The Beatles: Rock Band is a spectacular and worthy celebration of a band arguably unmatched.
Formats: Xbox 360 (tested), PS3, Wii
Developer: Harmonix
Publisher: Electronic Arts/Apple Corps.
Released: 09/09/09
Score: 9/10
In June of this year in Los Angeles, the two surviving Beatles wandered onto Microsoft’s E3 conference stage. Sir Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr looked utterly bemused by the video games extravaganza, but were there to give their stamp of approval to The Beatles Rock Band, the game that takes the player through the Fab Four’s illustrious career. "The game looks good, the graphics are very good... and we were great!" said Ringo. "We love the game!" agrees Sir Paul, "who’d ever have thought we would become androids?!"
Who indeed, Sir Paul? This is a video game that, by rights, shouldn’t even exist. Despite being arguably the most innovative and influential band in history, The Beatles have been less than evangelical when it came to digitising their music. There hasn’t been a single official digital release of their catalogue. Until now. That it’s happening in the form of the video game is little short of miraculous. Coinciding with the remastered re-release of their entire body of work, The Beatles Rock Band feels like an event that transcends video games. There have been single band releases for Rock Band and Guitar Hero before, but this is The Beatles we’re talking about here. Aerosmith? Metallica? Pfft. Move over small fry, you’re playing with the big boys now.
With such a celebrated and well-protected legacy, there’s a certain degree of responsibility on the part of developer Harmonix and publisher EA. Here is a game in which every detail matters, a game that needs to be crafted and chiselled to near perfection, and handled with the utmost care and respect. There is perhaps no other music game developer you would trust to pull it off, but Harmonix have managed it, the result a spectacular and worthy celebration of a band arguably unmatched.
For those not au fait with the mechanics of Rock Band or Guitar Hero, the gameplay has coloured gems scrolling down an animated highway. As the gems pass the line at the bottom of the highway you must strum your plastic guitar, holding down the corresponding colour on the neck. Or, if you are in Ringo’s shoes, whack the corresponding colour pad on your drum kit. Lyrics scroll across the top of the screen for the vocalist to warble along to. Vocals offer The Beatles’ biggest change over the previous Rock Band, allowing up to three singers to simultaneously imitate The Beatles trademark harmonies. Singing in harmony is, as you may expect, a very different skill to wailing on lead and Harmonix have cleverly included a vocals trainer to get you and your pals in sync. While only one player can take up guitar (with one on bass) John Lennon and George Harrison's effervescent strumming have been amalgamated in such a way that means any transition between the two feels completely natural.
This tried and tested formula is as hysterically enjoyable as always, particularly when you have a full compliment of band members. Harmonix’s exquisite mastery of note charts meaning you never feel like you’re just tapping away at buttons, but playing along with the music.
And what music it is. The game’s ‘Story’ mode follows the band’s remarkable career arc, taking in the flashpoints and highlights and projecting them, big as brass into your living room. It begins in the Cavern Club in 1963, and finishes on the rooftop of Apple Corps. in that most famous of impromptu gigs. On the way you’ll take in The Ed Sullivan Show, Shea Stadium, Budokan and those legendary sessions in Abbey Road Studio 2. As a video game progression, this structure unavoidably leads to an odd difficulty curve across all instruments. The game never approaches the finger-blistering difficulty of previous music games, so it’s never a major problem, and the offshoot is a quite brilliant journey through musical history.
As you progress from the frantic skiffle and rock and roll of the early years, through harmonious pop to pure psychedelia and hard-edged blues, you get a fascinating insight into The Beatles incredible, genre-morphing talents. A bass line or guitar riff here, a rattling drum beat there and it brings their influence on the world of music into focus. And most importantly, nearly every one of the 45 tracks is an absolute joy to play. Naturally, single band releases can suffer from a focus that is too narrow. Not so with The Beatles, their rich and eclectic catalogue plundered to great effect and a progression that feels bracingly different but effortlessly natural. From the ferocious Twist & Shout, to the flat-out weirdness of Ringo’s Octopus’s Garden, to the more modern rock of John Lennon’s Come Together, there’s something for everyone.
It’s a success that applies across all instruments. The Beatles were a true ensemble, with each member bringing their indelible edge to each song. There won’t be any moaning about being lumbered with bass here, McCartney’s dancing thrums as entertaining as Lennon and George Harrison’s intricate guitars. It’s music imbibed with such personality too, a throwaway riff here and there, seemingly just because they felt like it flutter down that highway, never to be seen again. That sense of adventure and experimentation mean that The Beatles provide the most flat-out fun songs to play in the genre.
This is all wrapped up in quite majestic presentation. The Fab Four have undergone a cartoon makeover, yet are animated in a way that is unnervingly realistic. It’s reported that McCartney, Starr, Harrison’s son Dhani and Lennon’s wife, Yoko Ono, all had critical input into how the ‘androids’, as Sir Paul so delicately put it, look and move, and the result is incredible, sending you hurtling back four decades to when the band were healthy, happy and having the time of their lives. It extends outside of The Beatles themselves too, each venue is painstakingly recreated and young girls with beehive hairdos scream their hearts out. It’s a wonderful snapshot of the hysteria of Beatlemania, and beyond even that, of 1960s culture.
Then come the Abbey Road sessions. They start innocuously enough, with the band sitting comfortably in Studio 2, indulging in some never-heard-before studio chatter. Then as the song you’re playing progresses, the background morphs into a psychedelic dreamscape to match the song. Yellow Submarine takes you into a gorgeous deep blue sea, with the Beatles floating along in a recreation of their appearance in the famous animation. The thumping I Am The Walrus sees the Beatles marching through a fantasy land atop a giant elephant.
These look absolutely stunning, bursting with bright colours and wonderful energy. In fact, some of them are too good, becoming something of a distraction while attempting a complicated riff. Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds, in particular, has bright twinkling stars that dance a little too close to the notes highway.
As you perform well on songs, you unlock photographs, videos and a host of Beatles trivia. These snippets and anecdotes are manna from heaven for Beatlemaniacs, providing a fascinating insight into the band’s history and, in particular, how they created their music.
With all this lavish detail and 45 terrific tracks, you’d be hard-pressed to find much fault with what’s on the game disc. It’s what isn’t on there, however, that means the game perhaps isn’t quite the procession of perfection it could have been. For whatever reason, be it EA holding back tracks for downloadable content (the entire Abbey Road album will be available for download next month) or licensing issues (goodness knows the whole project must have been a quagmire of legal difficulty) there are a few too many of The Beatles seminal records absent from the tracklist, meaning it’s difficult to regard the game a ‘complete’ Beatles experience. Among others, Love Me Do, Hey Jude and Let It Be don't appear on the list and while it’s unreasonable to expect all your favourite songs to be included, there are just a few too many that just feel, well, missing. You can take the pragmatic attitude and accept you don’t always get what you want, but it would be a lie to say there isn’t the slight twinge of disappointment at not being able to play along to some of these most defining of records.
Of course, that you can play along to any of The Beatles songs is remarkable in itself. What Harmonix have crafted here is a quite exceptional piece of work, raising the bar for single band releases to almost unreachable heights. It’s a gorgeous, reverential and respectful celebration of The Beatles. It is an event that transcends video games, it’s The Beatles finally stepping into the digital world. Their transferral to this most modern of mediums will undoubtedly expose The Beatles work to a brand new audience. And perhaps this will be its greatest achievement of all.
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