Pagoda of Gaming

I’ll admit it, as soon as the press blitz began, I was rather afraid, but I suppose I can think somewhat rationally now. I’m talking ofcourse about our favourite plastic space taker-uppers Guitar Hero, Rock Band and the newly announced Rock Revolution from Konami. Yes, the post you’ve all been waiting for, it’s time to pick a side, and I’m pissed.

So let’s get the obvious loser out of the way. Rock Revolution, from initial impressions, as 1up Yours put it, Konami’s late to the party that they started. Huge fucking 7/8 pad drum kit, no vocals, songs all cover-versions. GTFO. To be honest, for me it’s the culmination of current Japanese design. Fuck innovation, let’s just ramp up the difficulty level. I’m sorry, but it’s a something I realised lately, that personally, I’ve been avoiding typically ‘japanese’ games, because I’m simply bored with the same old shit over and over. And don’t get angry fanboys, I’m sure some of you are about to cite Okami, and I’ll agree with you there. And I’m sure some of you are going to bring the Wii to the table. Let’s not go too far, I’m sure you all know how I feel about that gamecube with a SIXAXIS.

Getting back on topic, next to the block is Guitar Hero 4, which seems to be doing it right. In other words, they’re copying Rock Band, but shoving a music creation thingy in with the package and adding cymbals to the drum kit. Sure whatever, apparantly, it might be more expensive than Rock Band. This immediatly brings to my mind the question: “Why did Harmonix Sell Guitar Hero?” They actually made a competitor for themselves with their old established name. That’s a Question that a simple google search can’t answer.

Then there’s Rock Band. I’m sure that this whole conundrum has already been answered for most Americans - Aslong as Harmonix can supply a steady stream of songs, who cares about an Activision knock off? But here, where Rock Band was released under a week ago, and isn’t exactly flying off the shelves? It sure as fuck matters, especially when news reached us that a shinier, well established version of Rock Band would be hitting shelves at christmas time, I’m sure gamer’s Europe-wide paused and pondered.

Me, I’m still backing Rock Band. I’m hoping and praying for a Price drop, atleast mid-summer. And I see the current Library of DLC very alluring, considering it’s chance to double in size before the release of Guitar Hero 4. But there certainly is a problem when Harmonix’s target European audiance, namely students both pre and post tutelage, can’t even afford a bunch of chinese plastic instruments. There’s only one entity at fault for all this, and that’s Harmonix. They set the price, they sold the franchise, they created the Activision beast. They forced us to split our wallet between Heroes and Bands, and what can they do to make up for it? Simply, a price drop, one that may never come.

Why is game itself £50? Considering you need Peripheral support in something Harmonix already sold you, shouldn’t it be something like £30? Regardless, I’m searching for a solution to the Rock Band Problem, I could pick up the Game by itself and play with my old 360 Xplorer, that’s £50. Add another £20 for a USB microphone, that’s £70. Add another £70 for Drums, bringing it to a total of £140, which equals the current online price for the complete Rock Band Package. So really, the choice is, buy seperately or buy it all and get a shiny new guitar.

Maybe I’m just being bitter because I’m poor. Maybe as soon as my first summer-harbour-job paycheck arrives, I’ll feel less annoyed and more incentivised. Only time will tell.

As a final thought on the matter, my heart goes out to the PS3 crowd, who don’t actually get to make this choice. Remember why they call it the Playstation 3 kids? BECAUSE IT HAS NO GAMES.

Now onto my other obsession of late, the National Qualifier. I dissapointingly landed 16th out of 22 players. And I could make excuses, valid ones, but I’m sure you’d scoff at me. It was certainly a learning experience. Next time, atleast two month’s preparation will be required, and I must learn not to try and recycle old decks to save money. Therefore I’m making it my duty to officially return to the Magic The Gathering scene, to pween some much needed asses.

