Rhythm based games seem like they will always be “the thing”, especially with the addition of The Beatles. Everyone loves The Beatles, hell, they are more popular than Jesus. It’s nearly impossible to access any form of media this week without being jumped by The Beatles. If you can avoid the onslaught you still have Come Together stuck in your head as a result of a previous jumping. Don’t get me wrong, I have enjoyed the hype surrounding this game. I have even been able to put Mastodon down for a while to listen to some Beatles albums. It has been a while since I took some time to listen to The Beatles, but that’s not all that I’ve enjoyed about this hype.
The opening trailer to the game is beautiful. Especially when it busts out into the colorful and wonderfully rendered 3d world. Passion Pictures did a great job on this piece, and sadly I had to do some research to find out they created it. For a while I was just assuming it was done by Blur. It’s not so hard now, but when the trailer was first released… probably a month ago it was irritatingly frustrating, or maybe frustratedly irritating… Anyways, trailers like this deserve to have the studios name on them somewhere obvious.
Now, I wonder if Activision is a little worried about their Guitar Hero 5, which sounds wrong, but World Tour was Guitar Hero 4. I found that a bit confusing for about 3 minutes. From what I’ve heard The Beatles: Rockband doesn’t offer much new as far as a Rockband game is concerned besides some awesome new periphs, but I have heard some nice improvements to the Guitar Hero franchise. Players are now able to drop in and out at their leisure, joining or leaving in the middle of a song. A player may also choose to play the same instrument at the same time as their buddy, so nobody has to fight about who gets to sing… Great party friendly improvements.
I haven’t touched GH5 or Beatles:RB yet, but I have always enjoyed Rockband more. Guitar Hero did get their hands on some Tool songs, but Rockband has always felt more refined to me. I enjoy the way power is activated more, especially on the drums, and I love the open drum fills. Plus Rockband now has The Beatles! The only thing I can think of that might be able to top The Beatles in a rhythm game is Micheal Jackson: DDR. The pad will have to be altered with some sort of conveyor.
I am the eggman…
I demand you make a mockup of Michael Jackson DDR and send it to Konami.