Beat It

This weekend I visited a local retail store and found, somewhat hidden and seemingly out of place amongst the jeans and mens shirts, a demo display for Rock Band 2 with 2 Guitars and a set of drums. The actual set comes with a microphone instead of 2 guitars but this setup allowed someone to play bass as well at the same time. I decided to try it out since I'd heard about it and I wanted to see what all the madness was all about. I never really liked the way the guitar felt when I held it & tried to use it so I thought I'd give the drums a try. I only played through the first 2 easy songs when my wife found me and let me know it was time to go as we had a birthday party for my niece we needed to get to.

Well surprisingly enough I really enjoyed playing Rock Band and the songs weren't some random band or song that nobody knew either, these were songs that are / were popular and most people know at least some of them. I decided that not only did I have to go back but I had to bring my brother Chris who told me about his adventures with Guitar Hero and how much fun that was. So, during the birthday party arrangements and plans were made to go and so we went.

We played a few songs and even had someone walk up (a boy about 12) and play Bass Guitar on Expert mode with us and he did really well. I did take a turn at Bass Guitar on easy but did little better than 60%. Chris took a turn at drums for the first time as well and found it was a little more complicated than he thought but I watched as he quickly got the hang of it and he still did better than 80%. Afterwards though he still preferred the guitar and I still preferred the drums so it's a good combination. We spent about an hour an a half playing through some of the songs before going over to the electronics section to see how much it was and what was included.

We found that there were many more songs than what was on the demo and several songs that we'd be interested to try out also. In addition to the songs included with the disc, you could also import songs from Rock Band into Rock Band 2 and you can download over 500 other songs from the Rock Band online store. Seems like a game that has decent replay value. And while it may not teach you how to read music or how to play these instruments for real, it does take a step in giving you an opportunity to make you feel like you could do something you never dreamt possible. For the younger crowd, it can also certainly open doors for music appreciation and maybe even give them a desire to learn to play an instrument for real.