These happenings spurred me on to watch the tail end of Pro-Tour Hollywood, which I conveniently caught as soon as I got back to Fundee. It was a rather interesting tournament, surprisingly only a single Faerie deck got into the top 8, and didn’t win! I say this happily after a sunday torrent of bitterblossoms aimed directly at my head. Check out the full tourney details HERE. It also spurred me onto buy some cards for use over the summer months and beyond. £30 netted me a complete Merfolk Deck, modeled on PT-Hollywood’s 2nd top deck, and a bunch of cards to fix up the Mono Black Control deck I played in the Qualifier and make a start on my upcoming Mono Black Multiplayer deck. And I got it all from mtgmintcard.com /productplacement

Well that’s that. The cards should arrive by the weekend so I’ll maybe do a MTG centric post this weekend, mostly on deckbuilding shite. I’m off to the super-final screening of Doomsday in Fundee, and to dread over whatever shite I’ve got/going to get myself into over the next couple of days. Seem’s like my hayfever’s back too, I guess that means it’s finally summer. shit.

Here’s some YTMND LOLZ for you, catch you later.

And if I had the choice

*Hours Later*

So, If I had written this up last night I would’ve been pissed, I still am, but less. I got the obligatory “go get ready for your damn holiday*” from the ‘rents. It was not a happy phone call, to say the least. Now I’ve got to figure out where the fuck I go to get a haircut in dundee, ontop of all the other shit I have to do. To get to the point, I already know how much of a clusterfuck this holiday’s going to be. And how freaking bored I’ll be. (*Air Quotes timez one billion zomg this is my final form)

France? Seriously? Of all the non-speaking european countries in the world, you take me to France? The country where I already hate the language, hate the history, and hold greatest military achievement as a goddamn midget. Seriously? SRSLY?

Then again this could all be some sort of elaborate joke, they’ve certainly pulled it off before. But I don’t expect they would these days. It’ll be me one-on-one with france for a whole week, and all I’ll have is my PSP. Luckily, the place we’re staying at is said to have wireless internet access, which might keep me sane. Then again, I’ll believe it when I see it, and it is browsing with a PSP, which isn’t the best experience.

My second point of ranting, though this is a minor one. How fucking hard is it to make working beta keys for a 360 game? I would’ve had some fun this week if I had the battefield bad company beta on my side. I just learned of it today, and if they get round to sending me a WORKING beta key, my fileplanet account will have payed for itself a little bit more.

I’m happy to see a new Sonic game on the horizon. I think. Well, from the leaked footage, I can say that it looks better than anything they’ve tried since the dreamcast. A return to the “press right and occasionally press A” type of sonic is what the franchise has been needing. In the same way that Square needs to re-release FFVII on the PS3. And in the same way that Duke Nukem Forever needs to come out. You get the idea, it’s like a horseman of the gamepocalypse.

Keeping the ‘copter blades spinning, we have the bi-weekly Rock Band rant. YOU ANNOUNCE A FUCKING SHITTY WII* VERSION FOR FUCKING JUNE IN THE MOTHERFUCKING COLONIES! HOW ABOUT A CUP OF FUCKING CARE FOR EUROPE, HARMONIX! HAVE SOME FUCKING BUSINESS SENSE AND RELEASE HERE. HELL, HOW ABOUT A DAMN PROPER EXPLANATION? (*by “SHITTY WII” I mean that the Wii version of Rock Band will be shitty, and that the wii itself is shitty, two birds one stone, cocks).

On the same subject, I did something particularily emo last night, though it was not the intent, most likely through a Relentless caffine-haze. I had a fleeting thought that evolved into something greater. I wondered what it would be like to play Electric Six songs on Rock Band. I know, but one can dream, can’t they? I ended up compiling a list of the ‘best for Rock Band’ for the Six and the Prophets (that’s the emo part there). And believe me, I tried a Linkin Park list, that’s fucking hard mode. Take a look if you like, I’m sure that your internet-savvy self could compile a mp3 playlist and you might understand why I picked these particular songs. If it were ever to be real, and I know that I’m the cancer killing dlc, when I say this, but I’d pay £10 for that. (consider asterix’d songs to be the best of the best, in a track pack).

