The Beatles Rock Band (Wii)

Product Information

Play well and perform a special move to trigger Beatlemania and multiply your points, play poorly and you'll fail, having to start all over at the beginning (unless you turn on "No Fail" mode). The DRM used in this game is Cloakware [1], from Irdeto, and was placed to protect the game's audio files better than other Rock Band titles due to strict licensing deal with Apple Corp. The balance board is enough by itself, and at least that's a clean, flat object that I can slide under a table.

The songs aren't exactly the Beatles' best and whilst the graphics are above average, when you're playing, you're focusing on the coloured dots, not John Lennon's outfit so it's a bit wasted really.They approved of the songs and venues that would appear in the game, and provided feedback on the artwork, character representations, and storyboards for animation sequences. Vocals were slowed down and broken into phonetic segments, allowing the art team to determine the appropriate facial movement for the virtual characters to go along with the lyrics. It's also not only a port from the 360 version, they actually reduced the sceneries so it would run smoother. The song was initially made available as an exclusive for Xbox 360 on the same day the game was released.

The developers also tackled the problem of Wii games not having accomplishments - those quirky little goals that give you a little something extra to feel good about yourself for achieving - by adding in as a feature of the game itself (rather than a feature of the console that utilises game content, as on PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360). It is a joy to watch the band mature and to play along with their music as it changes in tone and grows in complexity throughout the journey.Another layer of variation is the fact that inclusion of four instruments - guitar, bass, drums and microphone - means that there are four very different ways to play each song. Centered on the popular English rock group the Beatles, The Beatles: Rock Band is the first band-centric game in the Rock Band series. The creators' reverie is obvious, but here it serves as an arguable detriment to the experience gone are any mention of the band's darker days.

I think it's a fun concept, but once I tried it, I have no interest in getting better in such a thing. The Xbox 360 really brings out the game with It's "fab" graphics and beautifully animated dreamscapes and characters (This includes the crowd). Harmonix co-founder Alex Rigopulos described the game as "a new, full game title production built from the ground up". One stipulation that the Apple Corps shareholders required of Harmonix was that the game feature songs spanning the band's entire career. MTV: Music Television, MTV Games and all related titles and logos are trademarks of MTV Networks, a division of Viacom International Inc.com, [109] and X-Play; [110] the game was also nominated for Best Music or Rhythm game by the Game Critics Awards [111] and IGN. Will Tuttle of GameSpy questioned whether Harmonix limited the number of songs on release knowing that there would be a market for the game's downloadable content in the near future.