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Last night at Swamp Castle we did the entire career mode in ROCK BAND: BEATLES. It was Frank, Sandi, Elliott, and I. It took about four hours.
To move through every period of the Beatles' music and to actually be involved, in at least a vicarious way, in performing the songs and to see that transition from the Cavern Club to the Apple Corps rooftop was something really, really special. It's amazing that the game completely feels like a canonical Beatles experience, and more than that it feels like a totally new way to appreciate and enjoy their music. It's groudbreaking, and it is absolutely the best music game published to date- as long as you like the Beatles. I predict that this will be the first music game to win a Grammy.
It was definitely grueling, going through 45 songs but totally worth it. You unlock "The End" after the 15 minutes of credits and you get up and go again for an encore. And then we did the 360-exclusive "All You Need is Love" to cap it off, finally nailing our one "Triple Fab" of the evening. You get those when everybody hits the three-part harmonies. But when you do get those harmonies, it's a reward in itself to hear everybody synched up and in, well, harmony. That's closer to feeling like you're actually playing these songs than any other music game has gotten. It's one thing to have everybody clickety-clacking at the same time, it's another to have yourself and two friends actually singing in harmony. When it does happen, it's almost like a fleeting moment of pure magic.
People saying that this is an "easier" game than ROCK BAND are full of shit, particularly if you're doing it the right and proper way and singing while playing. It seems like everybody can hit the main melody line OK because that's what we sing when we've sang along with the Beatles all of our lives...but getting those harmonies...wow, it's really freaking hard, even at medium.
Song list is almost impeccable, but it is inevitable that the songs you really want aren't there- I guess they did need to save something for DLC. But there were a couple of brackets where every song was absolutely top-flight.
Visually, it's the Beatles. It looks like the Beatles, and it feels totally appropriate. And it's incredibly detailed- every piece of studio equipment is accurately rendered. I _love_ the animated pieces at the beginning and the end, and I almost wish the whole game was done in that style. But as it stands, this was the first time where I actually cared about what was going on behind the lanes. A couple of times I got lost because I was watching the scenes and not the lanes.
Last week I saw A HARD DAY'S NIGHT on VH1. It's a groundbreaking, innovative movie that was a lot more than just a feature film starring the Beatles. It tied rock and cinema together in a very of-the-moment way and it set a lot of precedents in how music and the visual image could connect. ROCK BAND: BEATLES feels the same way. I was thinking the whole time that back when I was a kid in the 1980s and playing Atari 2600, NES, and other video game systems that I would have never imagined being able to play something like this, let alone something connected so holistically to rock n' roll and one of the greatest bands of all time. But there it is, and it is one of the best experiences I have ever had with any video game, period. Totally blown away.
