Rock Band 2

I can't personally attest that Ike did no good. The hurricane afforded me some solid playtime with Rock Band 2. I drummed hours yesterday, much less today. I've unlocked a good chunk of songs so far, most of which I like, a few I could do without ever hearing again.

The sequel remains largely unchanged from the original. Harmonix did remove solo play, merging it instead with Touring. Which mean everyone forms a band and tours, even if you solo play the entire time. They also added some quality metadata into the song titles, including album covers and boxes that indicate what level you've mastered the song.

So far, some of my favorite songs are Duran Duran's Hungry Like the Wolf, Interpol's PDA, Ratt's Round and Round, and The Silversun Pickup's Lazy Eye. I unlocked the latter this morning, to much hooting and hollering.

I was a bit disappointed that there wasn't an option to transfer my rock star from Rock Band to the sequel. Instead, Wifezilla and I had to recreate our stars. For some reason, RB2 didn't offer me the option to two-tone my hair blue and lime green, so Eddie seems very plain to me. After knocking out some gigs, I did repurchase his famed Dragon armor. So all is not lost. I once again dubbed our band Moldy Garbage and took the Peanut Reaper as our band icon. The caped peanut wielding a scythe even appears on the bass drum.

I consistently five star songs on easy mode so I'm going to have to start playing medium more often. The problem with medium is that it's greatly more difficult than easy. The songs play totally differently, with more complicated beat combinations and much more liberal use of the bass drum. I often can barely get through a song on medium that I can play flawlessly on easy. I wish the difficulty were a bit more graduated than that, but until I get more accomplished on the bass drum, I bear more resemblance to a monkey banging away with pots and pans than a professional drummer.