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By Eli Green
September 22, 2009 - 22:00
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For the first time ever, though, The Beatles have become interactive, in their first ever, and likely only, video game. The Beatles: Rock Band follows the career of The Beatles, from their early days in their hometown of Liverpool (understandably skipping their years performing in strip clubs in Hamburg, Germany), through their years spent in the recording studio, to their performance on rooftop of the Apple building in London, letting you experience their music by playing it, as the members of the band.
Gameplay
If you have already played either Rock Band, Rock Band 2 or any of the Guitar Hero games you should already be familiar with the core gameplay. If this is all new for you, all you really need to know is that the instrument controllers that come with the game are designed to be as close to the real thing as they can be, while still being easy enough for people to play whether they can play the real things or not. In the Special Edition box, you'll find one guitar controller, one drum kit controller and a microphone packaged with the game. The game's interface brings “notes” towards you which you need to either strum or tap, if you're using the guitar or drum controllers, or a pitch line which you need to sing to, if you're using the microphone. That's all you need to know to get started, but to really help you get into the flow of playing, the game includes tutorials for each of the instrument types.
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Now that Electronic Arts has worked out most of the kinks with their instrument controllers, most of the scrutiny can be focused on the software portion of the gameplay. Thankfully, and rather astoundingly, Harmonix keeps on pushing the envelope with each iteration of its music/rhythm game. The core gameplay leaves very little to be desired, because, at this point, the main factor in whether you enjoy this game or not is the music. Between the Rock Band and Rock Band 2, Harmonix added a complete drum training section, including basic drumming beats and fill training, a No-Fail mode, so people who couldn't play that well could still enjoy the game regardless, introduced Performance Mode, allowing for players to play without the notes, and made the game more multiplayer focused, which is really the whole point of games like this.
The Beatles: Rock Band takes those improvements even further, replacing the Fill Trainer with a Beatles Beats Trainer, adding in a Vocal Trainer, and extending the No-Fail mode to allow for anyone playing on Easy to not fail regardless of whether the mode is on or off. The game also includes three modes which can be turned on at your preference – the aforementioned Performance Mode, Speed Mode, which keeps the music playing at a normal pace, but the notes come at you faster, and Realistic Mode, which is supposed to put the volume of the fans at the levels they were when The Beatles performed at live shows, but the difference is barely noticeable.
Further improvements made for The Beatles: Rock Band were the addition of vocal harmonies, the elimination of freestyle drum fills and Big Rock Endings, plenty of collectibles and the introduction of an in-game achievements list (for the versions that include achievements). The ability to do harmonies in this game added so much more depth to already deep gameplay. Not all of the songs have harmonies, but those that do, and there are quite a few, are a lot of fun to play. Better yet, a specific microphone isn't set to a specific harmony, so players can trade off vocal parts as they wish. This is definitely something I hope to see in future versions of Rock Band or, perhaps, added as an update to the older versions. As far as the elimination of the freestyle drum fills and Big Rock Endings go, I see it as an improvement, at least for this game, because it adds further focus to the importance of the original music, which is what players, especially those considering playing this game, are really looking for. With freestyle drum fills eliminated, the drummer player still needs a way to enter Overdrive, or Beatlemania as it's called in this game, so the freestyle drum fills were replaced with a simple glowing crash symbol, available to be hit at the player's discretion every few measures, similar to the frequency of the freestyle drum fills in the previous versions
Finally, fans of The Beatles will also get an extra kick out of all of the collectibles available in the game. Completing songs with a five star rating will open up two photos relating to that song or the touring/studio period you're playing in, and collecting a certain number of photos will open up special videos from The Beatles' career.
Multiplayer and Online
The focus on the importance of the original music was not lost on the multiplayer features in this game. From the moment you pop the disc in to play, nearly all of the songs are available to be played, right from the start, in Quickplay mode, making sure the focus stays on social gaming. Like the standard gameplay, the multiplayer features also keep improving with each new game. Rock Band 2 saw the introduction of online band multiplayer, and The Beatles: Rock Band includes that for both the quickplay and story modes as well, but the ability to do three part harmonies makes it possible for up to six players to play simultaneously (or you could have three of the four players on microphones, it's up to you).
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The only thing that was missing from this experience was the ability for three people to play guitar at the same time (two guitars and a bass). Was it Harmonix's decision to leave it at guitar and bass, thus giving the two guitar parts more to play with, or were they not able to make it happen? Either way, I find it disappointing that it's not an available feature, as it would have completed the experience, especially for this game.
As with the previous Rock Band games, The Beatles: Rock Band includes a Music Store. Unfortunately, the songs downloaded from The Beatles: Rock Band Music Store are only available to be played exclusively within The Beatles: Rock Band. Was this so the songs from your existing music library wouldn't interfere with the new game or vice versa, or was it some kind of licensing issue? Again, I don't have the answer why, but it's another feature that is cool, but a little bit disappointing. The good news is that quite a few songs will be available soon enough, as the Abbey Road, Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, Rubber Soul albums will be releasing for download over the coming months.
Environment and Graphics
The Rock Band franchise continues to impress me with its attention to detail on all levels, not just gameplay and sound, but visual detail as well. The menu interfaces and text are clear, the environments are highly detailed and the characters models don't just look real, but move realistically as well. This has been the case since the original Rock Band and continues to be improved upon with each version.
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That said, the character models of The Beatles aren't as realistic as they could be, but they certainly are close. I did notice some points where the models didn't emote quite as much as I would have expected them to, based on what they were singing at the time, but those were few and far between. The one thing I noticed specifically, which just seemed so perfect, was Ringo's perpetual smile. I don't know why, but it was mesmerizing and, interestingly, was almost non-apparent during the Apple Corps Rooftop chapter. No matter what though, it seemed right during each song.
Harmonix took its Rock Band “music videos” to a whole new level in this game. In the previous games, each song would play out like a music video, with various visual effects popping up every now and then, camera angles changing now and again, and more. In The Beatles: Rock Band though, each song's music video appears to be very specifically laid out, even more so than before. And the environments aren't just highly detailed, but there are so many things going on in the background that it's worthwhile to sit and watch while other people play, especially during the studio chapters, where the studio space turns into “Dreamscapes”, featuring a mix of various Beatles themes and artistic license from the development team. Some of the Dreamscapes even include karaoke style wording popping up in the background.
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The only problem that arises from having such highly detailed and busy environments is that people who rely on the note bars to play may find themselves distracted or, on some songs, temporarily “blinded” by bright colours that come near brightly coloured notes.
Sound
I think near perfect says it all for this section. The music and sound effects were immaculate. The only issue I found was the problem with the weak Realistic Mode.
Conclusion
The Beatles: Rock Band is one of those games which, for many, comes with the prerequisite of having to be a fan of the music to enjoy the game, as it is a band-specific music/rhythm game. If you don't like The Beatles, you may not enjoy this game for the simple reason that that's all you'll get with it. If you consider yourself a music lover, I would highly suggest giving this game a chance. If you are a fan of The Beatles, you're going to instantly fall in love with The Beatles: Rock Band.
Verdict: Buy It
