set from the first game.