Fun songs = fun rhythm game. Who'd have thunk it.
The Beatles: Rock Band carries the weighty name of Rock Band, and the infinitely more weighty name of the Beatles - one of the most beloved music groups of all time. Fortunately for both fans of Rock Band and The Beatles, this game carries those names well, and ultimately delivers an experience that draws on the things you love and gives you something that is fundamentally original.
Of course, this is a Rock Band title, and brings everything you'd expect from that franchise. You still have your 4 instruments and the same difficulty settings, and a fully loaded story mode and quick play mode. The look and feel of the game is unmistakably The Beatles, from the title screen to the cinematics to the videos that play in the background during songs. Absolutely nothing is better than the video paired with "I am the Walrus".
The set list is solid too, containing many songs that anyone will recognize, and some that I had never heard before (Although I admit I've never really been a huge Beatles fan). What is most important about the set list is that it is all Beatles music, and Beatles music is fun, catchy, and sometimes more than a little trippy and weird. That style of music meshes so well with Rock Band that the real achievement here would have been to make this game not be fun. Having not played Rock Band 2, I can't say what, if anything, is new to The Beatles: Rock Band, but all that really matters is that every bit of the interface is slick and every bit of functionality I could expect is there.
It was surprising to me that I had as much fun playing this game as I did, and I think the difference really did come down to the pure quality of the music. I've been playing rhythm games since the first Guitar Heros, and I really felt like the genre had become too stale and unimpressive for me to care about anymore. I'm glad to see that the trend of just trying to find songs that were really hard to play is at least being rivaled by the idea of just finding good songs.
