DP Challenge 22/100 - The Beatles: Rock Band

Game: The Beatles: Rock Band

Ranking: 8/100

Score: 90%

Help! It's time to Come Together and look at 'The Beatles: Rock Band'. Will this game feel like a Hard Day's Night to play, or will we Get Back to some serious fun... Okay, I'll stop now.

Look where you're going, Ringo! You're about to run into a huge font...
(Source: mohak-gamersparadise.blogspot.co.uk)

Intro

The opening animation sequence is quite nice; it encapsulates the 'Beatlemania' era and smoothly flows into their more experimental era. The fact that it doesn't try to look realistic and instead gives you cartoon representations of the band members makes everything feel more like a game than an interactive documentary; straight away you're given the impression that the emphasis is on what the player will be involved in rather than the messy history of the band. There are nice touches in the menu, such as guitar strums accompanying the selection of an option. When you leave the menu screen up, you scroll through more than one sound sample, as well. For better or worse, it doesn't take much to unlock an achievement - I got one for calibrating the controller!

The manual is pretty boring and full of densely-packed text, which doesn’t make it the easiest of reads. One thing that really annoyed me with the menu controls is that they are set up so you press Red to go back (which is displayed on the left hand side of the screen) and green to select (which is displayed on the right hand side of the screen). Where are the buttons placed on the guitar controller if you are right-handed? Green is closest to the left, Red closest to the right. Often I found myself accidentally going to the opening screen because I'd pressed the wrong button.

It would have been nice to see a bit more thought go into the manual layout; there could have been pictures of The Beatles, or more colour screenshots that conveyed the mood of the game. Also, let us customise the menu controls based on how we hold the controller.

Despite claiming to be a Wii screenshot, this clearly isn't. Otherwise, I could have pressed the controller buttons instead of relying on the fret buttons and sending myself back to the title screen.
(Source: neoseeker.com)

Getting Going

There is a training mode, where you get a cockney voice explaining to you how the controls work and getting you to practice techniques such as strumming, soloing and using the whammy bar. There are also practice modes available so you can have a go at many of the songs available. The story mode is fairly self-explanatory; you get nice little chapter animations introducing you to a specific venue, then you have to play through each song in that venue. It's easy to see when you’re succeeding, as the song plays properly and you get little starts burst from each fret onscreen. If you're failing, the song mutes on whatever part you're controlling and the frets are dull. As you can choose a difficulty, you can get to grips with the gameplay without too much trouble.

As it's very straight-forward to pick up the mechanics of the game and to tailor it to your own competence, the only gripe I have with getting into the game is how disjointed it feels. Sure, your tutorial section has the curious cockney voice over (curious because The Beatles were Liverpudlian), but there's nothing really to connect it to the story mode. The same goes for the practice section; you just play the songs, with nothing to connect it to the fact you are apparently guiding the Beatles through seminal moments of their career.

As the game provides a quickplay mode for anyone who wants to bypass the story mode and just play a song, why not connect the tutorial sections to the story mode? It could involve something as straight forward as a quick animation of the Beatles wandering into a practice session, or a shot of a rehearsal studio.

Cartoon Beatles. You won't pay much attention to these guys normally, as you'll be too busy trying to pull off a tricky solo.
(Source: IGN.com)

Fun

The inclusion of a 'No-Fail' mode is great if you're playing multi-player and have players with varying difficulties. The different difficulty modes in the game make it easy to customise the game to get the best challenge for you. However, there is still plenty of incentive to do well. If you complete songs well, you will receive a certain number of stars - these will unlock special features such as photos of The Beatles which you can view. Of course, there's always the satisfaction getting a message pop up saying you've completed a 'perfect solo'. The crowd will cheer and go crazy if you do well, and boo if you fail. It certainly does get a little frustrating when you miss a note or don't hold a sustain as long as you needed to.

Still, the photos and other unlockables such as videos aren't really that exciting unless you're a Beatles fan - and even then, it's all stuff you'll have no doubt seen yourself in book or on the internet. There are already a lot of songs available when you start off, yet some of the more obvious ones are missing (such as 'Hey Jude'). This leads me to assume that these tracks are available to unlock... but I can't be certain. Maybe there were licensing issues?

