We're in the midst of an epic battle here, people. The once-mighty-now-beaten-and-bleeding-to-death music industry has found firm footing in our beloved games industry in the form of rhythm game franchises Guitar Hero and Rock Band, and the two series now vie for dominance. I'm of the opinion that healthy competition forces innovation and brings out the best of the competitors so I'm looking forward to new entries in both series. I can't vouch for Guitar Hero: World Tour since I've spent zero time with it but after playing Rock Band 2 I can say that MTV Games and Harmonix tend to stay in this fight for a long while.

All the clever peripherals and new game modes in the world won't help if you don't have the songs and Rock Band 2 aims to overcome the obstacle with sheer numbers. There are 84 new songs included on the Rock Band 2 disc including "Man in the Box" by Alice in Chains, "Alive" by Pearl Jam, "Mountain Song" by Jane's Addiction and "Tangled Up in Blue" by Bob Dylan with 20 additional bonus tracks. In addition to the songs on the disc owners of the original Rock Band can do a disc import to get access to all the songs from the original game. If that wasn't enough all the DLC purchased for Rock Band also becomes available when loading up Rock Band 2. The goal passed down to the audio team by Harmonix CEO Alex Rigopulos was to have 500 songs in the Rock Band library by the year's end.

Rock Band is very much a community game and Harmonix has listened to its fans. Many improvements have been made that are completely outside the music gameplay. For instance, the song list now uses the same visual style as the Music Store in the original game. You can easily see a difficulty rating for each instrument on each song, and the list can also be sorted and filtered in a variety of ways. You can bring up all the southern rock songs, all the songs from bands that start with the letter A, only the Rock Band 2 songs, only the downloadable content, and on and on and on.

Playing songs in Rock Band 2 is largely the same as the first game.

Another community concern was the way Rock Band worked when in a party setting with lots of people. The interface complicated switching instruments and characters so that process has been streamlined for Rock Band 2. Rather than drop back to the top layer after every song in quick play you can now create your own set list as well as a character that can play every instrument. There's also Jukebox mode where you can listen to the music and watch your characters play it without the notes in the way; great for those band breaks during the night.

Is everyone else at the party really good and making you feel like you're ruining the night by failing songs? In Rock Band 2 you can turn on No Fail mode which should help lower the barrier of entry to the intrepid novice. Now you can play as bad as you want without the guilt of ending a song prematurely by failing out three times. However, one of my complaints about Rock Band - and music games in general for that matter - still stands for Rock Band 2. You still have to play through the single-player to unlock songs for multiplayer. It's not a deal-breaker but you'll want to keep that "unlock all" cheat handy for gatherings.

Harmonix also took us through the improved Band World Tour which is now playable online and solo. Rock Band 2's World Tour mode will have the leaderboards like the original game but also offers a Battle of the Bands mode to give late-forming bands a chance to get noticed. Battle of the Bands isn't a four-versus-four multiplayer mode like you'd think. Instead a challenge is posted to the Rock Band website and in the game with a set deadline to submit a score. For instance, a challenge could go up to post the highest score on all the Metallica songs. The bands then have one week to post their highest score to win the challenge. If you post your best score and one of your friends' bands beats it you can receive notifications through Xbox Live, email, or text to your phone. Multiple challenges will be running concurrently but points don't transfer from one to the next. With each new challenge all the bands are on equal footing.

Collecting an army of fans and a pile of money to sleep on is no longer just a function of playing through the venues, now you can control what kind of support staff to hire. Street team members, roadies, PR agents and even the number one fan for all bands, your mom, will affect how you gain fans and rake in the dough. Harmonix promised that figuring out how all these pieces of the music industry work together is the key to your band' superstardom, and that it isn't as easy as just hiring everyone.

The new Rock Band 2 guitar features calibration tools, woodgrain neck, quieter buttons and an improved strum bar.

After what felt like an eternity of presentation we were turned loose on the instruments and I made a beeline for the drums. The drum set used for the demo was the premiere Ion drum set that doesn't come with the game. It's a fantastic kit but I'm not sure it's worth the additional $300 and may not be that much quieter. We only had time for one song so I wasn't able to try out the guitar but Harmonix promised quieter buttons and a more sensitive strum bar. The most important guitar improvement is the calibration tool. The Rock Band 2 guitar has a tiny camera and microphone embedded in it specifically for the purpose of calibration. All you need to do is bring up the calibration screen and hold the guitar in such a way that the camera can "see" the TV and "hear" the sound. Gone are the days of deciphering calibration hieroglyphics and trying to pinpoint a beep in millisecond measurements.

Armed with wireless instruments, improved interface, online and solo world tour, battle of the bands, a drum trainer mode and a seemingly endless song list, the Rock Band platform is ready for the big show. From the looks of Guitar Hero: World Tour it's no slouch but Rock Band 2 won't be easily beaten.

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