Gay Bar*
Synthesizer
Devil Nights
Vibrator
Night Vision
Slices of You
Germans In Mexico*
I Don’t Like You
Kukuxumushu*
Dirty Looks

Shinobi Vs Dragon Ninja*
Kobrakai
Awkward
We Still Kill The Old Way
Burn Burn*
Goodbye Tonight
We Are Godzilla, You are Japan
The New Transmission
Can’t Catch Tomorrow*
Heaven For The Weather, Hell For The Company

Today’s video is something Wingums sent to me, I lol’d so hard I headrush’d.

I see that them halo 3 maps are finally free. I’ll go have a big cup of CARE. Srsly, CoD4’s where it’s at now. *sigh* I’m still pissed. I’m gonna go hurt something. That might make me feel better.

nights with the devil driving around the CITAYYY!

Before we get going, if anyone want to buy me an expensive, WoW-related, peice of gaming history and potential front-page-news murder weapon, THIS is what you can get me. Then, you know, I can lead an army of scourge and maybe make the world a more interesting place in the process.

I’ve never been one to play RTS’s and be into them, infact I’ve made it part of my new-years resolution to do so. My earliest forays into the genre were way back when I had to live with a 56k connection and the ‘family’ PC could barely run Age of Mythology, and before I saw the light that was Counter-Strike: Source. In this newer age, where the PC appears to me to be doing what it’s good at because it has to, in droves, if it is to remain a viable format. I approach each PC FPS or RTS that isn’t Valve-crafted with a feeling that I might just be wasting my money.

I saw the light last night, which may have been about 4am, when I played a single round of control point, battlefield style, and it suddenly clicked that I really liked it. I’ve had the feeling before, when I spend alot of time in the World In Conflict beta, I was just too poor and enfatuated with my new HDTV to afford delving further. Company of Heroes is the shit, and for all the time I’ve owned it, I’ve been doing it wrong. I’m happy that I finally get the chance to experience it properly.

Then I did something rather stupid. I love Steam, alot, some might say too much. Hell I’d buy every PC game I ever wanted on steam if they supported such a catalogue. So I saw CoH and it’s expansion pack for the UK price of £5 less than the expansion pack itself and I bought it. Long story short, Instant gratification isn’t so instant when you’ve got a shitty internet connection. Calculations lead me to a 10am tomorrow ETA of CoH itself. Worst part being I have the retail version in my hand and I can’t reainstall for fear of fucking up the steam version. Instead I spent alot of time over HERE, diving deeper into the strategy of the game, something that is unusually deep.

I spent more money today too, which I really shouldn’t but what the hell. I called the shopping trip a ‘Nerdventure’, a word I should use more often. I spent most of last night, whilst staring intently at CoH’s download percentage, ahem…. ‘archiving‘ most of the videos on my PC, using up all my blank DVDs, so I got another 50 in the bag. I also got the Werewolf the Forsaken book from Dundee’s best RPG stockist, something I’ve been after for a while.

Fear not my friends of flesh and bone, I couldn’t get you ‘into’ pen and paper RPG’s if I wanted. To bear my soul for a bit, now where did I put it?, I use these books to play out my own little mind-stories, that keeps me nice and sane. I hold the books in such high regard because it doesn’t force a story upon you, so much as you can with a little bit of self imagination, plop yourself into this fucked up world of Kindred and Uratha and suddenly the world seems alot more interesting. If you find yourself even partially interested in the lore, there’s a short and sweet Wikipedia article over HERE that should straighten things out.

To hit on some very special mid-week news, and what may be the thing that keeps me from selling my DS. Activision have finally unveiled their porta-guitar hero setup, and it’s looking like it’ll work. Check out the details HERE, and see a super-douchey video of the peripheral in action. Though I seem extatic, I remain slightly worried at acouple of details, the sound quality, the need for a guitar pick, only having 20 songs, and that things with the subtitle ‘on tour’ have gravely dissapointed me before, I’m looking at you SSX.

Console RTS’s seem to be the thang these days, in the way that it’s like building a sea-mine then hitting it over and over with a large mallet. Today’s video features the one I think might make it work. Unfortunatly, the video is ‘hosted’ by a bunch of the Frag Dolls, who might not be the best judges of Ubisoft games considering that ubisoft gives them free stuff and writes them large cheques. But if you can look past the broken side of game journalism for a second and enjoy the footage of what appears to be RTS actually working on a console, though there might be some windows movie maker magic involved, I’m sure you’ll be surprised. Just be ready to turn it off when the Frag Dolls beat a retarded, frothing at the mouth, horse to death with their ‘humor’.