If the game gave you a clue as to what songs were available to unlock, that would certainly increase the incentive to keep playing and beat certain chapters. These seem to me to be the only unlockables gamers are really going to care about

An unlockable photo. Fans have probably already seen this picture, and know the facts presented within.
(Source: neoseeker.com)

Visuals

The graphics are generally consistent and in keeping with The Beatles' theme of the game; where the art is rendered, it still has a cartoony feel which is fun and matches the quirky opening chapter sequences. The gameplay graphics of the guitar fret and the 'notes' you need to press are well contrasted so that it's easy to see when you need to react. The game is also good at showing you with nice bursts of stars when you have hit the correct note, and angry flashes of red when you've missed a note. When you fill up your 'Beatlemania' bar, you get noticeable yellow flashes along the guitar strings, so you won't miss the fact this has happened. There are also cartoony animations of the band playing each venue/TV show as you play each song. Entering 'Beatlemania' mode is accompanied by some nice floral details which make it obvious.

The in-song band animations must be for the benefit of any spectators; as a player you are never going to be paying attention to them. They are almost a distraction, as the moment you look at them, you'll miss a note. Sometimes it can be a bit difficult to work out if you hit a note or not, mainly because a duff note is accompanied by a flash of red - which is what you get when you correctly hit a red note!

As impossible as it would be to change the colours of the controllers, given they were based on earlier games, it would be helpful to have a different colour for hitting a duff note - maybe a grey-out of the combo metre? Perhaps it would be a nice feature to be able to switch off the animations for any players who find them a distraction from the gameplay?

Guess where we are. No, guess.
(Source: IGN.com)

Intelligence

The game's difficulty levels work fairly well; easy mode only gives you three fret buttons to worry about, whereas the hardest mode makes you deal with all five. The harder the mode, the more notes you have to hit as well - and the more akin it is to the song you are playing. There's not really much one can say about the AI beyond the fact that it's customisable - you can mercifully choose a difficulty level - and that it recognises your actions. And if it doesn't? There's a calibration section so you can tune it to your own playing.

Interestingly, sometimes the lack of notes in easy mode can throw you a loop; you find yourself playing a little against the rhythm of the song. This feels especially awkward when you're having to ignore the song completely to play it correctly - the music you can hear impedes your progress, rather than assists it. This seems rather odd to me in a game that focuses on musical rhythm.

I think that perhaps some of the songs could do with a redesign as to what notes are included in easier modes, as some of the songs don't quite seem to match the rhythm of the music you're hearing at times.

All eras are captured in 'The Beatles: Rock Band'. Weren't the late sixties great?
(Source: IGN.com)

Immersion

The game keeps play to short, sharp bursts; the longest it will enforce you to play in one go is four songs (around twelve to fifteen minutes), and that's only for challenge stages. This makes it addictive without straying into tedium, given that the gameplay is essentially the same throughout. There are many incentives to doing well, from unlocking bonus features to giving you exciting visuals and grades, which will keep you practising until you can nail a song pattern.

On the other hand, the gameplay is rather repetitive; you press keys on the controller and flick the strum button when the appropriate colour symbol passes over a line. The only thing that changes is the rate and position of said symbols, and the song they are moving to.

If the difficulty of the songs you progress through in story mode was noticeably early, that might make playing through each stage a little more interesting - there seemed to be no difference whatsoever over the course of two chapters. Perhaps other little diversions could be added to break up the gameplay, such as allowing you to unlock and dress the Beatles avatars in different costumes from their career. Even just unlocking the odd song early on might create more of an incentive to keep playing.

This is the gameplay. Also, a giant cat.
(Source: IGN.com)

Cameras

There is really nothing to say about the camera in this game; it is fixed, single screen and focused on a tilted guitar fretboard. This is great for the type of gameplay, as when you see up and coming notes, they look further away and it's easier to only focus on them when they get close enough for you to care. This type of perspective also makes the game feel more three-dimensional in a way than, say, using a top-down view would not.

