The game doesn’t do anything groundbreaking new in terms of gameplay, and it doesn’t try to stretch the bounds of your imagination, or even change the way you look at music games, but it does try to give you a very honest and honorable feel for who the Beatles were and what they meant to music. It plays more like an interactive museum at times as it takes you back in time to relive some of their greatest moments. Some of you might be thinking “I don’t like the Beatles, so I don’t care.” Well, you’re wrong. I don’t care about your background, where you came from, or if you’re deaf — you like the Beatles.

If you’ve played a Guitar Hero or Rock Band game before then you know how this works; the only new development is that you can use up to three mics at once, so you and two shitfaced Japanese business men can belt out horribly off-key three-part harmonies together (suck on that, karaoke bar!) In fact, trying to actually pull off those harmonies is by far the hardest part of this game; other than that, I wouldn’t say the overall difficulty is terribly high, which is good, ’cause if you’re old enough to remember when these songs came out, you’re probably also old enough that you’ll suck at the game.

The Beatles: Rock Band starts with the Beatles touring, taking you from playing at the Cavern in ‘63 to the Ed Sullivan show to Shea Stadium and finally ending with Budokan. During this period, the game acts very similar to other rock band games, as you witness the band playing in the background and fans screaming their heads off (especially with realism turned on).

But when the Beatles bunk up in Abbey Road, that’s when the game really hits its stride. The songs begin with the fab four gathered around in the studio, but that all changes as each song progresses. You’re treated to some of the most amazing, creative and beautiful visuals I’ve seen to go with the unforgettable music, each song with its own custom and painstakingly well-crafted background dreamscape to accompany it. Seriously, these alone had me staying up to the early hours just to see what the next song had in store.

Playing through the amazing songs conjures up old memories and enough nostalgia to fill the block, it also helps to wash away whatever foul taste was still left behind from that awful Across the Universe movie. Whether you’re new to the music or a loyal fan, you will be impressed with the careful consideration and respect Harmonix and company used to create this game.

There are a few downsides. The Beatles: Rock Band is a standalone game, meaning while Rock Band and its sequel allow you to combine its songs, The Beatles: Rock Band does not. I understand this — it would be odd to see someone as talented as Sir Paul playing one of the horrible Coheed and Cambria songs; hell, I’m not talented and even I was questioning what the hell that girl was crying about — but it still would have been amazing to bring the songs back into Rock Band 2. I also secretly wish I they had the mythical keyboard guitar so I could rock the hell out of the amazing piano solo in “Revolution.” All in all, however, I love the game and feel that Harmonix should be commended for a job well done.

Stuck Genie (Warner Bros., 2009)
purchase this iPod app (iTunes)

There’s a seemingly limitless number of them, but the rules for most iPod game apps are essentially the same: they have to be affordable enough to trigger a regret-free impulse buy, they need to be colorful enough to grab our attention, and they have to be simple enough to get the hang of in a few minutes (or less). Warner Bros.’ latest entry into the app arena, the intriguingly titled Stuck Genie, goes three for three; it sells for $1.99, boasts the sort of bright, cartoony graphics that iPod game developers (and consumers) seem to love, and its mechanics are simple enough for anyone with one finger and two minutes to master.

The premise is simple too, pitting the player against the mischevious Puzzle Genie, who has challenged you to free his captives by pushing a ball through a series of mazes via click and drag. In each maze, you need to collect a handful of other balls, which is accomplished by simply bumping up against them. Get them all before your time runs out, and you’ve completed the level. Repeat as necessary.

If this sounds like a premise in need of a twist, don’t worry — Stuck Genie gives you one, in the form of a series of mazes that require you to pick up the balls in a certain order, then rotate the shapes you create in order to get around corners and through passages. The developers did a fine job of ramping up the difficulty at odd intervals, too, allowing the game to lull you into a pattern of gameplay before delivering an unexpected jolt that inevitably produces colorful bursts of profanity. I picked it up quickly, and so did my 10-year-old nephew; like any good iPod game, it’s great for short bursts of concentration when you’re stuck without anything else to do, difficult to put down and easy to resume. (Word of warning, though — simply hitting the home button on your iPod and leaving the game won’t save it; you need to exit and save manually if you want to retain your progress.)

