# posted by Another Click in the Hall @ 10:34 PM
 
By RICK CUMMINGS, Associated Priss Writer

BANGOR, MAINE - After weeks of shopping, holiday well-wishing, fighting over hot gift items such as Guitar Hero 3 and Nintendo's Wii console, and fistfights at the local mall, Christmas finally struck on December 25th - and not everyone was filled with holiday cheer.

"My son, after he opened all of his presents, started jumping around and screaming," concerned father Dick Johnson told us. "We couldn't find him some game called Rock Band. He even kicked over the tree!" he added. As it turns out, his plight was a common one.

"My daughter wanted some pet thing that you could hook up to the Internet," one mother said, who wished to remain anonymous. "She still hasn't come out of her room."

Holiday shoppers took to the extreme on Christmas Eve, combing any and every store for hot items like global positioning systems, game consoles, and even remote control helicopters. Tensions ran high amongst consumers as retail outlets sold out of stock, and even turned ugly in some cases.

"I was at a local RadioShack and noticed that they had one TomTom GPS left," consumer Phil Collins said, who clarified that he was in no way related to the famed singer. "As I was grabbing it, a woman came into the store and tried to wrestle it out of my hands!" He threw his arms into the air and added: "It was nuts!"

When asked if he won the match, he asked: "Is this going to print before or after Christmas?"

"The thing with holiday shopping is that failure to procure a wanted gift for an individual elicits a feeling of disappointment in the receiver, which is then passed on to the giver," Dr. Thomas K. Whitman, Director of the National Center for Holiday Consumerism. "It's no good to think that you're no good, so it triggers a primal instinct to fight for the gift that you need to purchase."

To a certain extent, maybe.

"I found my son a Nintendo Wii by camping out at a Target store," consumer Rob Twick told us. "He'll probably appreciate that for about a week, and then go back to being a little bastard."

-RICK CUMMINGS is a writer for the Associated Priss, based out of Bangor, Maine. You may reach him via carrier pigeon.

Merry Christmas from Nerd Central. Hopefully you got that Wii/Guitar Hero 3/DS/whatever it was you were looking for.  0 comments links to this post   

# posted by Chronodin @ 12:43 PM
 
So, I was recently accepted into the Hulu beta.

When I first heard about the service, it was tied into the whole situation with NBC pulling their shows from iTunes over negotiating differences. The way I heard it, it sounded as if Hulu was just another name for NBC starting up their own video site to compete with iTunes. Upon playing around with it, though, I discovered that it was more than just NBC shows, but rather shows from NBC, Fox, Bravo, E!, USA, Sci-Fi and a number of other studios. There is actually a pretty hefty selections of shows that, at least for the time being, you can watch from their website for free. Granted, there are advertisements, but, I reiterate, it's free.

Not only can you view episodes of a lot of current television shows (missed the latest episode of Bionic Woman? It's there... along with Heroes, Life, The Simpsons, etc.) but there are a lot of shows that are no longer on television, such as, and this was a big one for me, Firefly. Every episode. Even though I have the box set and thus it doesn't do a lot for me, I think it's fantastic that the offering is there for people who missed out on this fantastic show.

Quality is pretty good. When you view a video full screen, it's not as good as what you'd get on iTunes or, definitely, from a DVD, but it's not bad, and the tradeoff is that the shows load extremely quickly -- or they have for me so far, and my connection is not always the best.

I know so far this has sounded like an advertisement for Hulu, but I'm not getting paid, I swear! I'm also a big fan of Apple and iTunes, so I was reluctant at first because it's sort of in opposition to iTunes, but I do agree that iTunes is a bit on the expensive side, and this is, so far at least, FREE, so I was impressed. The one big thing you can't do, that I'm aware of, is download them to load onto a portable device, but beggers can't always be choosers.

I'd like to reexamine my particularly scathing review of Guitar Hero 3 that I posted a few days ago. After spending more time with it and getting more used to it, I find that certain negative aspects don't bother me as much as they originally did. The hammer-on issue is, mostly, not as much of a problem now that I'm more used to it and am no longer expecting it to be like Guitar Hero 2. Going back and playing GH2 after spending time with GH3, I realize that the hammer-ons (notice I've stopped calling them hammer-ons/pull-offs, or HOPOs for short... it's just too long and rediculous-sounding) are noticeably easier in GH3, and actually had some trouble playing them in GH2, but I find that I like them being a little easier in 3. I don't particularly enjoy getting a note wrong not because I got it wrong, but because my timing was slightly off. It might take away some of the challenge, but the game makes up for it by making the charts themselves more difficult, as I've complained about previously. The difficulty is still TOO tough in spots -- that complaint remains, as some of those spots are just not fun to play, despite the hammer-ons being easier, but I do appreciate the game more than before. Besides... Pearl Jam's "Even Flow" and An Endless Sporadic's "Impulse" are two of the most fun Guitar Hero charts I've ever played. Those two alone nearly make the game worth it.

