Rock Band produces the best one-band-only music game yet, and does The Beatles proud.
The Bad: Some songs are noticeably absent; graphics leave a bit to be desired on Wii, though they're better than most music games on the system; the game's pretty easy, especially for those who have played Guitar Hero and Rock Band games in the past.
Rock Band is developed by the original creators of Guitar Hero, Harmonix. When they were bought out by Activision, the current Guitar Hero designers, Harmonix designed to branch out into the drums and vocals areas too. Since then, if you ask me, they've made far superior music games to the Guitar Hero ones (though I personally prefer Guitar Hero's guitar controllers).
Guitar Hero III was the first to take a chance on Wii, and became a giant hit. Since then, Guitar Hero has done well with the system, but after the horrible port of Rock Band 1 to Wii, the Rock Band franchise has been picking up speed. While I'm still a big GHIII fan and GHIV was solid, Rock Band 2 and Beatles: Rock Band are now my favorite music games, period.
The first thing you'll notice about The Beatles: Rock Band is that there's a very unique artistic style to the game that reflects the cheerful emotions that are involved in the band's music, as opposed to the more angry music of today. I have always complained that little to no effort is put into the graphics on the Wii iterations of music games, but Beatles: Rock Band does a reasonably good job on this front. On the other hand, since you'll be playing as The Beatles and no one else, they can pre-render the songs, so I'm not sure if I should be too complimentary.
The next thing you'll probably notice, since I'm sure you want to play some songs with friends right out of the box, is that all of the songs in the game are unlocked in Quickplay first thing. That's right, no unlocking music, it's all there for you. The game boasts a solid setlist of about 40-50 songs, although some, like Let It Be and All You Need Is Love, are noticeably absent. On the upside, some of these are being released online, which the Wii version fortunately supports. And, of course, The Beatles weren't know for making bad music... outside of Yellow Submarine.
In the Career mode though, there's plenty of reason to play through the whole setlist. This one works kind of like a retelling of The Beatles' rise to fame. It begins with their early music (Twist and Shout, for example) and performances in Liverpool, moves on to their famous migration to the U.S. with The Ed Sullivan Show (and, of course, their performance of I Wanna Hold Your Hand), more large concerts, and the band's later years in Abbey Road. While the early levels are filled with screaming fans, most notably girls with '60's hairdos, the later levels are essentially set to music videos that fit the tone of the song, even the whacky I Am the Walrus. After all, it wouldn't be that fun to watch them just sit in the studio, would it?
Additionally, there are a lot of little details that are changed about the Rock Band formula just for this game in order to honor the band's music. For example, instead of drum fills to use Overdrive (or "Beatlemania," as it's called in this game), you simply hit the green pad when Ringo would normally hit it, so the drum fill doesn't interrupt the music. Or, as another example, the guitar won't change its tone when you use the whammy bar. I'm glad to see these changes honor the music and keep your Beatles experience as close to reality as possible.
Another thing I really like is that while the songs load, the game plays little sounds the designers found in the recording studio, where they remastered The Beatles' music. These include conversations between recordings and sound bites from when the band played live. My favorite, of course, is before playing I Wanna Hold Your Hand, when Ed Sullivan says "Please welcome The Beatles!" to a bunch of screaming fans.
Since songs aren't unlocked in the career, the game designers decided to release many different bits of information about The Beatles and pictures, many of which have never been seen before, for the game. I think these are fun to shoot for, because they require you to get 4 or 5 stars on songs.
That said, the game really isn't that difficult, no matter what instrument you're playing. Singing can be tough, admittedly (or maybe I'm just bad at it), but the guitar, bass, and drum parts will be a piece of cake to anyone who has played their fair share of Guitar Hero III or Rock Band 2. Other than Revolution, the game never gave me any trouble on guitar.
Of course, something I do have to give them credit for is allowing players to use Guitar Hero, Rock Band, or Beatles Rock Band instruments for the game. Since this game was going to sell well no matter what, they easily could've made it only compatible with the new instruments, which are designed to look like the band's actual ones, but they decided to be fair to the players.
This is just one more bit of evidence that this game wants you to love The Beatles. When you lose, the game doesn't have the crowd start booing you. I suppose there is a bit of an awkward silence (The Beatles performing badly?), but it doesn't want you to feel defeated. Staying true to the music, making the game very available, and putting loving care into remastering each Beatles song makes it clear that Harmonix is honored to have the rights to the music, and the game's strengths easily outweigh its small flaws.