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Nega-review: Rock Band 2

by Kyle Orland { Sep 17th 2008 at 7:59AM }

"At its worst, Rock Band 2 feels like a massive expansion pack." (3) "If your initial exposure to [Rock Band 2] was to walk into the room when your friends were already playing it, you'd probably think there was nothing different from the first Rock Band." (9) "If you're playing one of the songs from the original game, you could forget you're playing Rock Band 2." (7)

"Most folks... may be a bit disappointed to find World Tour largely unchanged." (4) Yes, "the World Tour mode itself is basically unchanged." (8) "The progression ... is almost completely identical to last year's, ... the world map uses the same art and the challenges are set up the same way as in the original." (4) "The World Tour hasn't changed too much." (1) "It's essentially the same show." (3) and "it's hard to notice the newness when there's a big chunk of game that is just the same as it ever was." (4)

Continued →

Declaration of Independence reading gets perfect vocal score in Rock Band 2

by Kyle Orland { Sep 16th 2008 at 8:30AM }

Back in July, a GameSpy preview for Rock Band 2 claimed "the phoneme detection system used for the 'talkie' parts [in Rock Band] has been completely stripped and a new one has been put in place [for Rock Band 2]." Well, Harmonix definitely stripped out the old system, but it seems to have forgotten to put a new one in its place, as the new game seems to award perfect vocal points if it detects any noise during the "talkie" parts.

We first became aware of this problem when we saw this video of a singer using a bunch of gibberish to pass the Beastie Boys' "So Whatcha Want" with a 100% rating on Expert difficulty. It's an impressive illustration of the faulty phoneme detection, but it's not wholly satisfying -- the singer is occasionally on rhythm and his voice occasionally does kind of match with the on-screen words. We wondered: how bad would a vocal performance have to be to fail this song?

The answer, apparently, is "worse than a monotone recitation of the U.S. Declaration of Independence." As shown in the above video we've put together, even a dry reading of a 200+-year-old political treatise can be victorious in a Rock Band 2 vocal battle. Rest assured, there's no computer trickery going on here -- this video was taken as a direct feed from the Xbox 360 and has not been edited in any way. Now we only have one more question: when will Harmonix put in that improved phoneme detection system it's long been promising.