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" Another year, another dueling release from the Rock Band and Guitar Hero franchises. It has become an annual affair for these two rivaling rhythm games to flood store shelves over the holidays with their plastic-instrument-driven rock simulators.  And since Guitar Hero officially jumped onto the full-band bandwagon last year with Guitar Hero: World Tour, the games have been basically indistinguishable, save for the song choices. That all changes now. With their latest entries, the two games find themselves striking out on drastically different paths.  The Beatles: Rock Band is grown-up, highly polished, and almost worshipful in its treatment of the source material--if you fail out of a song, the crowd doesn&amp;#039;t even boo the band. Guitar Hero 5 is loose, eclectic and oh-so-irreverent: Icons Johnny Cash and Kurt Cobain are unlockable characters in the game who can be digitally resurrected and puppeteered into singing Bon Jovi songs. These attitudes carry on through the two games. The Beatles: Rock Band is by far the most polished game the music-miming genre has ever seen--with all the slickness of a track that&amp;#039;s been remastered a dozen times over the past 40 years.  In some ways, this makes it the superior game. The in-game animations are particularly gorgeous. Music games&amp;#039; background videos of on-stage bands often feel obligatory and slapped together. Not here. The CG movies are polished and realistic, and the Beatles&amp;#039; late-era songs (the ones made after they gave up touring and became a studio band) are particularly awesome, with on-stage footage replaced by psychedelic dreamscapes custom-made to match each song. We&amp;#039;ve got Ringo leading a procession of band mates through the bottom of the ocean (&amp;quot;Octopus&amp;#039;s Garden&amp;quot;), and Lennon rocking out through a blitz of red Soviet imagery (&amp;quot;Back in the USSR&amp;quot;). For some players, these videos alone will be worth the game&amp;#039;s steep price of admission. But The Beatles: Rock Band has a fatal flaw--the limited range of sound. I recently had a group of friends over to help me test out the game, full-band-style. Less than an hour into the game, they were begging to play Guitar Hero 5. The problem, as one friend put it: &amp;quot;The Beatles just don&amp;#039;t rock.&amp;quot; And, with a few exceptions, (like &amp;quot;Helter Skelter&amp;quot; and &amp;quot;Taxman&amp;quot;) he&amp;#039;s right. Beatles songs are unlikely to motivate karaoke mimers into David Lee Roth-like jump kicks and theatrics. They are great songs, melodic songs, and songs that have accumulated decades of rip-offs and memories. But they are unlikely to motivate anybody to jump on the couch.  So which game is the better pick? That all comes down to an age-old question: Are you a Beatles person, or a Rolling Stones person? Do you prefer John and Paul&amp;#039;s harmonies, or Mick&amp;#039;s feedback-filled strut? If you&amp;#039;re a Beatlemaniac, the pick is obvious. But if you like your music games with a bit more edge, Guitar Hero 5 may be the better pick. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.popularmechanics.com/culture/gaming/a4442/4330154/>