The Beatles: Rock Band

There was a lot of anticipation regarding the release of the Beatles edition of Harmonix’s superior  Rock Band, and honestly, I didn’t get what all the fuss was about.  True, the Beatles as are big of a pop band as ever was or may even even be, but having everyone play music exclusively from one band for the entirety of a  Rock Band session (which can go for hours, with my friends) seemed tedious.  I wasn’t even that big of a fan of the Beatles.

Well, I was pretty wrong.  After having played  The Beatles Rock Band, I have a new appreciation for the band itself and the medium of rhythm games.

Such games have been around for a few years and a number of iterations by now, so explanations are rather unnecessary.  For the uninitiated, in brief, you play plastic fake instruments (or sing into a real microphone) with a bunch of your friends and pretend you’re making music.  And it’s pretty fun.

So what separates  The Beatles Rock Band from  Rock Band (1 & 2) itself, or any rhythm game with the word “Hero” in the title?  They somehow eked a rather compelling narrative out of the game, which is rather remarkable despite previous attempts (such as  Guitar Hero III’s wholly unnecessary band-in-debt-to-the-devil storyline).  You follow the Beatles from the beginning of their career from the Cavern in 1963 to the Apple Corps rooftop concert in 1969, and the songs are arranged chronologically, rather than order of difficulty.  (This makes for a bit of an uneven game, but the game is overall easier than comparable rhythm games.)  Since most of us are at least vaguely familiar with Beatles’ meteoric rise and collapse all within less than a decade, it’s a story with which we are familiar.  The game accounts for this, providing transition between the venues that separate the game’s chapters with deftly composited introduction animations (as pictured above) that do an excellent job of setting the tone.  The whole game has a distinctive Beatles, 1960s aesthetic that makes it all blend together so well.  Whether you’re playing on the Ed Sullivan show in the second chapter or watching a re-created video of “Yellow Submarine” in their Abbey Road studio recordings, it just looks right (down to Lennon’s increasing hairiness over time).

This is also not to say that all the songs are that fun to play or sing.  (“Within You Without You,” I’m looking at you.)  This clearly has a lot to do with one’s individual preferences for the Beatles eras, as I found it a bit of a chore to get through the three Abbey Road segments, preferring far more the hip early 60s stuff we listened to in French class growing up.  There are also quite a few songs that I was hoping to play that did not make it onto the disc, but with Harmonix planning on releasing multiples songs and  albums, the cash cow that is the Beatles will probably milk many of us in return in the coming months.

I played through the game in one sitting (which was, given finger cramp breaks, about four hours total).  While I’m not likely to do that again anytime soon, it provided an important perspective: I watched the Beatles as they grew up, grew big, grew apart, and got back together one last time.  (Sadly, or perhaps fortunately, Yoko doesn’t show up anywhere.)  It felt like I watched a rather loving, unnarrated documentary that made me want to go out and learn more about the band.  I don’t think this is really possible with any other band; I can’t think of another group that has such a well-known history with settings, venues, and videos that the audience in general has seen.  And I’m not sure I would want to see the same with many other bands (the free copy of  Guitar Hero: Van Halen I got in the mail today reinforced this).  So it is a huge delight and relief that Harmonix got this right.

The Beatles Rock Band  is just as great a group experience as Rock Band  itself is, and in some ways, it lends itself to playing with three of your friends so much more.  Do yourself a favor: don’t just play it, play it from beginning to end.  The journey will leave you a little happy, a little sad, and a lot satisfied.