I can still remember when I first heard about the release of a new Rock Band title, to which I nearly shit my pants in excitement. Being a big music-game buff, and getting bored of the Guitar Hero [band name] titles, you can only imagine how excited I was to be getting something I knew and loved back, and this time it wasn't just in the form of more downloadable content. When I heard it was a Beatles game, my hopes were brought down a small bit, but I had faith still that it would be an enjoyable game. After all, I grew up on listening to my parent's old CDs of the Beatles, surely it will at least invoke nostalgia for days when things were as simple as choosing whether I wanted chocolate or vanilla ice cream being my hardest choice.
Upon getting my paws on this game, along with Guitar Hero 5, which I can sum up with "Same old shit, more new, obscure songs. Kudos for the Muse, Tool, Korn and (my guilty pleasure) Tokio Hotel," I found myself thinking, "Well, the good thing is that it's sure to have the Beatles' most famous songs like, "Elanor Rigby", "Strawberry Feilds", "Yellow Submarine", "I Wanna Hold Your Hand", and others! Well, I was half right.
It's been said before, and I'll repeat it: whomever decided to make this game and withhold half of the Beatles' most famous songs, and even the entire Help! album (my personal favorite), needs to be taken aside and shot for their greedy, dastardly ways. I've heard something about "proceeds made my a few of the songs go to the Make A Wish Foundation", which is all nice and altruistic, but for the love of GOD, withholding some of my most cherished childhood memories in the interest of squeezing even more nickels and dimes out of me just makes me cringe all the more when I know perfectly well that I'm going to give into the marketing ploy. Seriously, no "Imagine"? It might as well be the friggin' anthem of John Lennon!
But grumbling aside about the song list, the environments that I could watch behind the tracks were inventive and artful, and I remember particularly LSD-riffic moments such as in "Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds", and "Yellow Submarine", which made me and my dorm-mates all spark a conversation of just how many drugs of what caliber they must have been on at that moment. I'd tell you the results, but quite frankly, the hangover didn't help the fact that I don't remember them. The cutscenes and story about how you follow the Beatles' career from the basement to the rooftops was interesting, even if I am still bitter about certain bits being chopped out for "extra content" purposes, and I think that the very ending cutscene was probably the most mind blowing artistic creation I've seen since... ever. Again, I'm sure I was probably trying to figure out how many of the creators were high on something while creating it, but that just adds to the magic of it all, I think.
That is not to say that the game does not have further flaws, however. While I loved all I've mentioned above, I still found the biggest glaring flaw in the gameplay: I could do everything with relative ease. I'm reminded of a certain game that came back when the GameCube was on it's last legs, and Nintendo, struggling to come up with ideas, released a DDR game of their very own; DDR Mario Mix. This game included remixed songs from the Mario franchise, giving them a distinctly electronic/techno feel, but keeping them familiar. "But what does that mean?" you're probably wondering, "DDR and the Beatles have nothing in common!" Well, you would be right. They don't. The thing is, however, that the same flaw is brought to the table by both games: it's been pansified to a level where any little kid beginner can pick up a controller and play on expert within a matter of a few hours of practice. Even "Helter Skelter" didn't pose much of a threat on Expert Drums (I normally play Medium/Hard on Rock Band 2). Needless to say, after effortlessly flying through the game with 5 stars on almost every song, doing so for every instrument on Expert... I got bored. Yes, it was still fun to sing the classics like "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band/Little Help From My Friends" (an interesting idea to mix two short songs to create a fairly long one), but still, I felt cheated that all this was so simple, even if it was the Beatles who didn't tend to go on seven-minute power solos (I'm looking at you, Dragonforce).
What I was delighted to find, however, is that Bass was actually harder on most songs than the Guitar was! Being a Bass player myself, and constantly getting shafted with friends who wanted to shine with glory as they plinked and plunked through solos, as I calmly played the same note in time, I couldn't be happier that I was given a distinctive part of my own rather than one that just followed the guitar or simply played one note for each chord change. Drums, too, were a bit more than just keeping a beat, and actually sometimes ventured off on their own little interesting beats that remained simple enough to do, but interesting enough to keep me feeling accomplished once I had mastered it. Guitar was one big long chord change progression, which I believe is where it fits within 50s-60s music, and was a welcome change from, "Hey, I'm going to overpower all your songs because I'm a show-off-y asshole!" kind of thing.
Ah, and vocals. If you've read my Rockband VS Guitar Hero review, you know my quips with the Guitar Hero games and how they downplay vocals to an "extra, optional peripheral of an instrument", rather than something that takes talent and is probably the only thing you can transfer into real life and still look cool from these games. I'm a vocalist myself, and so it was a welcome application of having the "harmonies" within these games, so if people want to, they can join in the insanity and try their hand at busting out lyrics with all the heart they've got. Furthermore, this fixes the problem I had with songs in Rock Band 2, such as "I Stand Alone" and "Chop Suey" where it made you sing the harmony during parts instead of the main line. Now, it's up to the two or three of us to decide who is going to take which harmony, and I can't tell you how awesome it sounds when everybody hits their pitch just right. Especially when the other two singers are talented females who could probably easily find their way into a Gospel group if they so wanted. One Soprano, one alto, and me, the baritone... good times.
But I digress, Beatles Rock Band is worth the money, if only to say that you have it and can enjoy the 80 some songs that they do have on the disk (correct me if I'm wrong there). I'm sure that despite the irksome habit of withholding wonderful classics, if it's true that the money raised by the downloaded content does go to good causes like Make A Wish Foundation or whatever other life-changing programs that make people's days, then I know that even if I do grumble a little, that deep down I'll admire them for doing something semi-selfless and that by being able to play that song, I could very well have changed someone's life for the better. I might hate humanity as a whole, but who can shake the good feeling of knowing that you've helped someone who might really need it?
