In the holiday spirit, I've decided to be holly and jolly and all that crud to my readers this year, and give away a few gifts over the next few days before the Christmas. I've been saving up a few codes I've received and plan to give them away to my readers.
The contest is simple. Answer the daily trivia question correctly and I'll pick one winner from the comment section with the correct answer to receive the daily prize.
Today I'm giving away a free code for the Beatles Rock Band Rubber Soul Album DLC on Xbox 360.
Just answer this question and you could win!
"Name the blue creatures in The Beatles Cartoon movie, Yellow Submarine."
Good luck and stay tuned for another prize tomorrow. Note: players can only win one prize. Once you win a code, please opt out of playing the contest.
At one point in my long blogging career, I work for a short time over the The BBPS.com and back in September when Mike (former Attack This editor) and I hit X'09 Microsoft annual Holiday event, I ran into some of the guy from The BBPS, both current and former writers. There were current staff members, Jim Squires and Bryan Wall there and former writer Ryan Hewson, all in attendance at the event.
After Jim Squires got a bit of liquid courage into him to take the mic, we all decided to jump onto the mini stage and play some Beatles Rock Band. Best of all, we recorded it so our readers could hear how bad we sound. Yes, we all started singing at some point in order to back up poor Jimmy plus it's the Beatles - how could you not sing.
I know I should have posted this video sooner but I forgot about it until now.
I have two codes to give away today. One is for the Beatles Rock Band Xbox version which will net you the complete Abby Road album for download and the other code will get you the new Queen download pack for the Rock Band Xbox version.
The Abby Road DLC includes:
Abbey Road singles: “Maxwell's Silver Hammer,” “Oh! Darling,” and “Because”
The entire Abbey Road B-side 16 minute medley that includes: “You Never Give Me Your Money,” “Sun King,” “Mean Mr. Mustard,” “Polythene Pam,” “She Came in Through the Bathroom Window,” “Golden Slumbers,” “Carry That Weight” and “The End”
Additionally, the following songs from Abbey Road can also be played as 1-to-3-song sets, based on how they were recorded / composed:
“You Never Give Me Your Money”
“Sun King”/ “Mean Mr. Mustard”
“Polythene Pam”/ “She Came in Through the Bathroom Window”
“Golden Slumbers”/ “Carry That Weight”/ “The End”*
“Her Majesty”
The Queen DLC pack includes 10 songs like Fat Bottomed Girls, Killer Queen and Somebody to Love.
All you have to do to win one of these DLC codes is answer one of the following questions:
Abby Road DLC: Name the two Beatles members that didn't stay with the band past 1962.
Queen DLC: What was the name of the band that Queen guitarist's Brian May was in before he formed Queen?
You can only win one code so choose wisely which one you answer. First people to answer the questions right in the comments below win. Don't answer if you can't use the codes. You need a copy of Beatles Rock Band on Xbox for the Abby Road DLC and a copy of Rock Band 2 on Xbox for the Queen DLC.
Beatles Rock Band
EA, Harmonix
Available for Playstation 3, Nintendo Wii and Xbox 360
The last couple of weeks have been like a dream for this game reviewer as I’ve been able to review childhood memory inducing games like Batman Arkham Asylum and Tales of Monkey Island. Best of all, they didn’t suck which is a huge bonus when you are dealing with subjects so near and dear to your heart. Unfortunately, this week’s review didn’t escape my red pen of doom despite my love for the subject matter.
Beatles Rock Band hit stores on the historical date of 09/09/09 and being the fan that I am, I scooped up a copy in order to rock out to hits like Hey Bulldog, Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Heart Club Band and more. The game centers solely around the Beatles and their musical career, so don’t expect to find any other band’s music here like in Guitar Hero Aerosmith or Metallica.
Story mode takes you on a journey through the band’s entire career from their humble beginnings playing the Carven Club to their performance atop the Apple building. Rather than playing venues, story mode has you playing moments or albums (chapters) in the Beatles’ career and the songs that were out for them at that time. While this is great for a huge Beatles’ fan to follow all these amazing moments, the difficulties of the songs were all over the place which made story mode the worst place for a new player to start off. Luckily there is a training mode for newbies to learn how to play each instrument which can ease you into the game.
