The Beatles Rock Band: The "One [review] after 909"
The rhythm game genre had been around for quite a while. In 1998 in Japan the arcades had a game called "GuitarFreaks" made by Konami, which allowed the player to use a plastic guitar and play along to notes that scrolled on the screen. It wouldn't be until 2005 when the advent of plastic guitars would reach our shores in the form of "Guitar Hero." In the four years since the first "Guitar Hero" game was created there have been many changes to the genre. For one the original developer for "Guitar Hero," Harmonix, has moved on to create a new rhythm game with plastic instruments a little game called "Rock Band." Harmonix built on the idea of "Guitar Hero" and added a plastic drum kit and a microphone for Karaoke. And the phenomenon known as "Rock Band." was born and released in November of 2007.
Fast forward 2 years and plastic instruments are still all the rage although they appear to be losing just a bit of steam. On 9/9/09 "The Beatles: Rock Band" was released after much anticipation and hype. The game features 45 songs spanning the Beatles entire catalog. So is this franchise "Getting better" with age or could it use a little "Help!" ? (I apologize in advance for the cheesy use of Beatles song titles. But expect them to be (sgt.)peppered throughout the rest of this review.)
For those of you who have been living under a rock let me give you the basic game play of these types of games. The player has a plastic instrument either a guitar, drum or microphone. And colored rectangles will scroll across the screen and the player needs to hit them on the instrument at the time they cross a certain point on the screen. It's a very simple concept that in no way requires the amount of power the new consoles can put out. With the microphone you get scrolling words rather than rectangles obviously.
Anyway now that that's out of the way, let's move on the the actual game. Let me start off by saying this game is by no means a "Revolution" for the genre. If you have played any of the previous games in the franchise you will feel right at home. The only big difference in gameplay is the ability to hook up 3 microphones and have three people harmonize on a song. It's an interesting concept and it can be fun but not all of the songs support 3 vocalists and some don't even support 2. If I'm being honest it's not as fun as it sounds. The change that actually made me very happy, albeit it's very slight, is the fact that when you pause and unpause the game it counts down from 3 in order to give you time to reposition your fingers. I really appreciated that. But the fact that I feel a need to mention that as an improvement should clue you guys in on how little the game has changed.
Let's face it the real draw of the game is the fact that it is a Beatles themed version. Now the problem I have is that the game has the price tag of a full Rock Band game however the number of songs is significantly gimped. The first Rock Band game had 58 songs while the second game pushed the number to a significant 84 songs. The Beatles version meanwhile has only 45 songs. Alright fine, I concede that's still not a number to wave a stick at but it's obviously less than the previous incarnations. But I shouldn't complain too much because I would rather have a band themed game with only songs from the band its for rather than have a bunch of songs from the band and many other artists *cough*guitarheroaerosmith*cough*.
Anyway I digress. Each song for Beatles Rock Band has it's own quirky, trippy video to go along with it featuring virtual avatars of each of the fab four. It is nice to see the extra effort being put into each song rather than just have some generic visuals for every song just in a different configuration. Each of the songs in this game has unique visuals that I think The Beatles themselves would all be proud of. The game has a story mode that very loosely is based on the Beatles 9 year career. It's nice to actually see the appearance of the avatars change as the years progress but the mode itself just has the player playing a certain amount of songs for each year and them moving to another. But the attention to detail of the venues they play is pretty stunning. Especially their final live performance on the rooftop of the Apple corp building in London in 1969. The resemblance of the game to the actual footage is uncanny.
Playing through the game you also unlock videos and pictures of the band. This aspect was very informative and enjoyable. Every picture that was unlocked featured a little blurb about the band or a specific song. And before playing a specific song there might be a little bit of unreleased recording of the band in the studio. These are all nice extras for fans of the band.
My biggest complaint with the game is that the formula doesn't change. It's the same game I played 2 years ago just this time with a nice coat of shiny Beatles paint. I'm just going to run through a bunch of things really quick since they haven't changed. The game is obviously meant to be played with other people and if I'm not able to "get a little help from my friends," there is always the online play. It works exactly like the previous games except now there is voice chat, which is super annoying. If you're wondering about the difficulty is it nowhere near as hard as the other Rock Band games but for a casual player like me it proved more than difficult enough. As always there are ridiculously hard trophies that can be acquired. There are full albums in the works like Abbey Road that will be DLC in the coming months and only playable on Beatles: Rock Band.