All you need is love, baby,
~Sui
Upon getting my paws on this game, along with Guitar Hero 5, which I can sum up with "Same old shit, more new, obscure songs. Kudos for the Muse, Tool, Korn and (my guilty pleasure) Tokio Hotel," I found myself thinking, "Well, the good thing is that it's sure to have the Beatles' most famous songs like, "Elanor Rigby", "Strawberry Feilds", "Yellow Submarine", "I Wanna Hold Your Hand", and others! Well, I was half right.
It's been said before, and I'll repeat it: whomever decided to make this game and withhold half of the Beatles' most famous songs, and even the entire Help! album (my personal favorite), needs to be taken aside and shot for their greedy, dastardly ways. I've heard something about "proceeds made my a few of the songs go to the Make A Wish Foundation", which is all nice and altruistic, but for the love of GOD, withholding some of my most cherished childhood memories in the interest of squeezing even more nickels and dimes out of me just makes me cringe all the more when I know perfectly well that I'm going to give into the marketing ploy. Seriously, no "Imagine"? It might as well be the friggin' anthem of John Lennon!
But grumbling aside about the song list, the environments that I could watch behind the tracks were inventive and artful, and I remember particularly LSD-riffic moments such as in "Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds", and "Yellow Submarine", which made me and my dorm-mates all spark a conversation of just how many drugs of what caliber they must have been on at that moment. I'd tell you the results, but quite frankly, the hangover didn't help the fact that I don't remember them. The cutscenes and story about how you follow the Beatles' career from the basement to the rooftops was interesting, even if I am still bitter about certain bits being chopped out for "extra content" purposes, and I think that the very ending cutscene was probably the most mind blowing artistic creation I've seen since... ever. Again, I'm sure I was probably trying to figure out how many of the creators were high on something while creating it, but that just adds to the magic of it all, I think.
That is not to say that the game does not have further flaws, however. While I loved all I've mentioned above, I still found the biggest glaring flaw in the gameplay: I could do everything with relative ease. I'm reminded of a certain game that came back when the GameCube was on it's last legs, and Nintendo, struggling to come up with ideas, released a DDR game of their very own; DDR Mario Mix. This game included remixed songs from the Mario franchise, giving them a distinctly electronic/techno feel, but keeping them familiar. "But what does that mean?" you're probably wondering, "DDR and the Beatles have nothing in common!" Well, you would be right. They don't. The thing is, however, that the same flaw is brought to the table by both games: it's been pansified to a level where any little kid beginner can pick up a controller and play on expert within a matter of a few hours of practice. Even "Helter Skelter" didn't pose much of a threat on Expert Drums (I normally play Medium/Hard on Rock Band 2). Needless to say, after effortlessly flying through the game with 5 stars on almost every song, doing so for every instrument on Expert... I got bored. Yes, it was still fun to sing the classics like "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band/Little Help From My Friends" (an interesting idea to mix two short songs to create a fairly long one), but still, I felt cheated that all this was so simple, even if it was the Beatles who didn't tend to go on seven-minute power solos (I'm looking at you, Dragonforce).
What I was delighted to find, however, is that Bass was actually harder on most songs than the Guitar was! Being a Bass player myself, and constantly getting shafted with friends who wanted to shine with glory as they plinked and plunked through solos, as I calmly played the same note in time, I couldn't be happier that I was given a distinctive part of my own rather than one that just followed the guitar or simply played one note for each chord change. Drums, too, were a bit more than just keeping a beat, and actually sometimes ventured off on their own little interesting beats that remained simple enough to do, but interesting enough to keep me feeling accomplished once I had mastered it. Guitar was one big long chord change progression, which I believe is where it fits within 50s-60s music, and was a welcome change from, "Hey, I'm going to overpower all your songs because I'm a show-off-y asshole!" kind of thing.
Ah, and vocals. If you've read my Rockband VS Guitar Hero review, you know my quips with the Guitar Hero games and how they downplay vocals to an "extra, optional peripheral of an instrument", rather than something that takes talent and is probably the only thing you can transfer into real life and still look cool from these games. I'm a vocalist myself, and so it was a welcome application of having the "harmonies" within these games, so if people want to, they can join in the insanity and try their hand at busting out lyrics with all the heart they've got. Furthermore, this fixes the problem I had with songs in Rock Band 2, such as "I Stand Alone" and "Chop Suey" where it made you sing the harmony during parts instead of the main line. Now, it's up to the two or three of us to decide who is going to take which harmony, and I can't tell you how awesome it sounds when everybody hits their pitch just right. Especially when the other two singers are talented females who could probably easily find their way into a Gospel group if they so wanted. One Soprano, one alto, and me, the baritone... good times.
But I digress, Beatles Rock Band is worth the money, if only to say that you have it and can enjoy the 80 some songs that they do have on the disk (correct me if I'm wrong there). I'm sure that despite the irksome habit of withholding wonderful classics, if it's true that the money raised by the downloaded content does go to good causes like Make A Wish Foundation or whatever other life-changing programs that make people's days, then I know that even if I do grumble a little, that deep down I'll admire them for doing something semi-selfless and that by being able to play that song, I could very well have changed someone's life for the better. I might hate humanity as a whole, but who can shake the good feeling of knowing that you've helped someone who might really need it?
All you need is love, baby,
~Sui
