The Beatles: Rock Band Presentation/Hands On
Today, Aeropause got to go behind the veiled rope to view one of the hottest titles of the fall season, none other than The Beatles: Rock Band. Well maybe not a veil, but a nifty presentation, before going into the show area to try out the game for ourselves.
During our presentation, the producers of The Beatles: Rock Band tell us some interesting facts about the Rock Band series, with all the games selling over one billion units, and now having a song library of over 700 songs. But with The Beatles: Rock Band, they were looking to find a way to separate the title from the series as a whole, giving the title a way to live up to the greatness of The Beatles legacy.
Once production was started, the Harmonix development team gained access to Apple Corps entire vault of information on The Beatles, including rare recording, insights from people that were there with The Beatles through their career. One of the things that pointed this out is that during the rooftop concert stage near the end of The Beatles career, someone told the Harmonix team that the hair for the group should be moving more, because it was a windy day. Small details like that seem insignificant, but overall just add to the authenticity to the experience.
Right before they played their first song for us, Harmonix also noted the three part harmonies in the game, and that all current mics will be compatible with the game. So if you have Lips mics, Singstar mics or the standard Logitech based mics, they will all work, providing a six player experience in a Rock Band branded title for the first time. Also, gamers will now have the ability to switch on No-Fail mode from the instrument selection screen before heading into a game. No more having to jump to a menu to switch no-fail mode on, which is nice for those of us that have kids that like to jump in and out of the game. The other big thing they noted was that Easy mode will always be in no-fail mode, so if you have someone that sucks on the drums and wants to play easy, they will be in no-fail mode, eliminating the issues of not getting achievements by forgetting to switch no-fail mode off on accident (thank you Harmonix).
When I sat down to play through a song in the game, I noticed that the standard Rock Band interface for Rock Band has changed, but in a good way. The vocal chart now has up to three bars travelling across at the same time, all with different colors. The main lyrics run at the bottom of the vocal chart, while the harmonies will show up at the top of the vocal chart. The on-screen fret bar at the bottom of the note highway has nowly designed buttons that seem a little bigger, and now have an inset outline running around them. Vocals also get a new Fab rating system, so when you have harmonies, you can get a double fab and a triple fab based on how well the harmonies hit the pitch chart.
My playthrough was for the song, “Back in the U.S.S.R.” and it shows off the dreamscapes that are littered throughout the games. Dreamscapes were created for the time that The Beatles moved from being a live album band to a more studio focused album band. When you play through these sequences, you start in a recording studio, but as you play through the song, you start to see imagery that comes from the inspiration for the song. In this instance, we see images from the Soviet era of government in Russia. Red stained backgrounds start to appear as we see stars, hammers and other images that pertained to the U.S.S.R. One of the other dreamscapes that I saw someone else play through was for Octopus’ Garden. In that sequence, the band is playing underwater, surrounded by the flora and creatures of the sea. These dreamscapes are highly stylized, and really show off the imagination of the Harmonix team, in capturing the flavor of the songs from The Beatles.
The new instruments are keep to the designs of the orignal game, and they had a new guitar there that I did not get the name of, but it seemed like it might be in the box, and it might now. For now, I do know that McCartney’s bass, Ringo’s pearl white drum kit and a standard looking microphone will be in there, along with a mic stand for those that want to play and sing at the same time. The instruments are backwards compatible with the prior Rock Band titles and all previous guitars and drums work with The Beatles: Rock Band. Yeah, they did get the memo that people might not want to own a closet full of plastic instruments.
Compatibility with the music from The Beatles: Rock Band and the other Rock Band titles is not as encouraging. Harmonix reiterated that they are not looking at this as a true part of the Rock Band family in that sense. Music from The Beatles: Rock Band has to be played in the game itself. There is no import feature. The reasoning behind, according to Harmonix, is because the game has been created as an experience wrapped around the music. To separate it from the title would take away from the music and the game as a whole. DLC for The Beatles: Rock Band will also be kept on its own island, and will only work in this one title.
After my time with The Beatles: Rock Band, I can assure you that if you are a fan of The Beatles: Rock Band you will find a plethora of things to enjoy, while playing through the 45 included songs in the box, and more DLC coming after the release of the game. Rock Band fans will enjoy the new instrument compatibility with the other microphones available on the market as well as an improved interface. Harmonix looks to have delivered on giving players the true Beatles experience, and I have to admit that I cannot wait for 09-09-09 to get here so I can get my mop-top groove on.
