If you don’t follow LucasArts news, you might not have noticed that they released a new game today. There’s no mention of it on their website, after all. On top of that, with the exception of the press release, all mention of the game has been through a development blog that, if you stumbled across it, you’d probably think was a fansite rather than an official outlet.

Even so, I don’t think this game would have benefited from the usual hype machine that is a traditional game release. It feels very much like a small development team at LucasArts said ‘Hey, we’d like to make this game. We think we can do it with a small team and without much cost, and we’re pretty sure it’ll sell well enough to at least cover its own costs. If it doesn’t make us millions, no harm, right?’ I’m guessing that’s not far from the truth. It’s very much like the sort of indie game you’d pick up on Steam, except that it’s actually by a big company.

Lucidity is a fairly simple game that picks a mechanic and goes with it. It’s not trying to do anything super complicated or mind blowing, but it’s great for what it is. And although it’s simple, the gameplay is something new, or at least new to me. It’s a little bit like Mario meets Tetris. Sofi, not unlike a real small child, moves forward at her own pace through levels without heed for danger or obstacles ahead. It’s up to you, the player, to grab pieces from a randomly generated queue and place them in her path to guide her away from harm and towards coins fireflies. And as I said, it does stick with that mechanic, so that’s what you’ll be doing the whole game.

It sounds monotonous, but the sheer style of the game keeps it more than interesting. The art direction is unbelievably stylish, sticking to a style that really does evoke the illustrations from a childrens’ picture book. The music leans towards the haunting with plenty of piano and strings. The main theme, Byssan Lull, which was posted to the development blog a couple of weeks ago, is really a great example.

I find myself getting really irritated by reviews that say things like ‘It could have been so much more’ or ‘I wish it was more epic.’ Not every game needs to be an epic. Sometimes a simple game is a good thing. And at the end of the day, remember that it’s a $10 game. LucasArts hasn’t been pretending this is a 50 hour epic, and gamers shouldn’t expect it to be. That’s the fast lane to disappointment.

…do do do do do.

So I spent most of Friday and Saturday weekend playing all the way through the story mode of The Beatles: Rock Band and I have to say it’s pretty good stuff. Now I’m already pretty solidly on board with the Rock Band franchise, so it’s not like there was going to be a lot to dislike, gameplay-wise, but still.

The obvious first bullet point is the music. If you want me to explain why the Beatles are good, odds are you won’t be enjoying this game. That said, the game did remind me that I really don’t care all that much for their first album (with the exception of the always fun Twist and Shout).  The game’s a pretty decent Best-of album, though, and it looks like the gaps that do exist will be filled in via DLC.

One thing that I did notice is that the difficulty scale you’re given for each game is definitely adjusted relative to the regular game. Most of the Beatles catalog isn’t technically complex, so a 5/5 difficulty rating on a song doesn’t really map to, say, Tenacious D’s Master Exploder from Rock Band. I found myself getting 100% on the first play-through on a decent number of songs at the Medium setting (usually my preferred balance between ‘fun’ and ‘frustrating’ in these games). I like the music enough though that it really doesn’t bother me at all. Plus, my fingers don’t get tired as quickly.

The first half or so of the story mode does the band-focused music game thing, following them from venue to venue through their career. You get a lot of the cutaways to waaaay overenthusiastic girls screaming during the songs, as you’d expect. But when it hits the point where the band stopped touring, they went a different (and pretty great) direction. The next three groups of songs are just titled “Abbey Road ’66-’67″ and so on. Each song starts in the studio, but as the music builds the studio fades away into song-specific montages (Harmonix has been trying to call them ‘dreamscapes’ but I’m having none of that). And yeah, that includes the guy in the walrus costume for “I am the Walrus”. They’re all nicely done and it’s pretty obvious how much work Harmonix put into making them as special as possible. My one complaint is that if you’re actually playing, it’s sometimes hard to focus on the note tracks when there’s crazy fantastical stuff going on in the background. As an aside, by the way, the cover art for “Magical Mystery Tour” used to creep me out a bit as a kid, and it turns out that it still sort of does to this day.

Anyway, long story short, it’s an enjoyable game. If you’re not into Rock Band, you probably still won’t be into The Beatles: Rock Band.  Vocal Harmonies aside, it’s not really doing anything new, but who cares? It’s the Beatles and it’s fun.