On the other hand, seasoned players will find the difficulty of the songs rather low and can probably finish the story mode in a day if they want to. Actually there’s even an achievement for it, so if you are a seasoned Rock Band or Guitar Hero player I say go for it.
As you progress though story mode, you can unlock photos and secret videos from the Beatles collection with 3 & 5 star performances. Once you clear a chapter, you also unlock a challenge mode that allows you to play through that entire chapter’s song list non-stop and compare scores with your online friends. Other modes include the co-op online story mode and quickplay mode, or the competitive tug of war and score duels modes. There is also a “no-fail” mode which can be turned on for new players, so they can always finish a song no matter how badly they play it.
A new feature exclusive to the game is the 3 person melodies option which allow up to 3 people to sing during a song but there are also some missing features like the freestyle drumming, customizable band members or the whammy bar affect. Apparently, a lot of features were removed to preserve the music and the memory of the artists which in the long run is really okay by me. Besides do we really need another rapping Kurt Cobain? (Note: I don’t listen to Nirvana and even I thought that was wrong, Guitar Hero 5)
Now, I only grabbed the game disc as I have enough band peripherals to start 3 fake bands but for first time buyers, you can pick up two different kits: the Special Edition Beatles Rock Band kit which includes one basic guitar controller, basic drum kit, microphone and Beatles Rock Band game ($159.99CAN for PS3 or Xbox360) or you can pick up the Beatles Rock Band Premium Bundle which includes one Höfner bass controller, Ludwig-branded drum kit, microphone, mic stand, Beatles Rock Band game and additional special content ($249.99CAN for PS3 or Xbox 360).
Unfortunately this does not cover everything you need to fully play the game as a complete band as you still need two more microphones and probably two mic stands, and another guitar. You can pick up a Rickenbacker 325 guitar controller or a Gretsch Duo-Jet guitar controller for $99 each, microphones will run you about $50 each and mic stands probably about $20 each, so by the time you are done you are looking at spending about $500 on all the equipment if you want all the premium quality equipment.
And we haven’t even purchased any downloadable content yet. Yep, after spending all that money on the game and all the peripherals, you still have more money you can dump into this game via the online Beatles music store which at the moment has only one song, All You Need is Love (Proceeds go to charity) but there will be a whole bunch soon as Harmonix plans to release whole albums. And don’t say you won’t buy them either, you devoted fans as the game is missing great songs like Penny Lane, Eleanor Rigby and my favourite, Yesterday, so you won’t be able to stop yourselves from buying more music as they purposely kept back the some of the good stuff.
Visually, this game blows all other Rock Band incarnations away and makes you almost want to hand the controller over to someone else so you can focus all attention on the background animations. Like the Yellow Submarine come to life, Beatles Rock Band is a rainbow of colour and music splashed upon the screen in some of the best digital cinematics I have ever seen. Songs like Octopus’ Garden and The End bring the beauty of the music to life on screen with elephants, flowers and fishes.
When reviewing a music game obviously audio is a key component and there was nothing wrong with the sound here. Some songs were rearranged beautifully for the game and everything is a master track – no covers here. Extra features in the game included audio files from the Beatles private collection which still sound pretty darn good for their age. Overall, the music sounded fantastic and they still had this Beatles’ fan singing along with or without a microphone.
Games like these are really hard to review because as a fan you want to scream, “GOD, YES! BUY THIS! 10/10” but as a gamer you see the flaws and can’t in good conscience give a perfect review. I don’t expect uber-fans to listen to my review because if you are a fan, you probably already bought this game and are writing a letter to the editor trying to get me fired for what I’m about to say, so Beatles fans ignore me. Music game fans, listen up though as this is not a good investment unless you like the Beatles. Stick to the main Rock Band games because the store downloads will never be compatible with other Rock Band games and the difficulty of the songs in Beatles Rock Band will have expert players bored to tears.
