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Impressions: Abbey Road DLC
I excitedly downloaded the Abbey Road DLC, and after a couple playthroughs, I'm both delighted and disappointed. Straight off, it's hard to argue that the DLC is worth the money strictly in a monetary sense simply because so many of the songs are already on the Beatles: Rock Band disc. I wish MTV Games would have charged more like $9.99 instead of $16.99 given that I already paid for "Come Together", "Something", "Octopus's Garden", "I Want You", "Here Comes the Sun", and "The End".
That being said, I was willing to pay for the privilege of being able to play Abbey Road's long medley on the second side of the record in one uninterrupted session (nine songs total), complete with a single score and star ranking for the entire track. Needless to say, the long medley is a great moment in rock history, and getting to experience it this way is something you just can't get on the game disc itself. Apart from offering the long medley, I was glad to see that developer Harmonix also gave players the option to play it in smaller chunks by combining some songs like "Sun King" and "Mean Mr. Mustard", for instance.
There are a few new visual treatments for some of the songs, such as "Maxwell's Silver Hammer" (the song that broke up the Beatles!), but there's not a lot new on the visual front. I wish they would have spent more time on some of the other tracks visually, and the conspiracy theorist in me wonders if McCartney insisted on "Maxwell's Silver Hammer" because he seems to be the only person in the world who thinks that song is a hit.
While some of the tracks are more fun to play than others, the note charting is as good as on the disc game, and I was surprised to find a couple of challenges where I least expected them. The drum charts for relatively mellow songs like "Sun King" and "Polythene Pam" tested my rhythm , which I liked, and they also make playing those tracks more interesting. As mediocre as I am at drums, however, at least I got a 100 percent on "Her Majesty"!
As a Beatles fan, I can't turn down the chance to play almost the entire second side of the record in one glorious, uninterrupted sequence, but I have to admit that the value-for-cost equation for this DLC probably won't be there for most people. It also would have been a great idea if the stars you earn for the songs tied back into the unlockable accomplishments on the disc. I'm not going to hold my breath for that feature, however, in future album DLC.
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