Xbox 360 The Beatles: Rock Band – Software Only
Product Description
Experience The Beatles music and legacy like never before, utilizing the core Rock Band game play. “The Beatles: Rock Band” in an unprecedented, experiential progression through and celebration of the music and artistry of The Beatles. The game will allow fans to pick up the guitar, bass, mic or drums and experience The Beatles extraordinary catalogue of music through game play that takes players on a journey through the legacy and evolution of the band’s legendar… More >>
- A variety of gameplay environments pulled from the Beatles career, including Cavern Club, Abbey Road and Shea Stadium.
- “The Beatles: Rock Band” software for Xbox 360.
- A song list of more than 40 Beatles hits, as well as additional DLC to follow via Xbox LIVE.
- The first music game to offer harmonies as part of gameplay, challenging players to recreate The Beatles’ vocal blend.
- Works with all Rock Band and most Guitar Hero controllers and microphones.
I’ve completed the game and am overall quite pleased with it. I’ll take several points about the game in turn…
Song Selection: The song selection included many of my favorite Beatle tunes. I’m sure we could all make our own list of 10-20 songs we wish had been in the game, so I won’t bore you with mine, but if you can connect to XBox Live (or PSN for folks with that version) you’ll be able to fill in some of the gaps over the next few months. The full Abbey Road and Rubber Soul albums are confirmed to be upcoming as downloadable content, expect them to cost about $15 each.
Music Quality: It’s the Beatles! And it sounds terrific. The game uses the new mixes of all the albums which were released today along with the game. The only time I noticed a real distracting difference is that the strings in “Hello Goodbye” seem to be much more prominent, and I personally didn’t care for it. But that’s a minor gripe.
Game Difficulty: There was alot of discussion that the game would be too easy for veteran music game players. I was actually pleasantly surprised by the interesting charts on guitar and bass. True, there are no real scorchers in here of the likes of “Free Bird” or “Painkiller” from previous Harmonix music games. But there is a pretty good mix of songs across most of the difficulty spectrum, with some potentially challenging riffs and interesting hammer-on parts (“Octopus’ Garden” and “Dear Prudence” stand out in that last category.) Also, as most of the songs are 2-3 minutes long, the total possible score is lower than on many modern songs in other games, and therefore the margin of error for getting Gold Stars is much tighter and earning them is more of a challenge.
Presentation: The animated musical sequences at the beginning and end of the game are beautifully crafted. Most of the songs from the Beatles’ studio period have fantasy/psychedelic videos playing behind the note chart which look very nice as well, though I’m usually too honed in on the chart to notice them. On the menu navigation side, I liked the improvements in the quickplay menu over that in Rock Band 2. You will now see your personal best score AND how many stars you earned for that score next to the song name, so if you want to go back and gold star everything you can see what you’re missing. It also shows you your overall ranking and ranking among your friends for each song when you’re highiighting it. I have one other minor gripe with the game, and that is that while they took care not to put the “ding” sound effect for earning a star while playing, and they eliminated the ability to bend notes (you can still do it for star power, here called “beatlemania”, but it won’t affect the sound of the track), they put in a sound effect for earning and using star power. It’s only noticeable in the studio songs, as the live ones instead increase the volume of the screaming fans when you do so. Minor gripe, but I’d wish I could turn it off to get the pure Beatles track without the little “swoosh” sound every so often.
Extras: By playing through the story you unlock Beatles photos, which can be viewed from the main menu and are accompanied by a paragraph of text describing the historial context of the photo. You also unlock “prizes” that can be viewed or listened to, including the Beatles Christmas Album and a clip from the concert at Shea Stadium (named of course for the famous Cuban guerilla leader, Che Stadium… oh wait that was the Rutles). As far as gameplay-related extras are concerned, there are a number of achievements on the XBox version (and I assume trophies on the PS3 version) encouraging you to meet certain goals within certain songs, such as getting a long note streak or hitting all the hammer-ons without strumming any of them. You can also play through challenges to unlock new gamer pics and in-game icons.
Overall I’m quite pleased with this game both as a Beatles fan and as a fan of the Rock Band music games. I certainly hope it does well enough in sales to justify Harmonix adding the rest of the Beatles songlist as downloadable content over the next year.
Rating: 5 / 5
I love the Rock Band series and it’s one of the most fun games to play with a group of friends. When I first heard about The Beatles Rock Band, I was excited because now no one will get “stuck” as the singer. It’s much more fun to sing when you can sing as The Beatles.
The gameplay is awesome, the graphics are great and I think the game captures the essence of Beatlemania. There are a few missing features from the other incarnations of the Rock Band series (like you can only change timing lag for one instrument during a session, so if the guitar player fixes the lag for himself, it may be off for the preferences of the drummer, with no way to fix it. If the timing is off for one player, it can amount to a LOT of missed notes.)
The main disappointment comes with there only being 45 songs, and therefore only about 2-3 hours of truly unique gameplay (sure, you can change the difficulty, but you can really only play a song so many time before it gets predictable and boring). I understand that getting the rights to those 45 songs was probably difficult and extremely expensive for the developers; however I feel like the game being released (software-only) at $60 is a LOT to ask for 45 songs. What is equally frustrating is that they plan to release future albums via downloadable content… for a price. It just seems a bit shady to me. I don’t want to complain too much, because I should be glad that they are at least releasing downloadable content, rather than just leaving us high and dry. It would be nice if at least a few of the to-be-released songs would be free.
The songs included with the game are awesome; however there are many (MANY) hits missing. I guess it’s just a case of me not reading the description well enough, but it also feels like with a game that LOOKS so good, they missed the mark with the songs.