Controls

The in-game controls are fairly intuitive and work in a vaguely similar way to a real guitar - the strum action is what you use to play a note, so you can hold down the fret button long before you have to play the note. Although the tutorial is helpful in showing you the ropes, you don't need it; a player completely new to the genre of game could pick it up fairly quickly. All of the game styles - from guitar based play, drums or vocals - are accurate, so you won't feel as though you're losing due to poor recognition of the game. And if you do, you can calibrate the controls.

The one massive gripe I have has more to do with the hardware than the software; it is so uncomfortable to play using the guitar controller for any length of time. I managed three tutorials before I had to put the thing down and take a good break. Perhaps it's my small, child-like hands that are the issue, but trying to position your fingers over the frets and press them down is a recipe for instant RSI.

It would be really nice if the game allowed you to use alternative controls to the guitar - maybe just strumming by swinging the Wii Nunchuck and using the Wii Remote buttons to correspond to frets. It's not the most elegant of solutions, but there must be some way of playing that doesn't destroy your tendons. The DS uses a nifty finger grip akin to the strengthening tools you can buy to practise your guitar fingering. This lets you play the game without having to hold your arm in such an awkward position to reach the fret buttons.

This is your reward for getting through nine songs in story mode. Also available on YouTube.
(Source: neoseeker.com)

Ideas

The key selling point of this game is obviously the fact that you can pick up a fake instrument and play along to classic Beatles' tracks. The whole package is put together nicely; the introduction animations to each section are interesting and artistic - I really liked the way they conveyed geographical location by using flag colours over the top of black and white photographs. They don't try to be too realistic with the avatars or the animations of the band, which stops it from feeling too creepily voyeuristic. The fact that you have so many difficulty levels is great; nobody is excluded from the game. Terrible players can still get through a song, and really good players will have a challenge. The most fun you are likely to have with this game is in multiplayer mode with your friends. everything is set up so you can play different instruments and try to work together as a team - even the 'Beatlemania' power up you acquire can be used to 'save' failing band members. Of course, when I played this with my friends, everyone tried to distract each other and it became a competition over who could get the best score. There is little funnier in life than watching someone very drunk at a house party try to do well in a game involving rhythm and being pitch-perfect.

Perhaps my viewpoint is heretical, but this game is just a rhythm game that you play to the strains of the Beatles. Sure, you can unlock special videos and rare recordings only sent out to fan-club members in the sixties, but that's the kind of stuff fans will have already seen via the internet.

It should be more apparent whether you can unlock songs or not, in order to give people a real incentive to keep playing. Something that would also be kind of neat (and I'm fairly certain is happening in up and coming guitar style games) would be if you could somehow use the game to learn how to play various Beatles' tracks for real. Even if plugging in an actual guitar could prove difficult, you could still stick in some tablature and an animated band member talking you through certain songs. It would make for an interesting unlockable.

What it's like to play with friends. If your friends are remotely cooperative. Or sober.
(Source: IGN.com)

Memory

The game createsTthe Beatles' vibe in an interesting way, especially in its cartoon-style artwork and the use of 'pop-up' style photograph manipulation. The songs are all recognisable favourites, and it's certainly fun playing along to the tracks. The gameplay itself can be made as challenging as you want it to be, while always feeling fair. The fact you can calibrate the controllers to ensure the game matches with the way you handle the controls is a definitely plus.

There's no getting away from the fact that The Beatles' angle is simply a marketing ploy. You get to play The Beatles' songs, unlock some photos or other interesting tit-bits that you can find elsewhere, and there's some 3D rendered band members. Besides that, there is very little to really tie you into the experience of taking the Beatles' through their journey.

It would have been nice if the game was a little more interactive with its use of The Beatles and had a career mode built into its story mode; something where the player has to do well enough to fund the next step. If we could have had options to learn how to play certain songs for real, or to perhaps set up custom shows or do auditions, it might have felt more like the journey of a band than it currently does. 

All the swag you win for completing a song. Pretty neat, huh? But... when can I play 'Hey, Jude'?
(Source: neoseeker.com)

Overall, the game is a lot of fun to play with friends, and you will happily while away some time strumming along to the hits. The Beatles' tie-in is done nicely without being over the top. However, the unlockables available seem to be things any Beatles' fan would have, and you're probably quite likely to stop playing part way through the story mode to give your wrist a break.