The Day After 9/9/09

Hey, that's a punny title referring to the release date of TB:RB and the Beatles' song The One After 909! How clever am I? SCORE!

OK, seriously, here are my day-after thoughts. I played the game for a good 5-6 hours last night. All I can say is I had an absolute blast. It's definitely the most fun I have ever had with a music game. It's not a game that is going to overly impress the Guitar Hero gods who can master every song on the hardest difficulty. This game is about having fun, and it delivers in spades. Simply put, there is nothing out there that equals the joy of playing guitar (or bass) and singing at the same time. It has to be experienced. It's like a high. It is the closest I will ever come to playing live in a band. Now I am not saying that this even comes close to playing a real instrument in a real band. No one would ever make that kind of an argument. But this simulates the experience of performing - of singing and playing - about as well as I can imagine. And it is tremendous fun.

I played the drums for a bit and the kit is nice and solid, better than the RB1 kit. I do wish there were drum fills like in RB1, but the developers wanted to stay true to Ringo's drumming, which I understand. Barb played drums on quite a few songs last night and she got noticeably better as we continued. She came in completely cold and by the end of the night she was scoring in the mid 70's. That's pretty damned impressive.

Like everyone else, I wish there were more songs available. The set list is damned good, though I could do without a track here and there (I Dig A Pony, anyone?) Albums are scheduled to be released on the 15th of October (Abbey Road), November (Sgt. Pepper) and December (Rubber Soul). While that is extremely cool (Abbey Road and Rubber Soul are 2 of my favorite albums of all time), I wish they were being released sooner as I will be wearing out the tracks on the disc before then. And I am seriously hoping that while we are waiting for the albums to drop that individual songs - singles or B-sides - are made available in the meantime. Penny Lane would be an awesome one to drop on us, for example, with Paul's swirling bass line.

This is a game that will keep me interested for a long time, as long as Harmonix keeps putting out more music. The Limited Edition bundle was quite pricey and really not worth the money unless you are a Beatles fanatic like me. I had to have the Hofner bass (my other RB guitar is wired, too) and I really like the better-built drum kit. The mic stand is essential for playing and singing at the same time and it is a nice stand. But you could probably pick up a cheap one somewhere and not have to shell out for the bundle. And you'd think that for the $250 price tag that they could have made the mic wireless, but you'd be wrong. It's not a big deal at all to me, but this bundle was not cheap. It was absolutely worth it to me, but probably not to 99% of the population.

Overall the game itself gets a solid A+ from me. That is hardly shocking to anyone that knows me, but it is well earned. There is simply nothing better than playing as one of the Fab Four, singing songs that you know and love and having the time of your life as you do so.