Video Review: The Beatles Rock Band

  

 
 
 
Getting excited for music games is hard now because of the sheer volume that get released each year. Which meant going into The Beatles: Rock Band was both worrying and exciting; I mean how do you make a Rock Band game exciting again? Easy, put the Beatles in it and polish the Rock Band experience.

If you have ever played a Rock Band game or Guitar Hero game before then it will be pretty familiar to you by now. You can choose from the lead guitar, bass guitar, drums and vocals. However, this time round you can have up to three people singing creating the three or two p art harmonies that can be found in most of the songs. It's a nice touch that would defiantly be missed if it wasn't there and now that it is I can see future Rock Band games having this feature. The game mechanics follow the same hitting of notes in time with the song and trying not to fail. Harmonix have definitely put an emphasis on family fun as setting the difficulty of the song to easy will automatically turn on no-fail mode. This mode can also be easily turned on when choosing the difficulty making it much more streamlined to set up your play style.


You have the regular set up of Quickplay offering the entire 45 songs on the game for you to play from the get go. A drum trainer and Beatles Beats which will teach you how to play like the Beatles. There is also a harmony trainer so that you can find your own track on the harmonies to sing and guitar and bass trainer.


The biggest feature is that this is the first Rock Band game with a true story mode that follows the career of The Beatles from the 1963' performance in The Cavern Club to their performance on the Ed Sullivan Show and in the Shea Stadium full of screaming girls. Each chapter has between four and seven songs to complete before moving onto the next chapter starting with 'Twist and Shout' as you go through some of The Beatles greatest hits.


After 66 they went into their Studio Years. This is where you will play some of the best songs that they made in Abbey Road Studios. These songs take on a different approach as the backdrops for these songs include Dreamscapes. These are replacements of the screaming crowds in the huge arenas to magical interpretations of each song. These can range from a strange trip in a hot air balloon to just flashing lights with some lyrics flashing up once in a while.

Some are clearly more ambitious than others but it is good to see each have a different look to them. The final set list will place you on the rooftops of Apple Corp, where the band found themselves singing together for the last time. The entire story is a great collection of The Beatles memorabilia and completing each set list with 5 stars will unlock pictures showing you some backstage scenes from their career. Also when loading between songs you are treated to some studio chatter by the four. The whole career just reminds you why these four took the world by storm.


The overall presentation of the game is fantastic. From just the front end menu the Beatles video is there. The background menu music, which of course are songs from the game just keep begging you to play the song. The graphics of the game have been worked from the ground up and it certainly shows. They keep the Rock Band cartoon aesthetic but it fits the style of the Beatles well. You can recognise each of the four but at the same time the cartoon style helps bring to life the dreamscape moments. Harmonix have also polished their game by smoothing out some issues. For example when you enter the song after pausing it there will be a countdown of three seconds before continuing which enables you to prepare yourself.


One problem I did encounter was a problem with the peripherals with the game. Usually in Rock Band and Rock Band 2 you could use your Xbox 360 headset to use as a microphone, however this is not allowed. Which means, to master the harmonies in this game, which by the way is really tough, you will have to buy three separate microphones.


What else can I really say, if you like The Beatles and Rock Band this is a no brainer and is definitely the most accessible of the three Rock Band games, apart from the headset issue. The game screams out Beatles from the moment you start and there is a lot of content to unlock that will please some hardcore gamers, even if it is a simplified version of the game. The Beatles where so diverse and so energetic and it comes across in this game. All you need is (love) Beatles: Rock Band.