For fans of colorful puzzle games with deceptively simple mechanics, Stuck Genie delivers 73 increasingly infuriating levels of action for under two bucks. What else do you want?

Dynasty Warriors: StrikeForce (2009, Koei)
purchase from Amazon

I was going to write a real review for this game, but here’s the deal: it’s too fucking hard. Not writing about it, mind you, but playing the damn thing.

Dynasty Warriors: StrikeForce has much stronger RPG elements than the previous DW titles, because this one puts you in the shoes of just one warrior. (I personally chose Zhou Yu because I find it hilarious that he’s gone from scholar to marching band leader, with his raven black hair and swirling baton like a bo staff of pain.) You will find yourself in the middle of a small town with just a handful of pedestrians and a few shops. There is a also a message board where you can accept small challenges for (at the time) small gold rewards; complete a few of these, and you’ll finally get to accept a mission or storyline quest. Like all the other Dynasty Warriors, it begins with the Yellow Turban rebellion.

On the gameplay front, it seems like they decided to take a few elements of Monster Hunter, where you can farm resources from your enemies and wooden crates thoughout the level and use them to craft weapons, abilities and even expand the shops. Expanding the shops will allow them an even larger selection of items, skills and weapons to choose from. Fighting in the game is at times very much like your traditional Dynasty Warriors game as well, until you’re introduced to jumping, and the game’s new frustrating platformer additions. It can seriously take awhile to figure out just how the hell you’re supposed to get to certain areas in the game. The jumps they ask you to accomplish can be equally ridiculous, forcing you to combine a dashing charge and double jumps to help you leap beautifully from one ledge to another. Just pray that you don’t hit the invisible barrier, sending you crashing down to ground level and giving yourself a fun chance to try the whole thing over. Sweet!

StrikeForce’s great new addition is the ability to do these missions with up to four players online. That may have been a lot of fun and really helped get past the harder missions, but whenever I went to one of their online towns, no one was around. So much for that idea. Now I’d love to give you a detailed description of just how the game progresses and all of its great features, but you see, after hours and hours of attempting to beat Zhang Jiao as he and his three brothers flew around the room shooting large fireballs everywhere, trying keep me from destroying the tower (which occasionally sends large electric waves that also hit me), I gave up. Even if you manage to take down the tower and then the three brothers, those three assholes come back to life immediately — except this time as Super Saiyan versions. So until I can find someone to help me with it, fuck this game and fuck this review.

Peace.

Koei’s powerhouse, Omega Force, returns with its second installment of the Dynasty Warriors Gundam franchise, adding all new characters, bosses, missions and online capabilities (but no online co-op — lame, right?). They’ve also really touched up the game’s AI to make even the weaker enemies very difficult at times at the harder setting. It almost reminded me of how hard Dynasty Warriors 3 XL was back in the day. There are several modes to play through, multiple stories, and if you’ve never played a Dynasty Warriors game before, a whole crapload of stuff to acquire through grinding.

Grinding? I know what you’re thinking: sounds boring, right? Well it is usually, but in this title they’ve really gone out of their way to help curb that. Sometimes, when trying to build relationships with one of the game’s many pilots you’ll find yourself doing the same map over and over — but to help change it up for you, different enemies will attack you every time, the terrain will change, and so will the objective (even though you’re running the same mission). This may not sound like much, but it really helps.

One of the new things you’ll find from the last installment — aside from the 43 new mobile suits — is the very large boss battles. When these occur, you will be locked into the battle area, and the camera will be locked onto the boss — which helps keep track of them, since they’re faster and usually have large area attack specials. This also gets a little annoying, because if you get low on health you can’t really change the camera angle to help locate some. The AI gets a little weak here too; one boss has several small limbs that you must attack before you can take a whack at the main body. The problem is your team members don’t seem to understand this, and also don’t even bother trying to evade the enemy’s attacks. So you can find yourself racing against time trying to defeat the boss before he defeats your friends.

