I spent an awful lot of time complaining about things that were not plastic instrument related in my Guitar Hero 5 review. Different parts of a game, in any genre, cannot be isolated from one another to make the others more enjoyable. Titles are usually good or bad as a whole, a notable exception being Resident Evil anything, with voice acting so bad that it is often easier to play the things with the sound off, and almost always worth it to do so. Guitar Hero 5 was brought down, in my mind, by the intangibles. It just didn’t feel right, to put a completely unjustifiable point on it.
Every single thing that Neversoft got wrong, either due to greediness or laziness, Harmonix has gotten right. Beatles Rock Band is superior in every way, in spite of having less than half the songs in a rather blatant, and most likely very successful, attempt to get more money from gamers and aging Beatles fans alike. It feels (there’s that word again) better than any previous single band release, thanks entirely to the parts of game not involving falling notes being just as lovingly crafted as the parts that do.
To say that Beatles Rock Band is just Rock Band 2 re-skinned sounds a bit derisive, but it really is the truth. The interface and game play are almost exactly the same, note charts are relatively easy but the timing to actually hit the notes is narrow, the scrolling speed of the note highway is a little slow, even on expert; in other words, apart from everything Beatles related, it would be very difficult to tell them apart. It’s still Rock Band: the drums are still charted well on four toms, the bass parts are still a little boring, the guitar solos are still a little more friendly, and the downloadable content is (in the very near future) both abundant and reasonably priced.
The difference between Beatles Rock Band and, say, that AC/DC Wal-Mart exclusive glorified track pack, is that the new presentation is so polished and all the added content is so interesting I forgot I was playing the same game that I have been playing for years. It was new, it was fresh, and I was actually learning a little bit about music history and increasing my 60’s vocabulary in the process. Fab!
John Lennon was murdered in December of 1980. I was four. Needless to say, I didn’t notice, nor was I even alive when the Beatles were at the height of their popularity, yet I know them. A surprising number of their songs have seeped into my head. Part of this was caused by my mother, like anyone else who grew up with the band, buying the White album eighteen million times as I grew up and technology changed, but it is mostly because The Beatles are still culturally relevant today. It may not always be for their music, see their previous dealing with I-Tunes and fights over song rights as examples, but everyone knows who they are and can sing along to a few of their songs. Beatles Rock Band does a good job of taking the more well known songs, mixing them with the later, stranger stuff and throwing in enough songs that I had never heard before to keep it interesting for everyone. I had family members who, after asking to see it once, seriously contemplate the staggering entry fee for a non-gamer just to play this.
The Beatles have a strange cross generational, cross genre appeal. I have heard Beatles Rock Band described as the Wii of music games, which isn’t that much of a stretch when the easy difficulty automatically turns on no fail mode. Unlike waggle controls, however, everything here works just as it should.
It cannot be denied that there really aren’t that many songs included and that there are a few conspicuous absences, but the volume of extra content and incredible presentation more than make up for it. Career mode follows The Beatles from their small early gigs to them filling stadiums, but it gets most interesting when the band stops playing out all together. There are three sets of Abbey Road sessions, and in these each song has its own unique presentation. They all begin in the studio but quickly dissolve into bizarre, magical mystery tour inspired dreamscapes. This gets strange quickly, but each mini music video fits its song so well that it is not a distraction, and it keeps the uncoordinated or unwilling amused while watching everyone else have fun.
Playing through career mode unlocks archive photos and videos of the band, but this is not dependent on difficulty setting. Muddling through on easy and five starring a song nets the same rewards as full clearing it on expert. Ordinarily I would feel cheated by this, but then I remembered that if I wanted to hurt myself there was always Guitar Hero 5, Beatles Rock Band just isn’t for that. This is peace, love and electronic hallucinogens, not Children of Bodom.
This is not to say that there aren’t challenges to be had here. I was quite surprised by the complexity of a few of Ringo’s drum tracks. After a little research I found that dismissing his talent is both common place and entirely incorrect. Birthday and Get Back are both more difficult on guitar than I expected, and the addition of multi-part vocals is significantly past both my understanding and my ability. There is difficulty here if you want it, but it is not the crux of the experience nor is it necessary to have a good time. Drop the game down to easy, put the mike in front of several aging hippies all trying to sing With a Little Help From My Friends and tell me that vegetarianism and barbiturates don’t have an upside. Beatles Rock Band is not a music game, it is a music experience, rewarding to all skill levels, most ages, and anyone who can sing I am the Walrus without feeling like to much of an idiot.
