Well, I got my 20 free songs for Rock Band 2. The good folks over at MTV and Harmonix were late with the voucher code, but I suppose it’s better late than never. Anyway, I’m rocking a little more than usual today.

But if you can’t get enough of Rock Band, the developers are offering more songs in the form of the Rock Band Track Pack Volume 2. The pack is coming out Nov. 17 as a standalone disc with the chance to download the songs onto your hard drive for free. The pack retails for $29.999 and features the following 20 songs:

1. Avenged Sevenfold
Afterlife
2000’s
2.
Blondie
Call Me
1970’s
3.
Weezer
El Scorcho
1990’s
4.
Devo
Girl U Want
1980’s
5.
Maximo Park
Girls Who Play Guitars
2000’s
6.
Disturbed
Indestructible
2000’s
7.
Angels & Airwaves
It Hurts
2000’s
8.
Cars, The
Just What I Needed
1970’s
9.
Police, The
Message in a Bottle
1980’s
10.
Pixies
Monkey Gone to Heaven
1980’s
11.
Duran Duran
Rio
1980’s
12.
Mötley Crüe Saints of Los Angeles
2000’s
13.
Lynyrd Skynyrd
Simple Man
1970’s
14.
Red Hot Chili Peppers
Snow ((Hey Oh))
2000’s
15.
Nine Inch Nails
The Perfect Drug
1990’s
16.
Fall Out Boy
This Ain’t a Scene, It’s an Arms Race
2000’s
17.
Papa Roach
Time Is Running Out
2000’s
18.
Garbage
Why Do You Love Me
2000’s
19.
Judas Priest
You’ve Got Another Thing Comin’
1980’s
20.
Smashing Pumpkins
Zero
1990’s

*UPDATED: OK this is getting ridiculous, but now, they’re also offering the Foo Fighters album Colour and Shape.

I’m sure they’re almost to that 500 songs total that they promised by the holidays. If you’re a big music game fan, you guys may want to get a bigger hard drive.

Last June, we had a little post, citing the possibility of a Rock Band or Guitar Hero game featuring music from The Beatles.

Looking at the fact that The Beatles catalgoue isn’t even on iTunes yet, we predicted that any Beatles music game would make it to the PlayStation 9. Well, we were wrong.

According to Giant Bomb, the folks behind Rock Band just snagged the rights to a Beatles music game. Right now, I can almost hear the money being printed and the cha-ching sound coming from the Harmonix offices. Any such game would be comingn out in 2009 though so you have to wait.

Meanwhile, I know someone is buying a Lamborghini tonight.

I’m counting four: Michael Phelps, Kobe Bryant, Tony Hawk and Alex Rodriguez. I guess they can do this sort of stuff now that had some free time.

But with all due respect to Kobe, it looks sort of embarrassing. It’s not as cool as him jumping over an Aston Martin, but really what is?

And kids, don’t try to sing and jump around in your underwear at home. It just looks ridiculous.

vsqz & nirvanaby Flickr user vsqz under Creative Commons license

It was bound to happen. The writing was on the wall, and now, I’m excited to see that more Nirvana songs are making their way to Rock Band. This isn’t a full-blown album per se. I know it’s a downer but I’ll take any Nirvana songs as opposed to no Nirvana songs.

The Nirvana track pack includes the following: Breed, Lounge Act, On a Plain, Polly, Something in the Way, Stay Away, Territorial Pissings. The pack will sell for pricey sum of $10.99 on the PlayStation Network and 880 Microsoft Points on Xbox Live. Each individual song will be $1.99 or 160 Microsoft Points.

Expect the songs to hit Oct. 21 (Xbox Live) and Oct. 23 (PSN).

By Patrick Cant
Reviewer

Finally, some love for bass players. No, you still can’t do a solo bass tour in Rock Band 2 (How about a Bootsy Collins expansion pack?), but Mad Catz has teamed up with Harmonix on a new bass controller.

At $70 (for a wired version; a $100 wireless is planned as well) it’s a bit steep, but it’s also pretty sweet.
It looks like a standard Fender P-Bass, with all the right knobs in all the right places. Since a P-Bass doesn’t have a whammy bar, the controller has a “whammy knob,” located on the lower horn of the body, right below the “solo” buttons on the neck. This is a bit awkward, but I imagine it’ll get easier to find without looking as I get more used to it.