In other news, I found THIS, and I chuckled. There really should be more Battlestar webcomics out there. Thanks for staying with the long post. Game boner officially stoked for Company of Heroes, funny, since I’ve owned it for over a year.

With a suitcase full of fire

So Edge did it wrong, totally. Let’s start off with mistake numer one, listing the GOTY on the first fucking page. You bum-love the thing so much, give it a damn drum roll first, dudes, srsly. So here’s how it’s going to go: I’m doing the 2007 Edge awards (from issue 184), except I’m putting the right choises in, right as in my choices, and adding in some minor stabs at Edge as we go along. First thing I did when I got home with the mag was to go through it with a permanant marker and added my own little comments. And we begin with the Alternative Awards, games that missed the gold, silver, or bronzes of the real awards but still deserve a mention, like the stupid awards in your high-school year book like who had the best hair or who was most likely to become a porn director. I should say right now there’s only one Wii game that got an award, and it’s only for it’s box art. I’m not a reviewing press person so I don’t get hardware and games mailed to me by people who want their praise from me, so I didn’t want to have a £200 peice of kit sitting there doing nothing for the next billion years, hence no Wii, hence no Wii games played, hence no awards. These are my awards after all, they don’t come with a golden statue or additional press controversy or pissing off fanboys at a national level. They are about as useful as a list on someone’s retarded bebo page. These are all my opinions based on what I’ve played and observed over the past year. Granted, I’ll forget something. Also, because it is the new year already (so this is a little bit late) I’m going to forego the annoying texty bits and leave you with the pure and simple lists, and an invitation, one that allows you to challenge my decisions, so I can respond and tell you I’m right.

The Alternative Awards

Best Use Of A Beta - Crackdown (360)
Best Use of Annoying Leper/Poor People - Assasin’s Creed (360, PS3)
Most Dissapointing Game - Hellgate London (PC)
Best Use Of Subliminal Messaging in Box art - Super Mario Galaxy (Wii)
Best Movie based on Game Franchise - Hitman The Movie
Easiest 1000 Gamerscore - Avatar The Last Airbender: The Burning Earth (360)
Best Game that the Yanks Got But We Haven’t Yet For Some Fucked Up Reason - Rock Band (360, PS3)
Best Use of an Importer - Pokemon Diamond & Pearl (NDS)
Best MMO Patch Of The Year - EVE Trinity (PC)
Most Use Of Man-Hours - World of Warcraft: The Burning Crusade(PC)
Best XBLA or PSN Game - Settlers Of Catan (XBLA)
Most Secretive Game - Alan Wake (360, PC)
Game That Should’ve Had More Development Time - Mass Effect (360)
Game I Should’ve Played More - Company of Heroes (PC)
 

Read the rest of this entry »

My fingers swell with pain. I never realised how hard I hit the controller until I made that quick video, I guess it does explain alot, like the reason I’m typing this with my right hand, whilst my right rests in a cooling bowl of water. I doubt I’ll be doing little more than watching the last lot of battlestar tonight.

To clarify, that’s not my best playing of Lay Down by Preistess, it does infact suck ass. I’ll get better though, and when I do something really worth recording, I’ll totally upload something to prove my worth. Never know, I’ll maybe get picked up be a record label, become a rock star, get hooked on heroin hero, have a self revelation then return to my life as I knew it.

So Guitar Hero 3, well, what can I say. It’s entertaining, just a hell of alot less than before. It was either the right decision for Harmonix to sell the franchice to Activision or it was Neversoft that borked the game. The graphics haven’t changed at all, apart from giving your digital band’s male singer the jaw of Steven Tyler and more sparkely stuff for the next gen’s. The battle mode is utter shit, there’s no reason for it being there apart from making the game seem less like an expansion pack to guitar hero 2. And why the fuck do I need to play co-operatively to unlock some of the songs, that’s just bullshit. And I have no desire in engaging in online multiplayer, because it makes no sense for the genre.

