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A parent/20+ year drummer's persective

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 161 / 168
Date: December 26, 2007
Author: Amazon User

Seems I'm the first to review this on Amazon for the PS2 version. I read all the reviews for PS3, and there are minimal differences (character customization and online playing) that are absent for the PS2 version. I can't really say those are a big deal to me, and I was really skeptical about this product. I haven't played Guitar Hero, so I can't make a comparison of the two.

What I can say is this game is a BLAST to play. I read some reviews where people who are drummers (or are the girlfriends of drummers) are complaining about the quality of the drumset. Considering a high quality digital drumkit (Roland for example) is going to run you from $3,000 to $5,000, what do you expect for $170 (it ALSO includes a WIRELESS guitar controller plus the video game)? I am actually impressed with the kit, it seems durable so far (and I've laid in to the thing when getting in to a song), and I'm very surprised by the action of the drum pedal. It's not a TAMA or DW pro-pedal, but it's got great action "considering".

I would recommend buying a real pair of drumsticks (at a comfortable size for your playing). Not only are the included sticks smaller (kid sized), but they're very roughly finished and you're guaranteed to get nice and blistered real quick-like playing with the low grade sticks included. Personal recommendation for brand would be Vick Firth (or Promark) for sticks (just my opinion, there are others out there). Another "comfort" item (if you choose to put money in to this game) is a drum throne. You'll be in pain much less, and can play for longer.

As for the guitar, it feels great. I've always wanted to learn or play real guitar, and this doesn't replace the 6 string, but it does teach great coordination for your fretting (left) and strumming (right) hands. Playing along to the game on guitar is fun for me, because it's a different role than "beat keeper", and you feel like you're really jamming the tune.

Another advantage of the game... if you learn to play the drumkit on this ... the transition to a real kit will be minimal (much more comfortable for sure). Something to be cognizant of (for the drumkit) is the playing surfaces. They are hard, and playing for extended periods on this (especially for us 30+ year olds) can lead to some forearm/wrist pain. The reason being is when you strike a hard rubber pad with a stick, there's no "give" to the surface you're hitting. The game tutorial recommends holding the sticks loosely, and it's important you do this not only to have the speed to play the game, but also to keep the impact of your striking a hard surface from being sent back up the stick right in to your wrist/arms.

The other thing I like about this game is the collaborative playing. My 15 year old daughter (who mainly likes hip/hop) and I have a ball playing this. We hooked it up and were jamming for 3 hours. The only reason we stopped was from fatigue. We've always played video games, but most are "versus", and it's really cool to be jamming a tune with your kid. We haven't explored the vocal aspect of the game yet, but we'll get there. She loves the game and has been sitting with the controller going over the songs just to learn them (something cute about seeing your daughter jamming "Mississippi Queen" with you). If we have company, I can still see this being tons of fun.

For parents on the fence about buying their child a drumset... I see this as a perfect testing ground and reasonably priced. Most "kid sets" are absolute garbage, and if your daughter/son doesn't pursue it further, then you're stuck with a junk drumset you've paid $200-400 for, and you'll get half that amount (if it's in good shape) if you sell it. For what you get in this game... it's a great starter for drums, it'll teach them how coordinate all the limbs, and if they outgrow it and want a real kit, well ... you've still got a fun video game for the family to play. The fact you can play this with headphones is a big bonus, since real drum sets don't have volume buttons!

Don't buy the package unless you are a drum enthusiast

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 1 / 12
Date: December 26, 2007
Author: Amazon User

Almost $400 for this complete package is a ripoff. The game is great, but the package is not worth the PS2 Holiday pricetag. If you have guitar hero guitars, you are halfway there. Just think of this game as an extension to Guitar Hero, but with more popular rock songs that are taylored to the Karaoke crowd. And you can buy a Logitech microphone that works with Karaoke Revolution for only $4.99 at Best Buy. It works great with this game. Unless you're a drum enthusiast, the drums are not worth it IMO. Extremely difficult at times.

$249 for PS 2 version?!

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 2 / 11
Date: December 28, 2007
Author: Amazon User

I had so much fun with my version of the game, I came to Amazon to buy it for a friend. Wow, pretty nervy of Amazon.com to charge $100 over the suggested retail price I paid for the game just a few weeks ago! Are they taking advantage of the short supply? Why not just charge the retail price and when they're gone, they're gone. If you can wait for the supply to come back in, you'll save $150. Amazon, you've tarnished your usual sterling reputation with this move. Bad form.

