In addition to hawking The Beatles: Rock Band on QVC in the recent past, Harmonix also rolled through town with its latest rhythm title not long ago and gave me a close-up look at some of the more in-depth aspects of the Fab Four's first-ever video game. On the surface, this certainly looks something like a "Rock Band with Beatles songs" sort of package, but there's a healthy list of subtle touches to this game that look like they'll really elevate the quality of the experience, at least for serious Beatles fans. (If you're not a fan at all, being perfectly honest, there's probably not that much here for you.)
Anyway, let's break it right on down by category, shall we?
Beatle Beats
Rock Band 2's drum training mode with the snazzy name--the drum trainer--is reborn, or at least slightly modified, in the Beatles game as Beatle Beats. Fundamentally, it does the same, letting you practice the drum parts from all of the game's songs at vastly slower tempos than they normally follow. But Beatle Beats also attempts to introduces you to Ringo's general playing style technique, and goes as far as giving you the technical names for many of the parts he plays. As before, the drums are the closest you're going to get to learning a real musical instrument in Rock Band, and the Beatle Beats program seems geared toward that potential.
Career Mode
The game's career mode is structured about like you'd expect. Each leg of your journey consists of four or five songs and takes you to an iconic venue from those songs' collective era. For the first set, you play the band's 1963 show at The Cavern. Next up, of course, is the legendary appearance on the Ed Sullivan Show, and on and on right up to The Beatles' farewell rooftop concert in London.
Goodies 'n Extras 'n Stuff
At best, I'd describe myself as a fairweather Beatles fan--I can name and tap my feet to the big hits, but that's about all. Even I got pretty excited, though, at the unlockable obscurities and minutiae Harmonix is cramming into this game, so I can't imagine the excitement diehard fans are going to feel when they see some of the things that made it into the package.
So there you go. Again, this is such a Beatles-centric game, with so much peripheral material crammed in, that if you just can't stand the band for some reason, you're probably good to skip it. But conversely, if you have any affection for the Beatles whatsoever, it'd probably be pretty dumb to pass this game up when it hits stores on that utterly appropriate date of 9/9/09.
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