That aside, there was only one other thing that annoyed me with the game, and it’s the same thing that irritated me with the last one: they only have a handful of sound bits for each character. I like Heero Yui as much as the next guy, but I don’t want to hear him say “Buzz off” every two seconds. I understand disc space limitations, but you could at least make the voice acting a bit more varied.

Dynasty Warriors: Gundam — hell Dynasty Warriors titles in general — have been poorly received, mainly by the critical community, due to lack of overhaul every title. These are typically the same critics that will give Madden or other sports titles that update the rosters and add small additions decently high ratings year after year (even the infamous Madden 06 ). Perhaps you should take note of this, Omega Force, and add footprints in the snow and allow the mobile suits to get dirty, as this seems to be the only criteria for acceptable change for them. Overall, this is a good addition to the series, and something most fans of either franchise should enjoy.

Ah, The Godfather II. I know what you’re thinking: EA plus movie franchise equals suckfest. No brainer, right? Not so fast — this isn’t as bad as you might think. The game takes a few liberties with the movie, throwing you into the mix as Dominic Corleone, underboss of Aldo Trapani (main character from The Godfather). The game starts you off in Cuba, where the mafia is trying to get its foot in the door when everything goes to hell. After you sit through a few cut scenes — ta da, you’re a don.

The Godfather II takes what its predecessor did and builds on it, adding features like recruiting your own family and a new feature called Don’s View. This time around, you can take over businesses from other families — or just bomb them. If you decide to take something over, you’ll have to defend it, which means hiring guards to watch over the place while you’re off doing your don thing.

On occasion, the other families will decide they’d prefer it if they owned one of your territories, and attempt to take it back, forcing you to defend it by either driving over there and performing one of the many fatalities on them personally or by sending one of your men to oversee the matter. This feature gives you a nice little break from the story from time to time, and if you hold a monopoly on something it provides you with a bonus. You can even choose to assassinate one of the other family’s members by killing him in a certain (sometimes elaborate) way. Once a family loses all its territory, it leaves their headquarters open to attack.

The graphics haven’t improved all that much, and look kind of garbage the farther away you are. As you get closer the graphics sharpen and show much more detail. The overall city environment does little to help draw you into the game as the buildings, streets and overall look of the look of the game is almost generically simple. The music, sound effects and banter from your men are all pretty decent, though. The game also has a very solid online mode, which gives the added bonus of strengthening your men.

You certainly get a sense that some people truly loved working on this game — and certain people felt they had better things to do. Sometimes the small things in the game can really make a big impact; for instance, when you skid out during a police chase and hit a fire hydrant, it would be really cool if it didn’t just roll over, turn grey and vanish, leaving no evidence that it ever existed. The Godfather II also suffers from its fair share of bad glitches. One that stands out the most: cars you’re driving disappear, sending your men magically back to your compound. That glitch is just fantastic when you’re surrounded by policemen with shotguns.

Overall, this is a reasonably entertaining game despite its glitches, and its solid online mode allows for some good replayability. If you have 60 dollars to spend and you love the Godfather franchise this won’t let you down. If you’re not a Godfather fan, you might like Saint’s Row 2 or GTA IV more.

Suikoden Tierkreis (Nintendo DS, Konami, 2009)
purchase this game (Amazon)

I’ve been playing the Suikoden series since it first came stateside in 1996. Each story typically would touch on a cataclysmic event in the planet’s history, which involved one of the True Runes. The stories, while on different timelines, would usually have some sort of recurring cast which would help tie each story together. I was excited and intrigued when I saw that the DS was getting its own installment of the series in Suikoden Tierkreis.

However, the addition of touch-screen mechanics wasn’t the only change — this title is a spin-off from the rest of the Suikoden series. One of the series traits they removed was that every character had his/her own personal weapon, instead deciding to go with the more traditional “buy them at a shop” method. With all the minor changes, this game still remains a solid RPG title for the DS.

