For my birthday, I got myself Rock Band: Beatles.  I’m a huge fan of the Rock Band series, and I really enjoy the Beatles, so this was a pretty obvious purchase.  It definitely does live up to its promise — the production values are great, there are tons of photo and video extras, the venues and animations are well-done, and the songs are awesome.  As an extra bonus, the songs are also pretty clean, and although many have adult themes, the language is inoffensive.  Yes, we adults know what “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds” is really about, but my 8-year old doesn’t, and that means I can have him play any song he wants in the game with confidence, something that I couldn’t quite do with the other Rock Band titles.

But as fun as it was, it wasn’t until yesterday that we started to tap the full potential of the game.  In previous Rock Band titles, you have a lead guitarist, a bassist, a drummer, and a singer.  In Rock Band: Beatles you have the same 3 instruments, but you can have up to 3 singers, depending on how many harmony parts are in a particular song.

Of course, you need multiple microphones to support this, so I quickly ordered a Logitech USB mike from Newegg, which arrived yesterday.  Although we didn’t have a whole lot of time, Robin and I hooked it up and played two songs with the double mikes, and had a blast!  It sounds great (thanks to Robin’s singing skills), and most importantly, it’s fun!  Thomas was very excited about trying it too, so we’ll have to get him into the mix as well.

The way the singing works is that there is always a main melody line, and one person is encouraged to sing that.  The other singer can sing either harmony line (if available).  The best singer in a given phrase is the one that the multiplier is based off, but if the other singer(s) do well also, they can give a massive point multiplier.  Like the earlier Rock Band games, you are graded on how well you do in every phrase.  Stink it up and you’ll get a “Messy” or “OK”.  Stick on pitch well, and you’ll get “Great” or “Fab!”  If multiple players do very well, you can get “Double Fab” or “Triple Fab”, depending on how many harmony lines there are in the phrase.  These doubles and triples really boost the score.

So having multiple singers never hurts; it always is an improvement over what a single singer could achieve in the way of points.  And, it’s just way more fun to sing harmony.  I’ve got my eye out for a third mike so we can get Thomas in on it as well.

Tags: Rock Band, Xbox 360