-Chronodin

PS: The guy playing in that crappy YouTube video of Even Flow is none other than yours truly. The Impulse video is someone else, though I plan on recording this one at some point too. The latter isn't the best video in the world, but for some reason, most of the videos of this one are in hyper mode, which I think makes it a little easier, and we can't have that, can we? ;)  2 comments links to this post   

# posted by Chronodin @ 12:59 AM
 
EDIT: After writing this post and looking back over it, I do kind of go on a rant about Guitar Hero 3 for quite a long time. If you have no interest in it whatsoever, just skip to the very end for the Speed Racer part. You really don't want to miss that link.

A couple of things I wanted to talk about, as cleverly hidden by that title up there, I know, but here we go anyway.

First off, I had this review started for Guitar Hero 3, but never really got too far into it. Rather than try to type out a full, so-called "review" just for the sake of doing it -- because, after all, you probably know what Guitar Hero is by this point, and if not, there are plenty of other reviews out there that can give you that -- I'll stick to just my opinion, here, and even this might not be totally original. Were this the only Guitar Hero game with no previous GH's with which to compare, my opinion would probably be higher. As it is, though, it can't help but stand in comparison to its two predecessors. Can you discuss the significance and/or enjoyment value of Return of the Jedi while pretending A New Hope and The Empire Strikes Back never happened? I think not, and if you can, then I shall immediately seek to have your nerd license revoked. Action will be taken.

But if I were, hypothetically, to review it totally isolated from GH1 and 2, I'd say the game is great. Lots of great moments, enjoyable, but tough. Alas, no game is an island, as they say -- or should, at least -- and the incredibility of Guitar Hero 2 insists on poking itself into my opinion on the third in the series. Guitar Hero 1 was good, but Guitar Hero 2 was great. An excellent song selection, great balance, tweaked controls that increased the game's playability several fold, yes, Neversoft had pretty large shoes to fill when they took over the franchise from the Harmonix team that did 1 and 2. Did they make a good Guitar Hero game?

In a word, yes.

It DOES feel like a Guitar Hero game, and a good one at that. However, just as if you tried to recreate grandma's secret recipe for green bean casserole, there are distinguishing features, some small and some large, that make it obvious that this was not the work of its original creators. I felt they made three mistakes in trying to recreate the magic, some slightly contradictory, but extant nonetheless.

1) They didn't change enough. Granted, GH2 looked almost identical to GH1, the changes it brought were in the form of extremely tighter controls and an even better song lineup than the first. Quality greatly outweighed innovation there. But in GH3, the quality jump wasn't there. It was still good, for the most part (see points 2 and 3), but if they really wanted to make it stand out as a great sequel, they should have changed some more. The tiered system, introduced in GH1, where you beat X number of songs to unlock the next difficulty level (slight variants introduced in 2 and 3, but basically the same), is a bit antiquated, and a different approach, or at least the option for a different approach, would have been nice. The graphics don't really look any better than GH2. Yes, I played it on a Playstation 2, and if I played on PS3 or 360, I'm sure they would look a lot better, but there are some places in the PS2 version that look worse than GH2's graphics. It's extremely obvious to see the pre-programmed movements in the audience, noticeable when you see literally half the crowd doing the exact same thing at the same time, or there are three or four audience members standing in a row waving their hands in perfect synchronization. Some of the cheesy "special effects", a fresh take on graphics in previous incarnations, now look lazy and old by today's standards. And good lord, the drummer is one of the more terribly animated characters I've seen in a video game in years. They could have replaced him with an animatronic gorilla from Chuck-E-Cheese and I would have been more impressed. Moving on...

2) What they did change appears to have been changed only for the sake of changing. Much like the phrase "status quo is standing still", many of the changes are parallel shifts (not any better, just different) or they're not improvements but are actually worse. Exhibit A: The star power meter, instead of being an obvious blue bar that fills up from left to right, is instead a series of lights that"turn on" as you get more star power. The problem is, it makes it very difficult unless staring right at it to see how much star power you have, and you CAN'T stare at it while playing, unless you've got your note chart memorized, and in which case you probably don't need to be checking out your star power meter. Unnecessary.

Exhibit B: Battle Mode. Geez, did some guys sit around in a meeting, and one said, "Hey, what's the most annoying feature in a multiplayer game you can think of?" and another replied, "What about the power-ups from Mario Kart: Double Dash that can change the outcome of an entire race based on sheer luck, thus taking a large chunk out of the skill factor of the game?" "That's great! Let's put that into Guitar Hero 3." They very well might have. I appreciate that they were trying to do something different, but it's more annoying than enjoyable.

Exhibit C: Boss battles. First off, they're done in that battle mode I just made reference to, and secondly, the game is called "Legends of Rock", yet there are only TWO real guitarists in the game: Tom Morello from Rage Against the Machine and Slash from Guns 'n Roses/Velvet Revolver. I honestly expected a good 4 or 5 of these "legends", but there are only three boss battles in the entire game, and the last one is supposed to be the devil, and goes by the name Lou. Not that I'm asking for more boss battles, but it was an over-hyped, under-utilized feature. Don't half-do it... do it right or don't do it at all.

