Beatles Rockband

Being a self-proclaimed video game nerd, I was thrilled when my friend invited me over to play Beatles Rockband. While I personally own most of the Rockband and Guitar Hero games available for PS2; Beatles Rockband is not available for my gaming platform, and with good reason. To put it simply, the PS2 does not have the hardware, nor the chutzpah required to run this newest addition to the Rockband franchise.

Gameplay on the PS3 ran extremely smoothly. The graphics were extremely colourful and reminiscent of the original Beatles' album covers. Additionally, the in-game movies and all the movements of the characters were extremely realistic.

As in other versions of Rockband, the gameplay hasn't changed too much. There have been some minor tweaks to a few basic aspects of the game. For example, when playing the drums, there is no drum fill before you enable overdrive - which has been cleverly renamed "Beatlemania". Instead, the scrolling note area starts to turn green, signalling to the player that an opportunity to go into "Beatlemania" mode is coming up, should they hit the green drum pad when the green gem appears on the screen. This is a definite improvement over previous versions of the Rockband games. I also found that the accuracy of the notes timed to the music has been greatly improved, leading to less frustration and more enjoyment of gameplay.

In addition to these changes, there's also the capability to have three singers; although we weren't able to test this feature out yet, since we only had one microphone and no one available to sing. I think if we'd used a mic stand, either one of us could've easily sung along while playing the drums or guitar, since the songs chosen for the game are quite well known.

Another nice feature of gameplay is that each player chooses their difficulty for the individual song, which again, leads to much less frustration and fewer failed sets. Playing in career mode, you unlock photographs based on the number of stars obtained for each song. Having played both Rockband and Guitar Hero before, both my friend and I found it quite easy to obtain 5 stars on every performance.

Overall, I'd say that Beatles Rockband is definitely worth purchasing, and would be my chosen video game if I was hosting a Rockband party. Not only does the game involve more than just your standard four players, but guests not involved with gameplay would find themselves singing along and having just as much fun. While it's not the most challenging game I've ever played, I definitely had a wonderful time banging on the fake plastic drums and singing along to some of the best music ever produced.