I prefer Guitar Hero

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 1 / 19
Date: December 28, 2007
Author: Amazon User

We set this game up, and after messing with the calibration for a half an hour finally got to play. We were horrible. I knew I had no rhythm but the drums were frustrating. In Guitar Hero I'm pretty good, I get about 98% or higher on medium level (still kinda suck on hard), but with rock band I almost fail easy songs. This leads me to believe that the calibration is STILL way off. I guess I'll have to drag this into my bedroom on my normal teeny tiny TV... smash everyone in the cramped room and try it again...great party game. The guitar controller is a piece of crap, I hate the strum bar, and the start/select buttons are too close to the bar so I kept accidently hitting them with my hand.
I'm a girl, so naturally my voice is higher than the singers, and found I'd only get "Awesome" when I sang in exaggerated low vocals. Also for a kareoke game they chose some weird songs, that Im guessing most people wouldn't know very well...but I did have a blast singing In Bloom and Say It Aint So.
I guess on my day off I'll have to spend the day really figuring out the calibration and getting used to drums. I just feel a little disappointed. When I first got Guitar Hero I sucked, sure, but I at least had a lot of fun learning. This game just frustrated me.

Despite a stripped-down feel, Rock Band is still spectacular

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 41 / 46
Date: December 29, 2007
Author: Amazon User

We all knew that we'd be getting a stripped-down version of Rock Band for the PS2, but let it be said that despite it's last-gen flaws and missing options, Rock Band still manages to be a spectacular rhythm game. As one could guess, Rock Band is best enjoyed as a party game with others, as the instruments included in the Special Edition work wonderfully to their purpose. The 58 included songs here, including cuts from Weezer, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Metallica, Jet, and the Ramones among others; are all implemented well, and the in-game screen is flawless as you perform these tunes. While nearly everything about the PS2 version of Rock Band is spot-on, there are moments where you will notice just how stripped-down this conversion is. Most notably is the fact that you will not be able to download new content, and an incredibly stripped-down Band World Tour mode is what really hurts the PS2 version of Rock Band, but this was expected to begin with, which doesn't make these lackings a surprise. What is surprising is how spot-on spectacular the PS2 version of Rock Band ends up being, as there are still a variety of options to explore and modes to play, whether it be alone or as a party game as intended. All in all, if Guitar Hero got you into rhythm gaming and a PS2 is your only option, Rock Band is an essential pickup.

Overrated

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 2 / 5
Date: December 29, 2007
Author: Amazon User

Ok, I'll make this quick. It's a glorified version of Guitar Hero. Yes, the drums are cool, the mic is cool, 2 guitars are cool. Great party game. Unfortunately, only 58 songs. False advertising on that you can't make you own characters. Great party game, but seeing as you can't do the online thing and get any more songs or really customize or unlock anything, go buy a 360 or ps3 if you want to get the most out of it. Or just buy the game itself to rock out with guitars you already have (gh guitars work with this pretty well). So if it wasn't false advertising on what you could do with the ps2 version, it would get a 5 star because then you wouldn't go in with false expectations.

(and before anyone blasts me for posting this review, it's a great game, but not worth the big money that it's going for. And I like customizing things and unlocking things as well as playing the songs, and there's not that many songs)

Worth the wait....

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 21 / 22
Date: December 30, 2007
Author: Amazon User

We originally ordered this from Amazon around Nov 2007, but Amazon cancelled the order canceled shortly afterwards because of product shortages. And yet local retailers continued to get them in very short supply. So we took to checking local retailers each morning to see if they had a new shipment for most of December until we finally got lucky.

We've had a blast with it thank goodness, since after waiting this long, my kids' expectations were VERY high. Three instruments come in the box: guitar, drums and microphone. The game comes with a USB splitter that allows you to connect up to 4 instruments at once into the USB port on the PS2. We *WERE* able to use the guitar we have for Guitar Hero (a Red Octane wireless version for PS2) with this game, giving us a band of lead guitar, bass, drums and microphone. I like that we can keep switching around and try the different instruments. It gives you a lot of different perspectives on the same song!

Guitar:
The guitar is excellent. We've been using a Red Octane PS2 wireless Guitar with the Guitar Hero 1-3 games, and while good, aren't as good as the one that came with Rock Band (RB). The new RB one has an extra set of buttons farther up the neck for solos and there are NOT ridges (fret bars) between the keys on this one as there were on the GH guitar. This makes it easier to slide fingers along the buttons with this guitar than it was with the GH guitar, making it easier for the fast sections.

