Beatles: Rock Band review
Oct. 12th, 2009 09:31 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
asterrocThis weekend I played through the entirety of Beatles: Rock Band with a few friends in a cabin in the middle of nowhere, Vermont. There's an achievement to complete the entire game in 24 hours, and we did it in two sittings: 1.5 hours on Sunday evening, and another 1.5 hours on Sunday after a hearty breakfast of apple chocolate chip pancakes. Since I'm a vocalist primarily, and the vocals are what's supposed to be new about BRB, that's what I focus on here.
As promised, BRB supports up to three vocal parts, for a grand total of up to 6 players (drums, bass, guitar, 3 vocals). Not every song has 3 separate vocal parts; on the bar indicating the song difficulty there will be a 2 or 3 in a circle if there are that many parts, or no number if it's just a single vocal part. You can then pick either Solo or Harmonies mode - Solo mode generally does only the melody, though in a few songs where the harmony is crucial it will have the single vocal part jump from one to the other.
In Harmonies mode, only one of the three lines has to be completed in each phrase; often only the melody appears in a particular phrase, so it must be completed for the "awesome" etc., ratings. If there are two vocal parts in a phrase, the best one counts for the "awesome" rating. If an additional vocal part is completed at an "awesome" rating then you get a "Double Fab" which is some point value. If all three vocal parts are "awesome" then you get a Triple Fab. There are achievements for getting all the Double Fabs in all 2-part songs, and all the Triple Fabs in all 3-part songs. You do not have to assign one person to each part, you can freely swap around at will, though you may or may not be more likely to succeed at all the parts if you assign parts. It is possible to play Harmonies mode by yourself since you only have to complete one of the three parts to keep from failing out. Any of the vocalists can trigger "Beatlesmania" when it is available, but it ends up harder to control the triggering as it will often think you're just singing one of the parts badly when you want to trigger it instead.
The harmonies are represented by three separate vocal lines: the melody is in blue, if there is only one harmony it is in lighter brown with its lyrics across the top instead, if there are two harmony lines the higher harmony is in lighter brown and the lower harmony is in darker brown with the lyrics for the melody always on the bottom and the other ones split in some logical manner. The two colors can be confusing, as light and dark brown can be hard to distinguish quickly. The harmony's lyrics are ALWAYS on the top and the melody's lyrics always on the bottom, regardless of whether the harmony is actually higher or lower pitched than the melody, sometimes resulting in looking up for your notes and down for your words or vice versa. This did not bother me too much, but did one of our other vocalists. In addition the high harmony isn't necessarily always higher than the melody, "high harmony" just means "higher than the low harmony," and ditto for the "low harmony" being "lower than the high harmony."
I sang for around 2/3-3/4 of the songs, with two guys mostly swapping out for each other, so I wanted to do the highest part, but I kept ending up on the lowest part due to which parts the other people were familiar with. Interestingly, I learned that having decent ability to sing melody does not necessarily translate to ability to sing a harmony, as one of our vocalists did an excellent job on melody but pretty much was entirely unable to find a harmony. On the other hand, another one of our vocalists enjoys singing but doesn't have the best pitch and we found that he did a good job of always finding the top vocal part and doing reasonably well with it, so he could find harmonies despite not having perfect pitch. I guess it just never occurred to me that the ability to stay on-key/pitch wasn't necessarily the same as the ability to hear harmonies.
We messed around a bit with holding a mic in front of someone playing another instrument, but (a) it's difficult to hold a mic sideways like that, and (b) if you're playing the instrument at an appropriate difficulty setting for you it's very difficult to pay attention to singing. If you're going to attempt this, I recommend having the instrumentalist-who's-also-doing-vocals sing whatever part he/she feels like and have everyone else pick parts around him/her. If you're the instrumentalist-who's-also-doing-vocals, don't look at the vocals line at all, just sing whatever you want whenever you want.
If you're new to rhythm games, this game would actually be a good introduction to them, as most people know a few Beatles songs. In addition, most of the instrumental parts are easier in this game than in others in the Rock Band franchise, especially at the very beginning of the game where it would be trivial for a more experienced player to play an instrument and sing simultaneously (presuming you have a mic stand or someone to hold it for you). This is a good game to buy for your parents too.
