Review: Rock Band Beatles Edition

I was expecting to get another Rock Band game, a third iteration of the same formula, when I bought the Beatles Edition of Rock Band this week, but as it turns out, this game is more of a tribute than a music video game and I couldn't be happier.

Gone are the fans. Gone are the money. Gone are the costumes and the guitars and the accessories. Gone are the characters. Gone are the annoying, repetitive intros to each song. In The Beatles Rock Band game, all the glitter and noise are replaced well thought out nostalgia, real audio clips, and a ton of digital decoupage to honor the band. I don't feel like I'm playing a music video game as much as I feel like I'm taking part in an interactive museum.

Each venue the band plays in is special. They each get their own intro videos with music and graphics suiting The Beatles, a 30-second walk down memory lane. I was most impressed with the 7th venue, Abbey Road, cinematic which ended in an animation that created the Abbey Road album cover. It was beautiful and choreographed perfectly.

Each song is prefaced and followed with a few seconds of actual studio audio when that song was actually recorded. Bits of drumming or guitar practice. A little joke. Some laughing. It gets you in the mood to play. It feels familiar.

But as with all Rock Band games, the magic really happens when you have a full four-person band and, with the new feature added, up to four singers singing all the four original parts to the songs. This, personally, is what makes me want to keep playing. I never grew up with Beatles songs in our house, so I don't really know any of them except from popular culture references and Apple commercials. But now I want to learn all the lyrics so I can play drums or guitar and sing at the same time; something I'm figuring out I have the ability to do pretty well.

This is definitely an under-rated purchase for me. I didn't think I would enjoy it after I bought it and now I'm really looking forward to playing it everyday. Especially now that I realized my son likes to watch me play the drums and look at the tv, trying to figure out what the heck is actually going on with all the noise and movement.

Tip for Bands: Don't Be the Load Screen

Don't let a video game developer license one of your songs for the into/load screen of a game. The people who play that game on a regular basis will learn to hate your song. You'll be associated with waiting. Waiting for fun.

Yes, I'm talking to you Guns 'N Roses and Criterion (Burnout Paradise). And Lil' Jon and EA (Need for Speed: Underground).

Instead, be the end credits. Be the happy moment.

Video Game Music: Fan Renditions

Believe it or not, some video game music is just plain awesome. Most Japanese game music composers are pretty well known and loved. Koji Kondo of Mario/Zelda fame. Nobuo Uematsu of Final Fantasy fame. Even Martin O'Donnell composed the Flintstones theme and then composed all the music for the Halo series. There are lots of composers. And lots of fans.

Of course there is a lot of usage of commercial usage of already produced music in games, like the game I'm playing now from EA, Burnout Paradise. There are about 20 tracks of licensed music in the game.

But what were talking about is music specifically composed for a game with as much of a thought process, if not more so, than in most movies.

Game music has become a subculture world-wide. Bands have been formed. People record themselves and post on YouTube. Most play the piano. A few guitar too. But recently there is a trend to recreate all the parts of a song by yourself and mix them together like this dude. Color me impressed.

Intrinsic Values: Self Confidence

So we're playing Rock Band. Brian is tired of the guitar. Mary is tired of singing. The next song is one I know. So I grab the microphone and belt out Blackhole Sun by Soungarden.

I've been in high school musicals and one act plays. I've taken a public speaking class and passed with flying colors. I've sung in church as a kid. All in all, I'm no newb to being in the limelight. But singing, nope. I hate my voice. I'm nasal, congested and of narrow range. Perfect pitch, but crap quality.

But I didn't care playing Rock Band. The gamer side of me took over to try and beat the song. Everyone else had sung and by that point, I didn't want to be the one that didn't even try it. So I grabbed the mic and sucked it up with my crew. Most of the songs I really couldn't hit the high notes, but Rock Band recognized octaves and harmonies, so I made it just fine if I had to in a pinch.

Party games aren't new by any means, but singing to music with all your friends around is an idea most people are afraid to do. Yeah, we used to sing our Boyz II Men songs in the car cruisin the strip in high school. To our imaginary girlfriends. With the windows up and the bass over compensating. But there's no excuse in Rock Band not to shred the guitar with style, rock the drums with flare, and belt out your favorite song. I can't wait for another 5 a.m. Rock Band session.

Past Intrinsic Values posts.

5 a.m. Review: Rock Band

No, it's not 5:00am when I'm writing this, but it is when I went to bed last night. We started playing around 8:30pm and, well, that's how the game goes. It's super addictive and loads of fun for people who like loud music. But it will make you realize one thing: playing music in a band is repetitive. Really repetitive.

You advance your band by playing venues. The more fans you gain, the more venues you unlock. You start off with a few songs and have to play them over and over again until you gain more fans. A new venue will give you a song or two.

