I Want To Hold Your Controller

Not to be outdone, if perhaps more Baby Boomer oriented, The Beatles: Rock Band will be providing the songs from the Fab 4 digitally remastered, as you play along through views consisting of the evolution of the Beatles through time. Stylized animations of the guys is extremely well done, plus there are all the landmarks and touchstones - from their first appearances in Liverpool through those in New York and on to the psychedelic years.

Frankly, any fan would enjoy just watching and listening. And with downloadable music coming later on it just keeps on giving - whether you’re on bass or guitar or drums, the visuals will blow your mind. So okay you say, that’s great but what about the hardware? Well, yes of course there is hardware - ti’s the instruments. Rather than glomming some buttons, there’s the option to use replicas modeled off of the guitars, bass and drum set played by John, Paul, George and Ringo. That’s gotta make it wild.

But not as wild as my trying to recreate my skateboarding days (in case you’re wondering, I quit quick after two skinned knees and a hurt elbow). So maybe you’d think that playing at Tony Hawks would be cool - you’d be wrong. Using a controller to do tricks and stuff is so lame that I never bothered with a single game.

But now that there’s the RIDE (Tony Hawks RIDE to be exact) I might revise that opinion. Because it’s not just some piece of plastic that you shake your hips at; it’s designed to respond to the actual kinds of moves that a real-life board can make. So yes you’d better plan on having enough space to move around on this thing, as it uses motion sensing to interact between what you’re doing on it and the on-screen action. No wires for connecting to the console - natch.