What a failure of a game. After a game as superb as The Beatles: Rock Band, everyone reacted pretty much the same way when GD:RB was announced: "Whuh?!". Of all the amazing bands that were willing to work with Harmonix and that would've made for fantastic games, Harmonix (or possibly MTV or one of the higher-ups) ended up choosing the one band that inspires absolutely nobody. Most people just think Green Day is "Ok.", and certainly nobody, save for a bunch of young tweens, sees them as a particularly important part of musical history or even music as a whole. They're just there. And although I wanted to believe that Harmonix would find a way to make this game enjoyable, it turns out that my optimism was unfounded.

Whereas TB:RB had amazing dreamscapes, a historical romp through the Beatles' career, unlockable photos and videos that were really interesting to watch, and a redesigned interface, GD:RB has only three venues, and feels exactly like Rock Band 2 save for the custom band avatars. Career mode is a joke, with the player able to choose which venue to play, and then having to complete one tier (5 songs) to unlock another one in that venue. As expected, the songs get ridiculously repetitive to play, as the band has basically been making the same music since the 90s, and even then these songs are mostly repeating chords and similar vocal work.

There is one saving grace: the menu design. Menus and gorgeous, with lots of graffiti style artwork and TB:RB-style animations. But when the game is this dull, that's not much of a compliment. Rock Band 3 seems like it will be unbelievable, and the addition of a Keyboard certainly opens up the horizons for future Band-centric Rock Band titles, but as far as I'm concerned this whole game was just a mistake that I'd rather forget about.

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