Beatlemaniacs should get it
On the Plus side:
- Incredibly artistic graphics that get you into the atmosphere right away. People sitting on the sofa while you play won't feel as bored as with Rock Band. (But they did have fun at me listening to me sing anyways ;)
- You can sing the choir's part, not just the lead!
- Drums training beats actually contain beats from the songs themselves.
- A ton of trophies come with the game.
- Instruments other than RB1 and compatible with RB2 are now available outside of the USA! Hurray!
On the minus side:
- I paid full price (70 bucks) for 43 songs. That is NOT a fair business proposal. I only bought this game because I wanted my friends to feel like they could be involved in Rock Band now that they knew the songs.
- I knew 23 songs out of the 43 ones. I was extremely surprised because, though I am not a die-hard fan, I had already listened to 4-5 albums from the Beatles. I don't understand how we ended up with only half of the songs being known to me. I will further test my friends to check which ones they know.
- It took me 7 hours to beat the story mode with drums, playing all songs in either Hard or Expert. The thing is - this game is MUCH EASIER that Rock Band. At least on drums. And this further reduces its lifespan (and the value proposal from my perspective).
- The incentive to keep playing is high-scores (mmm, well...) or pictures & videos collection from the Beatles. Well I don't know about you but I personnally had more fun collecting clothes for my group than pictures & movies.
- The nice style change has a small side effect: kick pedal horizontal bar is less readable than before, especially while "Star Power" is active.
- You cannot include this game into Rock Band, nor vice versa. So it takes quite some loading time to switch between them.
- Training on the drums has a lot of harder sections than the game tracks themselves. I do not see the point (if the game was aimed at a wider audience anyway).
Overall, I can recommend this game for die hard Beatles fans essentially. If like me you wanted to have this to play songs you know and more easily share with friends, be prepared for a set back. I would recommend to wait for this game to be available at 30 bucks before buying it. In the meantime, just get more tracks for Rock Band (or Guitar Hero, for that matters)! Anyways, I have invested in Rock Band 1&2 already, I will squeeze a little more value out of that and consider that I am done with music games for a couple of years. Oh, and start playing a real instrument, already. :)