The story starts in your typical small village (named Citro, in this case). The protagonist is a member of Citro’s defense force, and the game follows the ongoing global conflicts with the Kingdom of the Order. You eventually come to head up your own company and find and recruit up to 108 characters to help your cause, which helps extend play value. Sadly, previously recurring characters like Vikki are absent from this list.

The combat system plays similar to its predecessors, allowing four team members in each battle plane. Magic is gifted (called “mark of the stars”) via special books, as opposed to runes, and is used with an MP pool. Each of the characters is given different magic from the books, giving them each their own unique feel and use. Cooperative attacks have made their way back into the game as well, to help deepen the strategy a bit.

The title’s most impressive note is its fantastic background designs, which are both creative and filled with a brilliant attention to detail. The musical score is masterfully blended into the environment, truly immersing you into the Suikoden universe even through the tiny DS screen. The voice acting, however, is poor, thanks to the protagonist’s machine-gun delivery of his lines — and the character’s inability to even pick up on the slightest of clues is sometimes mind-blowing.

The character designs are decent enough, even if they are a bit heavy on the anime side — you can see a character’s personality spelled out for you in their look. The characters do hit a large spectrum of personalities, from the dull to the ridiculous, which should help attract the wide age range of DS users into the franchise. The storyline remains deep, and has its fair share of twists and side stories along the 40+ hours of gameplay it provides. All in all, this game remains one of the console’s best RPG titles to date, and is sure to deliver without regret.

I have now spent the better part of a month playing PopStar Guitar and getting feedback from my kids and their cousins, who own a copy of Guitar Hero. Right from the start, you’ll notice that this Wii game doesn’t have a guitar controller like Guitar Hero or Rock Band. Instead, the game comes with two AirG peripherals that snap over the Wii controller. With the nunchuk attached to the controller, the controller provides the colored keypads used for “fingering” the guitar notes, while the nunchuk lever acts as the strumming mechanism. This loose, free-form feel is supposed to simulate an “air guitar” experience as you play the game.

It takes some getting used to, and if you’ve ever played the other two rock ‘n’ roll games, it takes a lot of getting used to. For me, playing the guitar requires a rigid positioning of my arms as I play the chords and strum the strings. In Guitar Hero and Rock Band, having your arms locked in place helps with the concentration needed to play the right notes; with the AirG peripherals of PopStar Guitar, your arms are loose to move all over the place. Not only is it easy to get distracted, but it doesn’t feel like you’re playing a guitar, which I thought was the whole point. Obviously, players of Guitar Hero and Rock Band know they aren’t real musicians when they’re standing in front of their TV, but part of the fun is imagining you’re Slash, Tony Iommi, or Pete Townshend as you shred the multicolor notes streaming in front of you.

PopStar Guitar includes the number of notes required to play. With only four colored buttons instead of the five the other games use, PopStar Guitar is easier for younger players to learn and gradually master. In fact, it seems geared toward younger players, especially with the song selections. My kids (7 and 9) and their cousins (5, 8, and 10) were thrilled to see some of their favorite acts’ songs available to play along with. But they quickly grew bored and set the game aside in favor of the classic-rock staples found on Rock Band. After about a week they forgot about PopStar Guitar entirely and wanted to go back to the Ramones and Mountain, leaving the Jonas Brothers behind. Eventually I found myself the only one even attempting the game, and when carpal tunnel syndrome in my strumming hand acted up because I overused my thumb on the nunchuk, I gave up.

The graphics and the features of PopStar Guitar come off as rather cheap, especially after you’ve experienced what Rock Band or Guitar Hero has to offer. If you do happen to play PopStar Guitar, you’ll probably go right for the songs and disregard everything else altogether. I feel like it has a huge hurdle to overcome if it wants to remain a player in the rock-game universe. Unless PSG’s makers change their mind and adapt to using the other games’ controllers, I can’t imagine it’ll be around for long.