Rock Band 2

I'll try and keep this down with sounded too bias but...

The option of over 1100 songs ranging from Death Metal to Nerdcore to Funk to Rap to Trance.

The option to import all the songs from Rock Band 1, Lego Rock Band and Green Day Rock Band.

World Tour bring a much longer and varied playthrough rather than play one song, next! play next song, NEXT! etc.

Realistic charts a.k.a single notes rather than a ensemble of three note chords.

Weekly DLC

Better graphics (Have you seen the main menu! D:)

Rock Band Network allows even more songs for 360 users and soon to be PS3 and Wii.

And it doesn't drag the legacy of greats like Johnny Cash, Hendrix and Kurt Cobain through the mud.

I was over 1,000 words into a review when I noticed that these have a 500 word limit, so I'll try to condense it. The Rock Band(RB) franchise began a year before Guitar Hero(GH) added drums and a microphone so it is the original (it's also made by the people who made GH 1, 2 and 80s).

The gameplay mehanics in RB2 are more realistic than GH:World Tour. Hammer-ons and pull-offs actually require some precision in timing (in GH you can essentially mash the frets with your forehead). Note charts are far more faithful reproductions of the original guitar and drum parts. The drums, despite having no cymbals as yet (The Beatles: RB drum kit will allow you to add them and is fully backwards compatible), are also more realistic since the toms double as cymbals allowing for potentially 4 toms and 4 cymbals instead of 3 toms and 2 cymbals. The 4 toms is especially important since more toms = more fun (watch the drumming gorilla in the cadbury's advert for proof).

Many of the songs are the same as GH but RB treats the songs far better. I remember playing GH3 and GHWT and being actively put off some of my favourite songs because they were a chore to play, not because they were difficult but because they were uncomfortable or because they would switch instruments randomly (Through The Fire and the flames at one point has you playing two guitars and a keyboard). More importantly, RB has its download store which, when added to RB1, RB2 and RB:AC/DC makes for over 700 songs, the vast majority of which are original masters.

GHWT has a song creator that allows you to create your own songs without vocal parts. This is no good since anybody with the talent to create a worthwhile song will be too constrained by it and anybody else won't use it. Rock Band are instead creating a full development envirnment for independent musicians to put their songs fully into the game with quality control and all.

Multiplayer is where Rock Band really cleans up though. You play as a band, when you set off star power it helps the entire band (but only uses your star power reserves), if somebody fails out star power can save them. You can even set it to no-fail mode so you can just enjoy the game (having played Guitar Hero with children before I can assure you this is very important as there's nothing more disheartening than constantly failing songs while learning to play and the 'beginner' mode is no help when attempting to progress to harder difficulties).

I could carry on ad nauseam but the long and short of it is that Rock Band is far, far superior to modern Guitar Hero and pretty much every review will bear witness to that. Don't believe the advertising, get the better game.

Having discovered that you can use your gh controller for rock band(with an update) I thought I'd give rock band a go, quite frankly I wasted my time! Rock band has nothing on GH, I don't know if it is just because I have always been a GH fan but I thought everything about Rock band sucks in comparison, the charachters are cartoons, alot of the songs are already on the GH games, the hammer ons and pull offs don't work as well as GH and to top it off the tour mode has you doing the same tunes again and again! If you are gonna get into this genre go down the GH road, in my opinion if you try rock band 1st it'll put you off and you'll probably not want to try GH. GUITAR HERO ROCKS!!!

This is a good game online but i prefer guitar hero it has more content