The songs are orchestrated a little more easily, I normally play GH at a "hard" level and get 3-5 stars there... on Rock Band I was able to sight read and get most songs at 5 stars on my first try, so I think they are easier in general.

Drums:
My kids LOVE the drums, and they take some coordination to play. Since I'm not a drummer, it's hard to add a lot here. The height is very quick and easy to adjust which is nice when there are dramatic differences int eh height of the players. The sticks that come with the set are fairly low end wooden ones... we use better ones we already had from a music store with nylon tips that are more solid and feel better. The heads on the drums are very solid feeling and have some give. They don't bounce like real drum heads, but are close enough for us non drummers to get a feel for it. The overall set is a little rickety -- the vertical bars that hold up the heads look like they are just plastic pipe and they will rock back and forth a little. That doesn't really affect the play, but it doesn't have a solid feel unfortunately.

Microphone:
A mic comes in the box and it seems to also be nice and solid. We also have the mics from the SingStar series, and these are shorter than those. We haven't checked to see if they are interchangable yet. The ones with Rock Band have longer cords which is nice -- you can spread out a little more. Some songs also allow you to use the mic like a tambourine and the singer's part (between phrases) sometimes shows a rhythm the singer uses to tap out a tambourine part.

Bass:
A bass does *NOT* come with this game. However, like the GH series, you can select whether the guitar you hook up plays a guitar part or a bass part. So if you hook up the guitar that comes with Rock Band and then another guitar that you already have, you can have one person take the guitar part and the other take the bass. This is about the same in RB as in GH, and as noted the tracks in RB are easier in my opinion.

Overall, an excellent effort and I look forward to being able to get the inevitable add on song packs. Just like GH came out with an "Encore: the 80's" product, I would LOVE to see add on disks for RB. If anyone from the RB team is listening, I'd love to see "genre disks" in particular, like Country hits, Hip Hop hits, best of an era, etc.

Just as much fun as Guitar Hero

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 5 / 5
Date: December 30, 2007
Author: Amazon User

This game has been a lot of fun so far for me and my family. We picked it up for the retail price (around $160). Usually only one or two of us can play a game like Guitar Hero at one time. With Rock Band, the whole family can play. One person plays guitar, another plays bass (and yes, Guitar Hero Guitars will work with the PS2 version of rock band as we've been playing this way already) and another either plays drums or sings. It took me a little getting use to the new wireless guitar that came with Rock Band. The strum bar is very different from the Guitar Hero Guitars. It doesn't make that clicking noise when you stum it, which is a big plus, but the action you get from the stum bar is different than the Guitar Hero Guitars. The buttons are large and square on the guitar. I find this much easier for fitting my fingers on the button and they don't tend to slide off and hit the other buttons.
The drums are a lot of fun. It helps to have good rhythm to begin with when playing them, but even that's not required. My 8 y.o. was able to play them and make it all the way through songs and had a blast doing it. Even my husband who has no musical talent was able to sit down and get through a song on the drums. The only complaint with the drums is that they are a bit loud when you hit them with the drum sticks. I have seen mods for fixing this and will probably do so soon (foam pad and felt to dampen the noise of the stick hitting the drum). The drum sticks that come with the game are very cheap. Ours came with nicks of wood out of them. I'll be getting a better pair very soon.
The microphone is beefy and seems to pick up singing pretty well. I've only sang one song with it so far, but it worked great.
I've seen complaints about people having difficulty with the game picking up the instruments, but we had no problems at all. We plugged the items into the included usb hub and we were off and running. It took more time to unpack everything out of the box than it did to plug it all in and start playing.
Overall, a great game and lots of fun.

Fun game, disappointing songs

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 2 / 17
Date: December 30, 2007
Author: Amazon User

We play this game as a family. The game itself is super fun. My husband even loves to play, and he hates video games. The instruments are great quality for game-playing (not for professional playing of course because, well, it's a game), especially considering it cost less than $200 for the game and 3 instruments (microphone, guitar, drumset).

We've only played on the easy level and are somewhere near the end. I can't imagine playing anything harder than the easy level because the drums and guitar both get very fast and difficult just at the easy level.