In all, the game is fun and the visuals are great, but the price point is a bit high for what you actually receive. Overall, if you are a huge Beatles fan, get it. If you like The Beatles and like Rock Band, wait until it gets a little cheaper before shelling out the cash.
Overall, I gave the game 4-stars for gameplay because it IS fun, but only 3-stars for the game as a whole because of the factors described above.
Rating: 3 / 5
I can’t top the previous review but I can say that I agree 100% with the 5 star rating. The music is fantastic and very well adapted to the game format. The graphics and the realistic animations are superb. I grew up in the UK when the Beatles were just getting started and remember “Beatlemania” very clearly. This brought back the old tingles as I played the songs all over again and was swept along in the nostalgia of the lovingly recreated backgrounds.
We played last night as soon as the package arrived and got to the first Abbey Road session – I’m looking forward to the rest of the game and then trying out the vocal harmonies etc.
If you like the Beatles music (who doesn’t?) and enjoy the challenge of Rock Band or Guitar Hero I would say go ahead and get this game…you will not be disappointed. Now where’s my old copy of Sgt Pepper??!
Rating: 5 / 5
Amazon delivered on the “pre-order and get it on release day” promise. I received the game 10 AM day of release. Thank you UPS and Amazon!
Fantastic game. Even the transition screens between songs have been lovingly crafted. Every inch of the game is very well thought out.
Make sure to get MULTIPLE MICROPHONES! The singing include three part harmonies that are very fun, we spent the first few hours of the game just singing. If you can still find it, I recommend buying the “Lips two microphone bundle,” as it costs the same as the single packaged Xbox 360 wireless mic (and it includes TWO of that same mic–as well as the LIPS karaoke game.)
You know how most music games have three, maybe four songs that you LOVE to play? Well, EVERY song in this game is like that. It’s magical.
Rating: 5 / 5
I just finished playing through the entire Beatles: Rock Band game on medium level. I was blown away in so many ways. We have all the various music games, many for several platforms, and this by far is our new favorite.
First, of course, the music. We have always loved the Beatles and playing through this game just reminds us how amazing these guys were as musicians. There’s the “outliers” theory that they had amassed 10,000 hours of playing time with their high intensity early years, which speaks to their superb ability to just pick up and run on any stage. Whatever it was, their harmonies are superb, their rhythms are great fun. Bob (my musician boyfriend) commented that playing along with the songs was great. Often we have to force ourselves to play through a song on other games (even songs we like) because the coded buttons just aren’t enjoyable, the coders get the rhythm a bit off. Here I was dancing along while I played guitar or sang.
There are 8 chapters / venues, from the Cavern up through the Apple roof-top. There are three Abbey Road studio chapters. You might think that’s boring. However, it was *superb*. They might start a song in the studio, but then the visuals go off to a CUSTOM TAILORED TO THAT SONG video! The Yellow Submarine song is underwater. The Sgt Pepper’s song is in the gazebo complete with 1800s cut-out people! The flower sequences are amazing. Usually in music games I ignore the backgrounds. Here I would miss notes because I was swept away by the background graphics! Whoever did these art collaborations needs to be given a bottle of Champagne. Maybe two. They were incredibly beautiful and a sheer perfect tie-in with the songs many times. I would gladly watch someone else play so I could watch the visuals.
Yes the “gig” shows you get early are fun – period appropriate screaming fans at Shea Stadium. I have to comment that the audience at the Budokan looked completely caucasian, surely some non-causasians should have been there? Still, a minor complaint.
Gameplay is as mentioned superbly fun, and not just because of the stellar music. You get real harmonies, which is a breakthrough for these main pair of products (GH and RB). Sing along in harmony with a friend, sometimes even three part harmony. If you have a mic stand you can even hook up your mic and play drums while you sing, play guitar while you sing, since there’s no “hand clapping” or other stuff you have to do.
There are a few minor complaints. I nailed 100% several times and got nothing at all. No gold stars, no visual indication. Since I like to go through and get 100% on all songs, there’s no easy way to see which to replay. The between-gig navigation is a bit rough, you have to literally page through them so you can’t just scan the list. Even when you’re looking at a given gig you have to go “in” to the gig to see which specific songs to work on. I really like having a scan option so I can look through for what I want to play with.
You earn photos with your stars (i.e. actual photos of the Beatles to look at) but I’d have liked something a little more fun. More instruments? I realize they want their gigs to all be period-specific with the right instruments and clothes but it still would have been cool to give the option.
Also, you are forced down their path in its completeness. You can’t get past the Cavern until you play EVERY gig in it. Then you move on to the Ed Sullivan show and so on. In every case you have to play every single song. I’d really like to have the normal “earn X stars and progress” in case there’s a song you’re really eager to get to.
You do get to download additional songs if you want – so if the killer set list built into this game isn’t enough, you can always get more!
I want to comment in general that the equipment you have for playing any of these music games matters a LOT. We have the Ion drum kit and the wireless guitars. I highly, highly recommend getting both of these. Playing any of these music games (and especially the Beatles!) on cheap gear can really frustrate you quickly. Spend the money to get better equipment. You’ll find you play the games for months and months because they are so much fun. You’ll also find that your real life dexterity and drumming skills will improve *amazingly*.
Finally be sure to sit through the 10 minute long (I’m not kidding) credits. You get to unlock an encore
Feel free to contact me with any questions at all! I have the full set list posted on my site.
UPDATE: Several people have emailed me asking if this can be played single player. YES. You play single player through the entire game if you wish. Also, if you’re alone in your house, you can still play multi-player with people on Live, so you can have fun four player music by going online and finding other players through the Live network.
Rating: 5 / 5