3) Neversoft likes to see you squirm. This game is tough. I really got the feeling that Neversoft thought GH1 and 2 were too easy and made changes solely to make the game tougher.

Things like making you play longer phrases to get star power, thus increasing your chances of missing one note and losing that opportunity for star power.

Things like nerfing what precious star power you get. By that, I mean the star power doesn't last as long and doesn't help you as much when you're losing. Star power in GH2 was a lifesaver at times... in GH3, it really doesn't help you all that much.

Things like sacrificing note chart accuracy with the song for difficult-to-play patterns, particularly involving awkward chord patterns and an abundance of unnecessary three-note chords. Slipknot's "Before I Forget" is still one of the toughest songs for me in the game, solely because of one short section which involves playing, if you can understand this pattern, buttons 1/3, 2/4, 1/3, 2/4, 3/5, 2/4, 1/3... etc. That's referring to two buttons at once, with one being the green on your left and 5 being orange to the right. Maybe it's just me, but that is a VERY awkward thing to make my fingers do at all, let alone at the speed the chart asks you to perform. The song itself is awkward because it throws three-note chord after three-note chord at you, at times when the song doesn't sound like it needs them at all.

Things like taking a lick that in GH2 would be played totally with hammer-ons/pull-offs (HOPOs) and throwing a non-HOPOable note in there, forcing you to restrum out of nowhere. I realize this was done probably for a realistic aspect, as they likely didn't HOPO that part on a real guitar, except here's the problem: The reason they weren't done that way in many cases on real guitars is because they had to change strings to play the lick. Of COURSE they had to restrum, it was a different string. GH, however, don't got no strings, therefore there's no intuitive way to know if a note should be strummed again except watching intently for the slight difference in the note telling you what can and can't be HOPOed. It was a difficult and uncomfortable adjustment I had to make from GH2, and there are some songs that should be a lot of fun to play, like Killswitch Engage's "My Curse" but because they insisted on forcing you to strum over and over and over again, it saps the fun out of those songs like vampires at a blood bank. If it ain't broke, don't fix it, Neversoft. That's one you shouldn't have touched.

There are a few more minor nags I have here and there, such as song selection being done obviously based on what songs they liked and not what songs would make good Guitar Hero songs, but those three are the big'ns: Didn't change enough, what was changed was unnecessary or just bad, and the game is too difficult at spots and not in a good way, but in a cheap way. In reference to the last point, Gabe from Penny Arcade had a good quote the other day. He wasn't referring to Guitar Hero, but his sentiments ring true regardless. He said,

"Tycho talked about the different reasons people play games in his post and I thought it was pretty interesting. It's a conversation we've had before and I think it's something a lot of gamers probably don't think about. I remember it came up while we were both playing Metroid Prime: Corruption. I was talking to him about how I was getting frustrated because some of the boss battles were really giving me a hard time. I realised I don't play games for the challenge. I don't need or want to be punished by a game for making mistakes. I play games for what Ron Gilbert calls "new art". I play to see the next level or cool animation. I don't play games to beat them I play games to see them. Coming to that realisation was actually sort of important for me."

Though it's not always just to see something new, my reasons for playing games usually don't involve the challenge factor. To me, it's just, "Is this fun or not?" One of my favorite songs on the new Guitar Hero 3 is "Impulse" by An Endless Sporadic. I 5-starred it on my second play-through... or maybe even my first, I can't remember, but either way, wasn't too difficult for me. But I still play the song almost every time I boot up the game, because it's a blast to play. That's one where they hit the nail on the head... no, it's not EASY, but it doesn't have those cheap difficulty aspects I was referring to earlier, and when you do beat it, you really feel like you've done so having a certain level of skill, not just trying to get around something stupid. I feel like when the game is cheap, I have to play cheap to beat it, and that's not fun for me.

Now, with this all having been said, I do still really enjoy Guitar Hero 3 despite its flaws, but when I do so, I think how much better the game could have been had they avoided some of the aforementioned pitfalls.

This post is getting a great deal longer than I expected. I've only discussed half of my subject line so far, so I'll get to the second quickly and with due haste! The trailer for the upcoming Speed Racer movie has been released, and it looks absolutely incredible. It's a thrilling treat for the eyes, a style I've never quite seen before but I've fallen instantly in love with it. I have no idea if the story is going to hold any merit or if it'll be a total bust, but if the whole movie delivers on the visual feast the trailer promises, I'll probably be able to forgive a lackluster storyline. Time will tell. Until then, enjoy the trailer.

Do feel free to comment below and tell me what you thought of the trailer, or your thoughts on Guitar Hero 3 if you have any.

-Chronodin  2 comments links to this post   

# posted by Chronodin @ 11:31 AM
 
Now, more of this would get me to listen to more country music!


I haven't laughed so hard in a long time. From dvorak.org/blog.

-Chronodin  0 comments links to this post   

# posted by Chronodin @ 11:07 AM
 
I cringed at this commercial.


But I did find it funny. Post-cringing, of course.

-Chronodin  0 comments links to this post