"The real DJ Hero was inside you all along."

Rhythm games have really been saturating the market lately. It seems like every other month, there’s a new Guitar Hero or Rock Band game coming out. When DJ Hero was first announced (along with two other DJ games from competing companies), my initial reaction was a sigh of dismay at the thought of more peripherals strewn about homes. As more information trickled down, though, my interest was piqued. In a very short amount of time, my feelings of the then upcoming game turned from apathy to excitement.

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With all the rhythm games out there now that use those little plastic guitars, it is getting easier to become disenchanted with the whole experience. Activision and Red Octane in particular have been milking the Guitar Hero franchise ever since they ripped it from the bosom of its original programmers at Harmonix.

So when Harmonix (you know, the guys that took Konami’s original “Guitar Freaks” concept and improved on it by leaps and bounds?) themselves announced that they would be releasing not one, but two off-shoots of their popular Rock Band franchise, the eyebrow began to raise. “Lego Rock Band” is still a few months off and will have to prove itself when it does finally release. But in the here and now, we have “The Beatles: Rock Band”, a game that, unlike Guitar Hero: Has-been Metal Band, features the songs and performances of only one band.

Many have asked the question; Are the songs of a single band, even one as influential and well known as The Beatles, enough to sustain a quality gaming experience?

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"Not a representation of the idea"

I played a decent amount of Action RPGs in 2008. Among these were games such as “The World Ends With You”, “Final Fantasy VII: Crisis Core”, and “Final Fantasy: Crystal Chronicles: Ring of Fates” (subtitle within a subtitle? Yeah… they went there!) to name a few. At some point during the year, playing these games got my creative juices flowing. My brain gave birth to an idea and I felt compelled to write it down. There it sat, alone inside a notebook. But today, faithful readers, I will share with you my dream.

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