Rock Band Hands-On--The PS2 Edition

[MKRayden]

Harmonix's multiplayer rhythm hit Rock Band has been setting hearts aflame nationwide for a few weeks now. That is, at least, on the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3. For all you would-be bandmates who haven't ponied up the cash for one of those consoles yet, take heart: Harmonix and Houston-based partner developer Pi Studios have been working on a PlayStation 2 version of the game. This version will let you get a vocalist, guitarist, bassist, and drummer so that you can pull silly rock-star poses and play through dozens of hit songs all in the same room. We had a chance to whip through a few songs in the PS2 game to see how smoothly it's translated to lesser hardware.
Unfortunately, a number of the modes from the 360 and PS3 versions of Rock Band have been removed from this port. Chiefly, there's no online head-to-head play, which will also preclude the possibility of future downloadable content (though that's not surprising, given the PS2's lack of standard mass storage). The band world tour mode has also been scaled down considerably. In the next-gen versions, you create a band and then tour from city to city, amassing cash, gaining new fans, signing record deals, playing in battle-of-the-bands challenges, and so on. On the PS2, you can still play a four-player career game, but you'll simply progress linearly through each tier of songs, as you would in a Guitar Hero game or one of the single-instrument solo tours in Rock Band. That also means the character creator is gone, so you won't be able to customize your own rock dude or dudette before jumping into the world tour gameplay.

Click [Only Registered Users Can See LinksClick Here To Register]Read More