I recommend all vocalists go through the vocal harmonies tutorial (you may need to go through the solo tutorial first, I forget) even if you know how to sing and have done vocals in the other games (Rock Band or Karaoke Revolution) so you can see how the harmonies work. On some of the later songs experienced vocalists should beware of what I call "key signature drift" - the background of the vocals part is usually lighter colored just above the middle, darker colored just below the middle, and then lighter again at the far bottom, and darker again at the far top, indicating different octaves. You will have noticed that the sections at the top and bottom are squished together so that the visual space between different notes is compressed. In the later songs there is occasionally a large vocal range for the song, which would result in large sections of the song falling into the compressed regions, therefore they decided to actually shift the notes back or down so that the background color then becomes darker colored above the middle and lighter colored just below the middle. More musically inclined drummers will also have "fun" with the later songs changing the time signature from 2/2 to 3/4 and back repeatedly - when I drum, I usually watch the screen to know which pad/pedal to hit, but I listen to the rhythm of the song coming out of the speakers to know when to hit that one.
Overall it's a fun game. You play through AS the Beatles so you don't have character creation. You play through their career, ending up with a shorter game than other Rock Band games due to the elimination of setlists at each location. You earn photos with snippets of their history, which will make the fanboys/girls squee. I expect it will have less replay value for me due to the shorter list of songs and my own opinion that the Beatles are repetitive. I definitely enjoyed the variety of having harmonies. It may be a better party game than other Rock Band games due to having up to 6 players instead of only 4.
In final conclusion I'm not a Beatles fan and I'm only a casual gamer, but I still think it was worth my $60 due to the harmonies. If you're not a Beatles fan and harmonies don't do it for you, then save your money. If you're a rabid Beatles People, then $60 would be a steal for you. For most gamers, the best balance is to have a friend who's willing to buy it, or consider chipping in together and buying it as a group, or wait a bit and pick it up used. And if your parents or grandparents already have a system (they all have the Wii, right?) then it'd make a great Christmas gift for them.
As promised, BRB supports up to three vocal parts, for a grand total of up to 6 players (drums, bass, guitar, 3 vocals). Not every song has 3 separate vocal parts; on the bar indicating the song difficulty there will be a 2 or 3 in a circle if there are that many parts, or no number if it's just a single vocal part. You can then pick either Solo or Harmonies mode - Solo mode generally does only the melody, though in a few songs where the harmony is crucial it will have the single vocal part jump from one to the other.
In Harmonies mode, only one of the three lines has to be completed in each phrase; often only the melody appears in a particular phrase, so it must be completed for the "awesome" etc., ratings. If there are two vocal parts in a phrase, the best one counts for the "awesome" rating. If an additional vocal part is completed at an "awesome" rating then you get a "Double Fab" which is some point value. If all three vocal parts are "awesome" then you get a Triple Fab. There are achievements for getting all the Double Fabs in all 2-part songs, and all the Triple Fabs in all 3-part songs. You do not have to assign one person to each part, you can freely swap around at will, though you may or may not be more likely to succeed at all the parts if you assign parts. It is possible to play Harmonies mode by yourself since you only have to complete one of the three parts to keep from failing out. Any of the vocalists can trigger "Beatlesmania" when it is available, but it ends up harder to control the triggering as it will often think you're just singing one of the parts badly when you want to trigger it instead.
The harmonies are represented by three separate vocal lines: the melody is in blue, if there is only one harmony it is in lighter brown with its lyrics across the top instead, if there are two harmony lines the higher harmony is in lighter brown and the lower harmony is in darker brown with the lyrics for the melody always on the bottom and the other ones split in some logical manner. The two colors can be confusing, as light and dark brown can be hard to distinguish quickly. The harmony's lyrics are ALWAYS on the top and the melody's lyrics always on the bottom, regardless of whether the harmony is actually higher or lower pitched than the melody, sometimes resulting in looking up for your notes and down for your words or vice versa. This did not bother me too much, but did one of our other vocalists. In addition the high harmony isn't necessarily always higher than the melody, "high harmony" just means "higher than the low harmony," and ditto for the "low harmony" being "lower than the high harmony."