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I'd like to play this but I think the character models would distract me. They just are too weird looking.
No Fail on easy not wrecking trophies/achievements… AWESOME. Does this mean No Fail also no longer effectively cancels any scores/stars/fans in tour mode?
Their stance on DLC sucks. When they first pitched a Beatles game, they made it sound like it may be totally different from Rock Band, thus no compatibility. Now we see it's just pretty much Rock Band. So I am not looking forward to maintaining two sets of DLC songs for what amounts to the same game.
Saying that “it's an experience” is not a Harmonix line, it's an Activision line. If I had been in the room with you, I would have totally made a disgusted O RLY face. How would being able to export select songs to regular Rock Band (or use DLC songs in either game) hurt the experience of playing Beatles Rock Band?
So, was all of Harmonix on LSD when making this game, or just some of them? Seriously, this thing looks psychedelic in every way. Anyway, I think it's smart for them to keep The Beatles separate from the other titles as frustrating as it might be. You don't want an acquisition this big to seem belittled. One thing I'm wondering about the game, is what happens with the harmonies when there is only one singer? To round this out, I'll just say that I'm very interested in picking up the disc-only version of the game at the end of the year. I wasn't expecting there to be more of The Beatles as DLC, so that was a pretty huge announcement.
I think the whole issue is that when you are working with one of the most sought after licenses in music, you have to drum to their beat. I am fairly confident with the thinking that Harmonix probably would love to have the tunes available to Rock Band and Rock Band 2, a la the AC/DC pack, however, The Beatles and Apple Corps probably dictated that it had to be a sole entity.
Look at it this way – not even itunes has been able to get The Beatles, so this is a huge coup, and Harmonix is probably having to work inside the terms that The Beatles and Apple Corps wanted.
The harmonies were never really shown with less than two people, even when we played on the game. I will find out from our friendly neighborhood press contact and let you know.
I understand having to go along with the demands of Apple Corp, hence the seperation of The Beatles from normal Rock Band. But not only is it annoying to me, it seems like it could hurt DLC sales of the extra Beatles songs – if I have to keep switching discs to play Beatles stuff then eventually I'm just going to favour the non-Beatles DLC instead. And ultimately that probably hurts Apple Corp too, assuming they get a cut of DLC sales.
Ditto, that's one of the biggest things bugging me about this game as well. I love Rock Band, I like the Beatles. But I don't want to be forced to play RB:B and only its DLC. On its own, it will definitely be enjoyable. But Rock Band is a huge party game at my house, and with any party game people want variety. I can tell you hands down, that RB:B will only last a few songs or so until RB2 is thrown back in for more musical variety. And am I willing to download different artist music for RB:B? Heck no! The last thing I want to do is fragment my music collection between multiple titles. Heck, that's one of biggest complaints about the original Guitar Hero and Guitar Hero 2. I so wanted to play the first one's music in the second one because the second one had the better play modes, graphics, etc.
Well, that is a way to affect the outcome of this. Speak with your dollars. I hate the idea of switching discs, but it does not bother me as much considering the business side of things. The DLC is a bit thornier for me, but I can just not buy it to show my displeasure.
I understand having to go along with the demands of Apple Corp, hence the seperation of The Beatles from normal Rock Band. But not only is it annoying to me, it seems like it could hurt DLC sales of the extra Beatles songs – if I have to keep switching discs to play Beatles stuff then eventually I'm just going to favour the non-Beatles DLC instead. And ultimately that probably hurts Apple Corp too, assuming they get a cut of DLC sales.
Ditto, that's one of the biggest things bugging me about this game as well. I love Rock Band, I like the Beatles. But I don't want to be forced to play RB:B and only its DLC. On its own, it will definitely be enjoyable. But Rock Band is a huge party game at my house, and with any party game people want variety. I can tell you hands down, that RB:B will only last a few songs or so until RB2 is thrown back in for more musical variety. And am I willing to download different artist music for RB:B? Heck no! The last thing I want to do is fragment my music collection between multiple titles. Heck, that's one of biggest complaints about the original Guitar Hero and Guitar Hero 2. I so wanted to play the first one's music in the second one because the second one had the better play modes, graphics, etc.
Well, that is a way to affect the outcome of this. Speak with your dollars. I hate the idea of switching discs, but it does not bother me as much considering the business side of things. The DLC is a bit thornier for me, but I can just not buy it to show my displeasure.