The Beatles: Rock Band

I picked this up after some great reviews and discovering I had nearly £20 in vouchers at for the local GAME which didn't have Guitar Hero Metallica in stock.

The Beatles have hundreds of classic songs, and are amongst the most legendary bands in all of music. No one can contest that they deserved a Rhythm game more than any other band ever. We're not here to talk about that, we are here to talk about the game itself.

Obviously, the soundtrack is superb, not a bad song on it, which is more than can be said for every other Guitar Hero/Rock Band game. Every song is uniquely enjoyable and playable. The graphics are sublime and opening and closing cinematic sequences are a sight to behold. I seriously think that a proper animated Beatles film should be made in the same style.

Everything has been taken into consideration, properly charting the history of the band, this is no mere conversion of songs into squares plummeting toward you, but a full on experience of The Beatles music, in a totally new way.

However, historical accuracy does away with the most important thing any game can get right, the difficulty curve. At the first set list, The Cavern Club, you are greeted with some pretty hard songs, obviously the songs they would have played at this period of their careers, but you would expect to have something easy to lead you into the game. This leads to problems later on, with Yellow Submarine and the likes seeming far too easy for the position they hold in the career mode. It's listed as the easiest song in the game, so why have it in the third to last set list?

Once you get past the historical accuracy making a joke out of gaming standards, you look past the game to see what it is, the best Rock Band expansion pack you could ever wish for, and a superb contemporary documentary of The Beatles, presenting their music in a way that embraces the relatively new technology of video games.

This is the peak of Rhythm games so far, and will likely remain that way until the always looking more likely Led Zeppelin: Rock Band rolls around and gives us all a nice kick in the teeth.

John, Paul, George, Ringo, Mrs. Harrison, Mrs. Ono and everyone who worked on this over at Harmonix and MTV Games, I salute you for making possible and putting together the finest music game ever made.


Positives
No bad songs.
Improvements to the basic Rock Band gameplay, including the three mic harmony mode are always welcome additions.

Negatives
Bad, but historically accurate, difficulty curve.
A bit too easy, but The Beatles never were the most musically talented band ever.

Overall
If you like Rock Band, or The Beatles, this is a must buy. No questions asked, just buy it, it is worth every penny and is nothing short of amazing.