Even though the music game formula still works after all these years I think it's going to need a big change or at least an overhaul to keep it alive. I mean I think the novelty is beginning to wear off. But "I've got a feeling" that the formula won't change until the games start to lose money for the publishers. By that time it will be too late. But unlike tired old game mechanics that ages like spoiled milk, good pop music ages much better more like fine wine. The Beatles sound great and the music still feels like something that you could hear on the radio today and have mass appeal.
I'm going to give the Beatles: Rock Band an 8/10 for the fact that it barely improves on the old formula.
Fast forward 2 years and plastic instruments are still all the rage although they appear to be losing just a bit of steam. On 9/9/09 "The Beatles: Rock Band" was released after much anticipation and hype. The game features 45 songs spanning the Beatles entire catalog. So is this franchise "Getting better" with age or could it use a little "Help!" ? (I apologize in advance for the cheesy use of Beatles song titles. But expect them to be (sgt.)peppered throughout the rest of this review.)
For those of you who have been living under a rock let me give you the basic game play of these types of games. The player has a plastic instrument either a guitar, drum or microphone. And colored rectangles will scroll across the screen and the player needs to hit them on the instrument at the time they cross a certain point on the screen. It's a very simple concept that in no way requires the amount of power the new consoles can put out. With the microphone you get scrolling words rather than rectangles obviously.
Anyway now that that's out of the way, let's move on the the actual game. Let me start off by saying this game is by no means a "Revolution" for the genre. If you have played any of the previous games in the franchise you will feel right at home. The only big difference in gameplay is the ability to hook up 3 microphones and have three people harmonize on a song. It's an interesting concept and it can be fun but not all of the songs support 3 vocalists and some don't even support 2. If I'm being honest it's not as fun as it sounds. The change that actually made me very happy, albeit it's very slight, is the fact that when you pause and unpause the game it counts down from 3 in order to give you time to reposition your fingers. I really appreciated that. But the fact that I feel a need to mention that as an improvement should clue you guys in on how little the game has changed.
Let's face it the real draw of the game is the fact that it is a Beatles themed version. Now the problem I have is that the game has the price tag of a full Rock Band game however the number of songs is significantly gimped. The first Rock Band game had 58 songs while the second game pushed the number to a significant 84 songs. The Beatles version meanwhile has only 45 songs. Alright fine, I concede that's still not a number to wave a stick at but it's obviously less than the previous incarnations. But I shouldn't complain too much because I would rather have a band themed game with only songs from the band its for rather than have a bunch of songs from the band and many other artists *cough*guitarheroaerosmith*cough*.
Anyway I digress. Each song for Beatles Rock Band has it's own quirky, trippy video to go along with it featuring virtual avatars of each of the fab four. It is nice to see the extra effort being put into each song rather than just have some generic visuals for every song just in a different configuration. Each of the songs in this game has unique visuals that I think The Beatles themselves would all be proud of. The game has a story mode that very loosely is based on the Beatles 9 year career. It's nice to actually see the appearance of the avatars change as the years progress but the mode itself just has the player playing a certain amount of songs for each year and them moving to another. But the attention to detail of the venues they play is pretty stunning. Especially their final live performance on the rooftop of the Apple corp building in London in 1969. The resemblance of the game to the actual footage is uncanny.
Playing through the game you also unlock videos and pictures of the band. This aspect was very informative and enjoyable. Every picture that was unlocked featured a little blurb about the band or a specific song. And before playing a specific song there might be a little bit of unreleased recording of the band in the studio. These are all nice extras for fans of the band.
My biggest complaint with the game is that the formula doesn't change. It's the same game I played 2 years ago just this time with a nice coat of shiny Beatles paint. I'm just going to run through a bunch of things really quick since they haven't changed. The game is obviously meant to be played with other people and if I'm not able to "get a little help from my friends," there is always the online play. It works exactly like the previous games except now there is voice chat, which is super annoying. If you're wondering about the difficulty is it nowhere near as hard as the other Rock Band games but for a casual player like me it proved more than difficult enough. As always there are ridiculously hard trophies that can be acquired. There are full albums in the works like Abbey Road that will be DLC in the coming months and only playable on Beatles: Rock Band.
Even though the music game formula still works after all these years I think it's going to need a big change or at least an overhaul to keep it alive. I mean I think the novelty is beginning to wear off. But "I've got a feeling" that the formula won't change until the games start to lose money for the publishers. By that time it will be too late. But unlike tired old game mechanics that ages like spoiled milk, good pop music ages much better more like fine wine. The Beatles sound great and the music still feels like something that you could hear on the radio today and have mass appeal.
I'm going to give the Beatles: Rock Band an 8/10 for the fact that it barely improves on the old formula.
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