The real advance, however, is the split strum bar. This allows the player to use both the index and middle fingers to lay down bass notes. It definitely feels weird at first, and I found myself switching back to the standard thumb strum method for the trickier parts, but the potential is there for some serious, rapid-fire bass lines.

The strum bar has a substantial click to it, more like the Guitar Hero III Gibson rather than the original Rock Band guitar. The neck is longer, as it is on a real bass, so I had to retrain my hand a bit. I found myself missing the orange note by going too far up the neck (“up” in this case refers to closer to the body, as in where the higher notes are), but again, once I got used to it it felt more comfortable.

The controller feels solid, the fret buttons work nicely and the headstock even has four big, shiny tuning knobs on it. They don’t work, but they do look cool. There is a switch on the back of the bass for Rock Band or Rock Band 2, so make sure you’re on the right one before rocking out.

I would encourage Mad Catz to reconsider the “no whammy bar” position, but I appreciate that they were going for authenticity. The only problem is, on a real bass you can bend the strings without a whammy bar. On a fake bass, you can’t.

If you are looking for a bass guitar to add to your Rock Band arsenal of instruments, Mad Catz is currently your only option. Thankfully, it’s a pretty solid one. Plunk down your $70 now, or wait a bit (and save some more money) and grab the wireless version.

Now, where’s my Joe Strummer, limited edition Fender Telecaster controller?

• WHAT: Mad Catz Rock Band P-Bass controller
• PLATFORM: Xbox 360 (reviewed)
• PRICE: $69.95
• GRADE: B+

Big day for Guitar Hero news. Not only did Metallica’s new album hit Guitar Hero III today (I haven’t played the songs in game form but as a listener “Suicide & Redemption” is pretty much the best) but the entire Guitar Hero World Tour song list has been officially announced.

Highlights include a live version of “Sweet Home Alabama”, “Hot For Teacher”, Sublime’s “Santeria”, two entries from Hendrix (“Purple Haze” and “The Wind Cries Mary”, two of my favorites), The Who’s “Love Me Two Times”, The Guess Who’s “American Woman”, “Hotel California”, “Ramblin’ Man” and “Crazy Train”. And most of all you can finally attempt to be the greatest living guitar player, Satriani’s “Satch Boogie” is included.

Honestly, if it was just those 11 songs I’d probably still buy it. And the other 75 are good too.

Full list of all 86 songs post-jump.

The UPS guy came over yesterday, and lo and behold, he brought a magic box of rock to my cubicle. I promptly brought it home to find Rock Band 2 inside. In geek talk, it roxored my soxors. So here are some photos including some comparison shots of old Rock Band instruments to new Rock Band instruments.

Below are some unboxing shots

For more Rock Band unboxing porn, hit the jump

Metallica, my long-time favorite band even after the unmitigated travesty that is St. Anger, is releasing their new album Death Magnetic as Guitar Hero III DLC this Friday, the same day the album hits store shelves. It even includes an exclusive version of Suicide & Redemption with extended solos.

Considering how warmly they embraced downloadable music early-on this is a big step for them, though the truckloads of money Guitar Hero and Rock Band DLC have been earning probably helped them see the light.

In case you’re not as forgiving of St. Anger as I am and don’t know if you want to spend the money, head on over to Tony Hicks’ blog for a preview. And be sure to mention you’re wondering if you should buy it to play on Guitar Hero. He loves music games.

This seems more like one of those advergames, but it’s still pretty interesting. In JamBio’s SongBlitz, players are given short clips of songs and they have guess what album it came from. They have to go through three pieces of music, and the songs range from stuff you’ve heard on the radio to obscure old rock and I have no idea about.

The games are short and sweet, and if you’re not too busy this Labor Day, you should try it. It’s very reminscent of Google Image Labeler.

Play Time: A little under 45 seconds depending on how quickly you can identify the song. Afterward, you can always play again hence the addictiveness part.

Samba De Amigo has been making a lot of racket lately. As you know, one of the earliest music-rhythm games is getting a second life on the Wii. But what we were clueless on were the details such as the release date, pricing and set list.

Well, Sega just answered that for us. Sambe De Amigo is being released in Europe on Sept. 19 and in the United States on Sept. 23. It will be priced at $39.99 but the interesting thing is that Sega is offering a plastic maracas peripheral for $14.99.

If players really want to get in the game, this will be mandatory. You can pile it atop the list of other Wii peripherals and plastic instruments in your collection. The Wii remotes fit into those the thingamajigs and voila you can samba out.

For the full set list and downloadable content, hit the jump