Anyone who knows me knows how much I love the new rhythm game phenomenon. I can’t get enough of playing along to my favorite songs. I started out with Guitar Hero 2, and thought it couldn’t get better from there. Guitar Hero 3 came out, my mind was blown, and a new champion lived. Then Rock Band strolled along, and while my love for the guitar persisted, with all its options, Rock Band was king.

Let’s just say long live the new king; Rock Band 2 reigns supreme.

To get it out of the way, Rock Band 2 does not reinvent the wheel like Rock Band did. Most of the features are minor, but will be majorly appreciated by fans of the series. World Tour replaces the solo mode, as you can now play through the popular Band World Tour setup from Rock Band by yourself or with friends. Meanwhile, the main problems with World Tour have been fixed. First, the bands are not tied to any specific character, so switching band members in and out is no longer a problem.

But the best new feature of World Tour is the online, no questions asked. Let’s say you’re the equivalent of Jimi Hendrix in Rock Band, but your drummer is rhythmically impaired. Find someone on XBox Live or the PSN, and get them to join your band. Having problems beating a setlist with Panic Attack, Painkiller, and Battery in solo mode? Go online, get a friend to help and save you when fail out. The online capabilites can be such a help to your progression through World Tour. But that’s putting it in too business-like terms. It’s flatout fun to play this game with friends. It’s a social game. Playing it with friends, as long as their talents suit yours, is much more fun to play than it is alone.

But the initial structure remains unchanged. Most cities have three different locales, you progress through your career rather similarly, etc. There are a few more cities to cater to the larger setlist. Also, there are a few more challenges, like using no overdrive or playing for a rich crowd. It’s very similar, but if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.

Along with it is a new Tour Challenge Mode, which is a set of progressively harder setlists, which effectively takes the place of the tried and true solo mode from the original. Other new features include Battle of the Bands (not the same as a score duel with an entire band, the lag on that would be insane), an online competition with new sets added almost daily, and the Drum Trainer mode so your drum fills so don’t sound like a three year old beating on their mom’s pan set.

However, there are some problems with stat tracking. In Rock Band 1, it always kept your highest score posted in solo mode along with the stars. Now, your highest score alone is only posted in the pick a song lists and Quickplay lists, with no stars next to it. For the ScoreHero crowd and those obsessed with gold stars (including me), this makes keeping track of your scores a hassle. Also, only your top 10 finishes in Battle of the Bands are saved, so after a few weeks, most of your scores will be gone forever.

The game starts with 84 songs, which is a rather large setlist to start. All 84 tracks are masters, which is beautiful compared to just a year and a half ago. Guitar Hero 2 released in April 2007, and its main setlist launched with 4 master tracks. It’s great to hear Geddy Lee, Hayley Williams, Anthony Kiedis, and Axl Rose instead of some imitator, resulting in the best sounding game we’ve heard. The setlist is among the most diverse you’ll ever see, from Bob Dylan’s folk masterpiece "Tangled Up In Blue" to Abnormality’s agonizingly hard "Visions", there truly is something for everything. Anyone who buys Rock Band 2 will have their plate full with all the songs on the disc. In addition, anyone who buys a new copy of the game can redeem a code for 20 free songs to be released soon (we’d guess somewhere around October 26 based on gut instinct alone, but Harmonix has promised them by the end of the year). With these 84 songs, Harmonix has upped the difficulty too. No longer will you only be caught up on "Green Grass and High Tides", any number of songs near the end of the game can easily trip you up and keep you stuck for days (still can’t consistenly beat Painkiller for the life of me).

But of course, Harmonix rewards their longtime friends. Anyone with Rock Band can upload 55 of the 58 (sans "Enter Sandman", "Run To The Hills", and "Paranoid") tracks in Rock Band for $5.  To put this simply, for $65, you can have 139 songs to play. All downloadable content purchased in Rock Band is compatible in Rock Band 2, and since the original’s launch, Harmonix has provided downloadable content every week. An AC/DC track pack is being released that can be uploaded to your hard drive. Five albums have already been announced for release. By year’s end, combining all these things, over 500 songs will be available to purchase. Simply insane.

And with more songs comes more content. More challenges will be available in Tour Challenge. You’ll have infinitely more Battle of the Bands competitions open to you, as many are based on a specific band (Weezer, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Metallica) or a common theme (songs with animals in the title, creepy stalker songs, genre-specific).

The graphics are nice, not that you’ll have much time to be looking at them. But the venues are distinct, and there are some new characters to see playing in your band. Our favorite graphical update had little to do with character models, however, as hammer on/pull off notes are now much more easily identified.

Overall, this game could just be viewed as an expansion pack to the original, and that opinion certainly is valid. But every aspect of the original has been improved on. With continued support of new content and an already impressively loaded package to boot, we can’t recommend Harmonix’s second offering highly enough.