Another progress measurement is stars. Like Guitar Hero games your songs are rated 1-5 stars. Some venues and gigs require the band to have a certain number of stars. This is how you get to play different gigs. You could play a set list for an audio technician, or a jet. It's all in order to move the band along in the "story". Make you play more. make you play the same freakin songs more.

I was most interested in playing the drums most of the night. They, along with the microphone, are the most realistic things to do. I couldn't ever play outside of the medium difficulty. My coordination just isn't up to par yet to play drums. Even my best friend, an excellent drummer, thought that the hard difficulty offered up some pretty complex patterns. I think he's going to have fun playing that, as he's the one that actually bought the $180 game.

Sadly, the guitar that comes with Rock Band is worthless. It's make of cheap plastic, nothing close to the quality of the developers old Guitar Hero guitar games. Within minutes, the strum bar stopped strumming down. The built-in control pad also stopped working sporadically, so selecting between bass and guitar and the different settings just wasn't available all the time. The effects switch on the guitar is almost directly under the whammy bar. That's not particularly detrimental to the game, but annoying none the less.

Other than those things, the repetitive nature of a band and the cheap guitar (which is under warranty), the game is awesome. It's why we stayed up all night playing. Every time we unlocked a new song, we rocked it out, smiles all around, impressed with our own gaming/musical/singing skills. If there was ever a game to bridge the gap between games and reality, this one does a hell of a job. It should be a new genre of games like there is for talk shows: reality gaming.

Guitar Hero III on iTunes

It comes out soon if not already. Now you can just listen to it if you want to. Or practice on your wireless air guitar.

PaRappa The Rapper Music!

This is really some of the best music in gaming. PaRappa was one of the first, if not the first, rhythm video game. It wasn't until two years later that Dance Dance Revolution took Japan by storm in 1998.

So download these great music tracks and imagine hitting the different controller buttons to get PaRappa to sing his rhymes.

Review: Video Games Live

To go to a concert based on music in video games has to be one of the stranges things I've ever done. I've been to plenty of concerts before, but when you drill down into gamers to find the ones that really appreciate the music, you know your on another level. There really isn't anything like it. But there should be.

I can see a few other ways to do it; music from movies preformed live is the first thing that comes to mind. Jurassic Park, Star Wars, Lord of the Rings...the size of the pool of canidates for the set list is almost unimanginable.

But there is a little more on the artistic side when it comes to video games. In the early days, music was simple if there was any at all. PONG for example had none, but it was the first thing the National Symphony Orchestra played. The beeps and boops from the game were translated into the ground work for the introductory composition about of the most earliest video games. Space Invaders, Asteroids, Tempest and more soon followed. At first, all of the music was from other composers but matched to the individual games personalities. Once they reached Dragon's Lair, they switched to actual game music rescored for a full orchestra. Hearing Super Ghosts and Ghouls performed live made remembering one the hardest games in existence (some think) slightly more enjoyable.

Tommy Tallarico and Jack Wall, the creators of the show, had something like 300 games to their musical credit. I didn't know they were that involved with the industry.

I also realized that whenever you take a subset of gamers and find a particular event or aspect of gaming to talk about, you really get the hardcore of the hardcore. Sure there were normal people there like me, appreciators of the craftwork, and you also got people who just enjoy orchestra music, but you also got the typical ADHD, "parent's basement", cleanest-t-shirt-I-own types crawling out of the woodwork. Thankfully, everyone was in full check to enjoy the show and cheer on their favorite games.

I thoroughly enjoyed the two and a half hour show. Listening to the great music brought back some good memories. Watching a couple audience members compete at Frogger and Space Invaders for prizes (a Ferrari laptop and a DS) was quite hoot too, especially when you play Space Invaders by running back and forth across the stage to move.

Video Games Live

A short motorcycle trip to Knoxville, TN for a birthday vacation and I'm finally back.

I walked into the kitchen to find a few birthday cards. One had some tickets to a show printed off from the computer. It didn't have what the tickets were for, just that they were to the Kennedy Center and for the 29th of June. So I looked up the show schedule.

I was blown away.

Video Games Live is for pure gaming junkies and connoisseurs of music alike. Combination of an orchestra, lights, and footage from video games all tied together. And the game list is quite impressive.

Mario™, Zelda®, Halo®, Metal Gear Solid®, Warcraft®, Myst®, Final Fantasy®, God of War™, Kingdom Hearts, Castlevania®, Medal of Honor™, Sonic™, Tron, Tomb Raider®, Advent Rising, Headhunter, Beyond Good & Evil™, Splinter Cell®, Ghost Recon™, Rainbow Six®, EverQuest® II and a special retro Classic Arcade Medley featuring over 20+ games from Pong® to Donkey Kong® including such classics as Dragon's Lair, Tetris, Frogger, Gauntlet, Space Invaders & Outrun!

If this is a taste of what's to come, I don't know if I can wait a week.