Game: The Beatles Rock Band
Platform: Xbox 360; PS3; Wii
Publisher: MTV Games
Developer: Harmonix
ESRB: T
Genre: Music Game Pinnacle
Players: 1-4
What's Hot: Not a cobbled together collection of random songs, this tells a story; superb visuals, note charting, and overall atmosphere; singing harmonies is fantastic
What's Not: Set list isn’t quite big enough out of the box; can’t sing harmony online; where’s the rhythm guitar? I really wanted to sing In My Life, and Blackbird, and Mother Nature's Son, and...
Review by: William Abner
Every music group who has a band-themed game currently on store shelves should be officially pissed off, from Aerosmith to Metallica…even Queen. Harmonix and MTV Games have shown the industry how to make a game centered on a great band—and The Beatles Rock Band is it.
This is obviously not a game for people who don't like the Fab 4, but it also has the ability to transform someone who is indifferent or ignorant to the music of The Beatles and turn them into a fan. The music and the craftsmanship of the design is that good. This game is a celebration of the music and the legacy of The Beatles and that legacy is treated with energy and absolute respect. It doesn’t even let you mess up the sound with the whammy bar noise. It’s not going to let you go all Yngwie Malmsteen on George Harrison’s solo.
This is a stand alone product – there is no importing any of this content into Rock Band or vice versa, but to complain about this misses the point. This is a game about The Beatles, and if you don’t want a game about the Fab 4 then move along as there is nothing else to see here…and that is exactly how it should be. You will not see John Lennon belting out “That’s What You Get” or “Nine in the Afternoon” and you also will not see your Xbox 360 avatar signing “I Feel Fine” or “Ticket to Ride”. Thank goodness Harmonix made that call.
What you do get is 45 songs from early classics like “I Saw Her Standing There” to end of an era tunes like “Come Together” and a whole bunch in between. It’s hard to complain about the songs that made the initial cut but there are some obvious classics that are missing in action: “Let It Be”, “Hey Jude”, and “Help!” immediately come to mind. But with a songbook as diverse and as meaty as The Beatles, it’s impossible to pick 45 songs and not miss a ton of great tracks. It’s an appetizer—the CliffsNotes version of the songbook and somehow it won’t feel complete until Harmonix starts cranking out the downloadable content starting October 20th with the complete Abbey Road LP (followed by Sgt. Pepper and Rubber Soul).