The song list is really weird, HERE it is in all it’s…. glory, I suppose. First off, I’m just at the last set of songs on Hard mode, and the only song that’s given me trouble so far is the Queen’s of the Stone Age one, And that’s for two reasons: 1, because the rest of band make, how could I put this, “unintelligable rock”. So much that you can’t hear yourself playing over the rest of them. And 2, because it’s got a really shitty rhythm. I found the easiest way to beat it is to turn off the sound for the band and the SFX, leaving it just with your guitar noises. I’m sure that the final batch of songs are a bitch to play, I just haven’t gotten my teeth into them.

I’m not a fan of all these songs I’ve never heard before, or songs that I’ve heard before, but play very differently from what I thought they sounded like. Let’s just break it down into this, A little list of all the songs that I actually like in this version:

* “Hit Me with Your Best Shot” – Pat Benatar
* “Barracuda” – Heart
* “When You Were Young” – The Killers
* “Miss Murder” – AFI
* “Lay Down” – Priestess
* “Paint It, Black” – The Rolling Stones (Encore)
* “My Name Is Jonas” – Weezer
* “Even Flow” – Pearl Jam (Encore)
* “Rock You Like a Hurricane” – Scorpions
* “Welcome to the Jungle” – Guns N’ Roses (Encore played with Slash)
* “The Metal” – Tenacious D
* “Knights of Cydonia” – Muse
* “Cult of Personality” – Living Colour † (Encore)
* “Through the Fire and Flames” – DragonForce

That’s 13 out of 42 songs. I have to say that the Killers song is quite enjoyable, even though the rest of their music sucks balls, certainly my surprise hit of the game, though it matters not since the same song makes an appearance in Rock Band. But the rest of the songs, the other 29 songs, I’m glad to have completed them and say to myself; “I’ll never have to play that again”.

For experiment’s sake, let’s do the same list cutting of Rock Band’s Initial song list, Full list HERE:

* “Ballroom Blitz” – Sweet
* “Black Hole Sun” – Soundgarden
* “Dani California” – Red Hot Chili Peppers
* “(Don’t Fear) The Reaper” – Blue Öyster Cult
* “Enter Sandman” – Metallica
* “Epic” – Faith No More
* “Go with the Flow” – Queens of the Stone Age
* “The Hand That Feeds” – Nine Inch Nails
* “Here It Goes Again” – OK Go
* “Learn to Fly” – Foo Fighters
* “Next to You” – The Police
* “Orange Crush” – R.E.M.
* “Run to the Hills” – Iron Maiden
* “Sabotage” – Beastie Boys
* “Wanted Dead or Alive” – Bon Jovi
* “When You Were Young” – The Killers
* “Won’t Get Fooled Again” – The Who
* “Brainpower” – Freezepop
* “Pleasure (Pleasure)” – Bang Camaro
* “Timmy and the Lords of the Underworld” – Timmy and the Lords of the Underworld

That’s certainly bigger. 20 out of 58, but that’s only the songs that I like, not to mention the ones that I know. But just look at it, the amount of epix songs in there is staggering. We’re not counting downloadable content either, which I should mention that Rock band has much more to choose from and has much more planned to come than GH3.

I’m not sure what the new GH3 guitar is like, I thought I’d save my self a couple of bucks and just get the guitarless version, though I do imagine that the new one is somewhat better than the old Xplorer. It doesn’t matter much anyways, It’ll be banished to the dusty corner once Rock Band rolls into town. Another thing, the Achievements suck ass, moreso than the game’s previous iteration, CHECK IT. They all beg for you to dedicate your life to the game and want you to drag another person down with you. To the point that there is very little for you to Achieve if your a lonely bugger and without an XBL connection.

And so we wait for Rock Band… The PS3 version I think, because I actually know people that have PS3’s.

All in all, the game really should’ve been called: “Guitar Hero 2: The Legend’s Of Rock Expansion: Rock Band Training Because It’s Not Out In The UK Yet”. I think that’s more catchy, don’t you? Here’s that killers song to sing us out. Warning, the music video makes no sense.

Lay down just like in a coffin, Then I’ll have nothing but a song