These topics are debated and much more on this edition of Opinion Unlocked.

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This game covers the songs they played and historical events they took place in. The songs are memorable and any rock fan should know some of their work. Seeing the graphical reenactment of playing in Shea Stadium to their later years just recording songs in a sound studio. The game portrays the songs and events wonderfully.

Starting off with the story mode, you get an eight stage look of The Beatles as they grew with their music. To the clean shaven, short hair cuts in The Cavern Club to the scruffy, long haired demeanor on the rooftop concert, the game shows that progression nicely. John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Ringo Star have their roles in the band but are given equal amount of time to show off their talents. Ringo and Harrison sample their songs like “Boys” and “Here Comes the Sun” while Lennon and McCartney show cased the rest of the game with songs like “With a Little Help from My Friends” and “Revolution”. Though the game doesn’t actually feel like being at that place and time, you do get a great feeling playing songs from revolutionary artists that changed history as we know it.

While playing story mode, you can unlock pictures that give you more insight into The Beatles then average fans wouldn’t know. The reward seems small at first but enlightening after you play the song that gave you a picture.

Game Challenges can be completed while in story mode to rack up points by playing each stage again but continuously. The harder your difficulty, the easier it will be to move up in the rankings and beat your friends.

Quick play is a basic feature that is seen in all rhythm games that allows you to play locally or online with others but playing only Beatles songs. All 45 songs are available out of the box. Downloadable content will be coming for this feature soon but is limited now (as of 09/17/2009).

The sheer look of this game is wonderfully done in a cartoon-sort-of-way. The graphics don’t scream ‘realism’ but keep a fun and exciting feel while fretting away on the guitar or singing that song of childhood memories. The graphics did shine when The Beatles were in Abbey Road Studios just recording song but the developers made it more interesting. Harmonix took that studio time but added some ‘trippy’ music video like scenes displaying a message for the song being played. Anyone who is looking to see realism in this game will be disappointed. The game doesn’t need that graphical realism and still produced a wonderful game.

As I leave you from this review, the one thing you should take from it is The Beatles are terrific band and Harmonix didn’t down-grade or disappoint. Relive the events and songs of The Beatles: Rock Band.

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According to the NPD, the music rhythm game genres total sales year-to-date has declined a staggering 46%, despite still being the 3rd most popular genre of videogame.

It is noted however that prices on nearly all music rhythm games were slashed during the beginning of 2009, contributing to the lower amount of sales in dollars earned. On top of that, proper reiterations, not one-off shoots (such as Guitar Hero Smash Hits and Gutar Hero: Metallica) are being released now (such as The Beatles: Rock Band and Guitar Hero 5), which could also contribute to the low year-to-date sales.

Brad’s Take: There’s also two factors to process, and they are quite obvious:

The barrier to entry for some of these games are still a little high. Guitar Hero 5 has apparently set some standards for letting everyone get involved in the game, but if you still can’t grasp holding a large, guitar controller, it’s still intimidating to some.

The other is the fact that fans of the game already have one set and are unlikely to buy another set of instruments. Thus, the disc portion of the game, not the whole band set, may get the sale, driving unit sales to be up, but not dollar amount.

There’s also the wild-card: Is the music rhythm game genre on the downward trend? We’ll have to see if Lego Rock Band, Band Hero, and DJ Hero perform well to know for sure, but some (including me) seem to think that after the anticipated release of The Beatles: Rock Band, we may see a rather sharp decline in interest and sales on this type of game.

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