We have a jam session with the sequel to the smash music game Rock Band.

When faced with creating a follow-up game to the smash hit music game Rock Band, developer Harmonix was faced with a real challenge: how do you improve upon a game that is already jam-packed with features? Rather than adding in a keyboard instrument or something equally different, Rock Band 2 refines the gameplay established in Rock Band. It features a vast number of minor (and a few not-so-minor) improvements to the original game's formula while adding 84 new songs, all of them master tracks.

Since its inception, Harmonix has emphasized that Rock Band is a music platform rather than a single game. Staying true to that rhetoric, Rock Band 1 and 2 are both fully cross-compatible. All previous downloadable content will be available for RB2, and all future DLC will be usable in RB1. You can even choose to import the Rock Band tracklist into Rock Band 2, copying all of the songs off of the CD onto your hard drive. As if that wasn't enough, Harmonix has also announced that between now and the fall they will release twenty free downloadable songs, all of them master recordings.

The Rock Band 2 tracklist reads like a veritable who's-who of the rock and roll world. Songs appear from artists such as AC/DC, Bob Dylan, Talking Heads, and Pearl Jam, and the game can even boast the world debut of a new Guns 'n Roses song from their upcoming album Chinese Democracy. Harmonix claims that there will be over 500 songs available by the end of the year, which is quite an impressive number; while competitor Guitar Hero: World Tour may be trying to win people over with shiny new features like the Music Creator, it is clear that Rock Band's draw will be its impressive and ever-expanding music library.

The laundry list of Rock Band 2's new features are mostly direct responses to common fan requests. Band World Tour, the game's meaty multiplayer career mode, is now playable online. Each band no longer has a dedicated 'band leader', so you're not forced to use certain instruments and characters. In fact, all of your characters, in addition to having all sorts of new wardrobe options, can now play on any instrument instead of being restricted to just one. New content for Band World Tour includes Tour Challenges, special goals for your band to meet, and a Battle of the Bands mode where you can compete against other bands online.

There is even a drum trainer to teach you how to play the drums for real (or at least as “real” as you can get with a plastic toy drumkit). There are a lot of other little touches to make the experience more pleasant, such as a mode that stops you from failing out of a song (perfect for young children or hopeless friends who think they have better rhythm than they do) and a sensor in the new controllers that automatically calibrates the game to compensate for lag, eliminating the need for time-consuming manual calibration (more on the new instruments is below).