What? The Rock Band franchise was created by Harmonix, the same development team that created Karaoke Revolution and a little franchise called Guitar Hero. Rock Band was their successful attempt to merge those two music game concepts, and Rock Band 2 is (as of writing) the BEST music game for any console. 


Why? Between the 84 songs on the disk, the 20 free downloadable songs, the ability to import songs from Rock Band 1 and Lego Rock Band, over 1,000 songs available as DLC, and the Rock Band Network (with the possibility for a gigantic increase in song availability), I’ve got 100s of songs to choose from on my hard drive. Two players play controllers shaped like guitars, one player plays a drum controller (just like you’d play regular drums), and one player gets to sing along. My kids and my parents play. When I have parties, we play. I play alone. I can play with my friends online. I compete in score competitions online (and can view my leaderboard scores from a web browser). This is the game that librarians play at gaming sessions in conferences. This is one of the best games for library programs. If you purchase it for a collection, it will be loaned constantly.

Who? It’s hard to find a game that you can say is for everyone. Wii Sports is one of those. This is the other one. Because of the GIGANTIC library of songs, you are bound to find a song you like. Because of the scalable levels of difficulty, anyone can pick it up and jam. And probably the most important dimension of this game, the one that brings it from a great party game to the BEST party game, is the microphone. You don’t need to ever have played a video game before to jump right into the Rock Band 2 experience, you just need to be able to sing karaoke. Also, because the game scales up to VERY difficult, hardcore gamers can really get depth and playability out of this title (which is usually a choice that has to be made: good party game or good hardcore game? this one is both).

Rock Band 2 is the game I’ve spent the most time playing since I purchased my 360. It is fun, challenging, and the songs are “great jam”. And just when you think you’ve gotten bored with the game, they release more songs. Besides all the game content, there is an information community built around the game over at rockband.com. You can link your in-game band to your rockband.com profile, link your profile to your facebook account, and you are immediately involved in the Rock Band community. Librarians could take a tip from them and how successful they are at building communities around non-traditional media forms.

Not only should you buy this game for your library, you should buy it for yourself.