The big disappointment for us is the selection of songs. You have to wade through a lot of crap to get to the good stuff. A few great classic rock and alternative rock songs are thrown in among a slew of what I assume is Christian rock (because of the consistent mention of Jesus....?) and other unknown (and not good) songs. We'd love to see more from Rolling Stones, Aerosmith, Metallica, ACDC, Violent Femmes...even DEVO and the B52's would be better than some of this stuff. Why the need for all the unknown and crappy stuff when there's an abundance of good stuff out there...?

Great party game, certainly better than Guitar Hero!!

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 9 / 9
Date: January 01, 2008
Author: Amazon User

A few weeks ago I was invited over a friend's house to play Rock Band on his Xbox 360. I absolutely fell in love with the game and just had to have it for myself. Only I didn't have a 360 and I knew it would be extremely difficult to find one for the PS2. I was about to go all crazy and buy a 360 just to play Rock Band when one day I managed to find a PS2 version just by chance. So of course I bought it and set it up as soon as I got home.

Setup isn't all that simple. Unless you want to take 5 minutes to set everything up everytime you play, I suggest leaving everything assembled (that is, if you have room to store everything). Initial setup obviously takes longer. First you must setup every instrument. The mic requires no assembly. Easy enough. For the guitar, you need to snap the end of the guitar into the other piece, then put on the strap, then unscrew the plate on the back of the guitar and insert the batteries (which are included). The drums have several different pieces. This is what takes the longest to set up. After the instruments are assembled, you hook them up to a usb hub which then hooks up to the usb port on your PS2.

In terms of the actual game, you are allowed to have 4 people playing at one time (one singer, one drummer, and 2 guitarists-bass and electric). If you only have a couple of people or if you just want to play by yourself, you have that option as well and you can choose any instrument to play. Just want to sing? That's fine. One of you wants to play guitar while the other plays the drums? That's fine too. The additional guitar is not included with this bundle but if you have a Guitar Hero guitar, that'll work.

What's great about this game is that anyone can play. I played this on New Year's Eve with my 20 year old sister, my 22 year old sister, my 13 year old male cousin, my 15 year old female cousin, and my 40 year old uncle and everyone enjoyed it. I probably wouldn't recommend this for younger kids because even the easy levels can be difficult for adults. There are 4 different levels to choose from-easy, medium, hard, and expert. Each player can choose which level they want to play on. If your singer doesn't know the words to a certain song, you can put him/her on easy while your awesome bassist can play on hard or expert.

For those who don't have Guitar Hero and/or don't know how to play the game, it's pretty simple. The singer sings the lyrics (obviously). The drums and guitars have 4 and 5 "buttons" (respectively). Each is colored. Every player has their own "chart". Different colored circles come in varying speeds down the "chart" and the player must hit the correct colored buttons as they come to the end of the "chart". When done correctly, notes are hit in tune, and music is produced. You play as a band and when one person fails, you must "save" them (or bring them back into the game) by playing really well and hitting every note.

If you have someone in your group that is a good singer and can hit the notes and/or is not all that great at playing the guitars and drums, this is your singer. If you have someone who has good rhythm and doesn't mind playing at an obnoxiously fast speed, this is your drummer. If you have two people who are quick with their fingers and can multitask, these are your guitarists. Other reviewers pointed out that this game is hard and yeah, it can be. Not everyone is going to be good at every instrument. I'm good on guitar but can't play the drums on easy without failing. This is why I think this game is better suited for teens and adults.

A few other noteworthy things to point out. First, this version is different from the 360 version. Obviously with the 360, you can play "online" with other people and you can't with the PS2 version. Also the tour options are different. With the 360 version, you can constantly work up to harder difficulties and new songs whereas the PS2 version is very straightforward-you get new songs after playing the other songs no matter what difficulty level you're on. I've played every song and from here I can only try to beat the harder levels. After I've accomplished that, there isn't much else to do.

There are different options as well. You can configure your game so that there isn't a lag with the song. If your guitarist is a lefty, you can choose Lefty Mode. You can change the volume levels for each instrument so that mom isn't yelling at the kiddos that the drums are too loud. Song-wise, there are only a few songs that the younger generations will know. I'm 20 years old and of the 58 songs, I've probably only heard of 15 or 20. And some of the songs have me questioning why the heck they were chosen for this game. But overall the songs aren't terrible.

Would I recommend this game? For sure. Keep in mind that younger kids might have a really tough time getting the hang of it. Replayability isn't as great as I'd like it to be but I'm hoping there will be new Rock Band games released in the future.

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