25eleven

Four Englishmen prancing through the streets

Tomorrow, September 9, marks the long-awaited release of the newest installment in the Rock Band franchise, The Beatles: Rock Band.  Now if you’re like me, and you can’t play those goddamned plastic guitars to save your life, but you do count the boys from Liverpool as the second greatest band (after the Monkees, of course) then you’re probably pretty stoked.  I sure as hell am.

The game features 45 classic tracks from the period from 1962-69, including such gems as “Come Together,” “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds,” and some song that sounds oddly like the George Harrison classic, “While My Guitar Not Loudly Becomes Tearful.”  In addition to those classics, the gamemakers at Harmonix even included a song written by a 4-year-old Ringo Starr about a squid or an octopus or something like that.  I can’t remember, I wasn’t listening.  I guess he didn’t get much help from his friends on that one.

But in addition to the 45 songs included on the game’s disc, Harmonix plans to release scores of downloadable content for the game, including full albums such as Abbey Road, available in only a few weeks, which may be just enough time for hordes of sun-starved gamers to master the first 45 tracks.

What sets this game apart from the previous versions of Rock Band are the controllers.  The drum set is modeled after Starr’s Ludwig kit, and the two guitars are modeled on a Rickenbacker 325 and a Gretsch Duo Jet.  I’m not going to pretend to know who played what.  But the bass I can handle, as its modeled after Paul McCartney’s iconic Hofner 500/1 violin-looking thing.  I saw him play it during a football game once.  Best of all, the game has multiple mics so that more than one asshole with no voice can fuck up the harmony on “Here Comes the Sun.”

All in all, it seems that the newest Rock Band is gonna be the video game of the moment, at least until the next Call of Duty comes out.  Early reports range from “surreal” to “fucking transcendental,” and Yoko Ono’s inability to fuck this one up shows that this game is a fighter for sure.  Pick it up tomorrow, its gonna be a great game.  It’s gotta be… it’s the Beatles.  I mean, they’re almost as good as the Monkees.

"I think I'm going to adjourn to another dimension."

Tags: rock band, the beatles

This entry was posted on Tuesday, September 8th, 2009 at 6:05 pm and is filed under Entertainment, Music. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.