I sang for around 2/3-3/4 of the songs, with two guys mostly swapping out for each other, so I wanted to do the highest part, but I kept ending up on the lowest part due to which parts the other people were familiar with. Interestingly, I learned that having decent ability to sing melody does not necessarily translate to ability to sing a harmony, as one of our vocalists did an excellent job on melody but pretty much was entirely unable to find a harmony. On the other hand, another one of our vocalists enjoys singing but doesn't have the best pitch and we found that he did a good job of always finding the top vocal part and doing reasonably well with it, so he could find harmonies despite not having perfect pitch. I guess it just never occurred to me that the ability to stay on-key/pitch wasn't necessarily the same as the ability to hear harmonies.
We messed around a bit with holding a mic in front of someone playing another instrument, but (a) it's difficult to hold a mic sideways like that, and (b) if you're playing the instrument at an appropriate difficulty setting for you it's very difficult to pay attention to singing. If you're going to attempt this, I recommend having the instrumentalist-who's-also-doing-vocals sing whatever part he/she feels like and have everyone else pick parts around him/her. If you're the instrumentalist-who's-also-doing-vocals, don't look at the vocals line at all, just sing whatever you want whenever you want.
If you're new to rhythm games, this game would actually be a good introduction to them, as most people know a few Beatles songs. In addition, most of the instrumental parts are easier in this game than in others in the Rock Band franchise, especially at the very beginning of the game where it would be trivial for a more experienced player to play an instrument and sing simultaneously (presuming you have a mic stand or someone to hold it for you). This is a good game to buy for your parents too.
I recommend all vocalists go through the vocal harmonies tutorial (you may need to go through the solo tutorial first, I forget) even if you know how to sing and have done vocals in the other games (Rock Band or Karaoke Revolution) so you can see how the harmonies work. On some of the later songs experienced vocalists should beware of what I call "key signature drift" - the background of the vocals part is usually lighter colored just above the middle, darker colored just below the middle, and then lighter again at the far bottom, and darker again at the far top, indicating different octaves. You will have noticed that the sections at the top and bottom are squished together so that the visual space between different notes is compressed. In the later songs there is occasionally a large vocal range for the song, which would result in large sections of the song falling into the compressed regions, therefore they decided to actually shift the notes back or down so that the background color then becomes darker colored above the middle and lighter colored just below the middle. More musically inclined drummers will also have "fun" with the later songs changing the time signature from 2/2 to 3/4 and back repeatedly - when I drum, I usually watch the screen to know which pad/pedal to hit, but I listen to the rhythm of the song coming out of the speakers to know when to hit that one.
Overall it's a fun game. You play through AS the Beatles so you don't have character creation. You play through their career, ending up with a shorter game than other Rock Band games due to the elimination of setlists at each location. You earn photos with snippets of their history, which will make the fanboys/girls squee. I expect it will have less replay value for me due to the shorter list of songs and my own opinion that the Beatles are repetitive. I definitely enjoyed the variety of having harmonies. It may be a better party game than other Rock Band games due to having up to 6 players instead of only 4.
In final conclusion I'm not a Beatles fan and I'm only a casual gamer, but I still think it was worth my $60 due to the harmonies. If you're not a Beatles fan and harmonies don't do it for you, then save your money. If you're a rabid Beatles People, then $60 would be a steal for you. For most gamers, the best balance is to have a friend who's willing to buy it, or consider chipping in together and buying it as a group, or wait a bit and pick it up used. And if your parents or grandparents already have a system (they all have the Wii, right?) then it'd make a great Christmas gift for them.
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no subject
Date: 2009-10-13 04:43 am (UTC)But I can't stop singing, so any chance to do it in a socially-sanctioned way (as opposed to the everyone shuffle away way) is good by me!
(I heard you can buy more songs off the internet -- when I played it briefly at a school event last week I couldn't find many of my favorite songs like In My Life and Eleanor Rigby)
no subject
Date: 2009-10-13 12:30 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-10-15 04:07 am (UTC)