Solid, familiar gameplay and a massive song library but Rock Band lacks music that rocks.
Huge track list: With 84 songs included with the game there's a lot to like (and dislike). The music spans a couple generations and many genres. The songs are also well suited for each band member - generally giving each instrument some good variety in musical composition - ranging from repetitive to chaotically complex. Combined with Rock Band 1's setlist and downloadable content that can all be played on 2 and you're left with a pretty respectable library.
Setlists: Whether you're in quickplay or World Tour mode, it's easy to create your own setlist of any length allowing your band to move from song to song without having to leave the venue and go through different loading screens. Your library of songs can also be sorted to your taste and quickly browsed through making it easier to find a particular song or play only songs in a certain genre or by a single artist.
Customizable characters: Like before, RB2 lets you create a band member by making a few simple selections. The character creation itself isn't terribly robust but it does offer some good variety letting you change height, weight, color, hair, face (from a collection), and their musical style which will dictate how they behave on stage. Once you start making money playing as a band in World Tour mode you'll be able to afford different clothing options, change your hairstyle, buy unique instruments, and add/make tattoos.
World Tour: Creating a band and traveling around to different venues is fun as there are lots of different places to play. Of course, this will only affect the look of the stage you play on. Playing on any difficulty will gradually unlock new venues (depending on how well you play) provided you have the necessary transportation to get there.
Change band members anytime: Your World Tour isn't affected by what instrument you're playing so you can start a Tour playing guitar and at any time change to a different instrument without affecting your progress. As well as add or remove band members.
Online bands: The online portion of Rock Band 2 is far more feature rich than any other rythm game out right now. It's easy to have friends join your band online (and vice versa) and play in both Quickplay and World Tour modes. A small gripe is that music selection is limited to only one person. If others want to influence the setlist, they have to trust that the person in control will cater to their whims.
Battle of the Bands: Just as a nice addition to keep you coming back for more, RB2 includes weekly challenges that stack you up against your friends and the RB2 community at large to see who has the greatest chops.
Visuals: While not exceptional, watching the game is much more interesting than watching Rock Band's rival, Guitar Hero. Characters are interesting to watch on their own and often interact with each other. Occasionally the screen will take on a particular style or emulate a 70's music video. It's also a nice touch when the crowd gets into the music and starts singing along - although I guess that's not really graphics...
Bad stuff
Track list sucks: OK, so that's harsh and taste in music is subjective. It's doubtful that anyone will love every song on here. (If you do, you've struck gold.) The problem isn't really one of taste though as it is one of length and repetition. There's a number of songs and bands that were included that I really enjoy, and was excited about. In practice however, these songs just don't transition well. They're simply too long and often times, the composition is too repetitive to be enjoyable. (Sonic Youth's "Teenage Riot", Bob Dylan's "Tangled Up in Blue", Beastie Boys' "So Whatcha Want".) Personally too, I don't feel that enough of the songs really "rock." Or perhaps more accurately, there's a lot of songs that are snoozers. Regardless of genre, they just don't have that get up on your feet, barroom sing-a-long familiarity. It's hard to get excited about a song that doesn't stir something inside you. Even by lesser known bands, it's not hard to find music that simple gets your blood pumping to the beat or has you waving cigarette lighters in the air, so it has me scratching my head when a party game like Rock Band comes out with very little party music on it. It's good music. It's just not music I care about playing.
Unlocking music: Not a big surprise and not terribly annoying or frustrating but songs have to be unlocked in World Tour mode before they can be played anywhere else. This means that your Quickplay library is very small out of the box and it also means that if someone joins you for an online game, you're both restricted to what songs the host player has unlocked.
World Tour: Too open. This could have really benefited from a simple storyline and a more linear progression. There's just no feeling that your band is really accomplishing anything. Yes, you can unlock bigger and better transportation, hire more effective managers, play bigger venues, and finally grace the cover of Rolling Stone but it's all very haphazard with very little direction: "Play this gig to unlock such and such." The ending is terribly anti-climatic. A balance between it's chaotic open world and the linear progression of Guitar Hero would have been nice.
Meh visuals: The graphics aren't anything special. I do like some of the effects and it's fun to watch your band members dancing around (if you can look away from the notes). Harmonix also did a pretty good job with the crowds in terms of character and movement variety but there's still a lot of repetition. You'll see several people doing the same gesture in unison. Guitar hammer-ons are also a bit too inconspicuous - denoted only by thicker white lines on either side of the button graphic. I found these easier to recognize in Guitar Hero.
Overall, I do really enjoy Rock Band 2. As a music game though I feel it falls short. Maybe it's just my taste in music, maybe it's the fact that Harmonix tried to cater to so many musical tastes, maybe it's the shear size of the library that causes me to overlook lots of songs, but whatever the reason I'm just left wondering where's the music that makes me want to rock?