I own Guitar Hero (PS2), Guitar Hero II (PS2), Guitar Hero II (360), Guitar Hero III (360), and Rock Band (360). I own FIVE plastic guitars, a mic, and a drum set from those games. It’s quite ridiculous. The path that led to my situation is quite frustrating and should’ve been much easier. I can point fingers at a lot of people along the way (and I have, don’t worry… I wouldn’t be true to myself if I hadn’t vented) but I read some news today that simultaneously made me feel better about someone finally “getting” the problem, but at the same time it pisses me off that they didn’t “get it” before I laid down my cash and started my journey in a direction that will be expensive to correct.
Curious what I’m talking about? Find out after the jump… (more…)
Yes, we all know Rock Band 2 is supposed to be launching initially as a timed Xbox 360 exclusive. Well, my theory is: they simply can’t ramp production up fast enough to handle simultaneous launches across all platforms and territories for the September launch, so someone’s gotta be first.
Harmonix seems to think the Xbox 360 in the US makes the best choice of platform and location. So folks… get prepared to drop $199 on the new Rock Band 2 bundle come September. Whoops! Wait a minute… we now have news that things have changed just a little bit. Sorry US Xbox 360 owners… you’re going to have to show your Harmonix support a little bit more if you want the “full meal deal” this September. Support to the tune of $50 more for individually buying everything that will come in the bundle… a month later… when everybody else gets it. Oops! (more…)
I have a question I’d like answered. I have a hunch as to what the answer really is, but I’d love for some game developer to stumble across this and actually comment on it (even if anonymously.) How do seriously bad games ever get released? At some point in the development process, people involved in the games HAVE to know the game they’re working on isn’t fun, or is somehow substandard. Is it that game development inherently ALWAYS starts as an unfun project that slowly evolves into a fun game along the way, or do the really great games start out fun and end up being fun to play? (more…)
Microsoft has a pretty solid reputation for monetizing anything they can and so far, they’ve stood pretty firm on the issue of Xbox Gold costing us money. The carrot they’ve dangled in front of consumer so far has pretty much been the “online multiplayer” carrot. If you want to play online multiplayer over Xbox Live, you need an Xbox Live Gold account. With the recent announcement that Games For Windows Live is moving to a free online multiplayer model, a player of some of the cross platform Xbox 360<->PC games has noticed that he can now play those same games online on his Xbox 360 using his Silver account. While some folks are excited that this might mean the end to “for a fee multiplayer gaming,” I’ve got a much more down to earth explanation of what’s likely going on here. (more…)
I’m getting sick and tired of something and frankly, that’s why I’ve got this column… to vent about things. What am I sick and tired of now? I’m sick of people using the term “kiddie games” in a derogatory sense when the game(s) they’re otherwise referring to are top notch in design. It’s a shallow and thoughtless remark that (I’m guessing here) makes them feel somehow better about themselves and their testosterone-fueled bloody, mature gorefest games that they think I _should_ be playing. You know what? Shove it. If I said I just saw and enjoyed Cars or The Incredibles you probably wouldn’t be flicking me crap, so why is this any different?! (more…)
I’m going to propose something to you in a moment, but I’m going to ask for a little bit of cooperation and patience from you first. I want to do a little experiment with you. This is going to be a bit of a different “rant” from what you might be used to. Instead of doing the ranting, I’m going to help place you, the reader, in the position of being ranted at or about. This is either going to be interesting, or really lame… I haven’t decided yet. Okay, now that you’ve (hopefully) agreed to give me your cooperation and patience, let’s try this… (more…)
Okay, I was trying to decide on what to rant about today but I couldn’t narrow it down to just one topic, so today you get multiple mini-rants because I don’t want to sit on these for individual rants throughout the week. I need these off my chest now, so here we go… three mini-rants…
I’ve ranted on GTA IV before but last night I thought I’d give it another shot… we’ve had two patches to the game itself and at least two firmware updates. I figured my luck would have to change eventually, right? (more…)
Okay, for all intents and purposes, E3’s pretty much over. The announcements have been announced, the press conferences have been pressed (or conferred?) While we sort through the aftermath of it all, I have one question left… Where The Wipeout At? (more…)
Spin, spin, spin! The E3 hype machine is starting a bit early this year with some mighty spin coming from Redmond, Washington.
Microsoft announced a few things “officially” this morning, including the “temporary” price drop of the 20GB Xbox 360 Pro model… I say temporary because this is nothing more than a clearance sale to purge those models from the pipeline. The only way to get rid of those in any speedy fashion is to lower the price and entice retailers to add their own incentives to them in the form of “bonus” gift cards. For someone wanting an Xbox 360 and not minding the hard drive is only 20GB* (*barely over half that is usable by you,) then yeah, your deal just got $50 better.
If anyone thinks I’m going to let a move like this “slide by” as a “price drop” after all the crap everyone gave Sony about the 60GB PS3 price drop being a clearance sale, well… that’s just not going to happen. This is 100% “turnabout is fair play” and 0% related to my dislike for the 360. I love tossing Xbot logic back in their own faces. They usually resort to ALL SORTS of hilarity when that happens. (more…)
As a gamer, we have games and advertisements targeting us. As an older gamer, some of those ads and games miss me as a target. I had the pleasure of attending Boy Scout summer camp as a parent/leader with my son last week and partway through the week, I realized something… I was surrounded by the lower end of the “gamer” demographic.
Find out what else I noticed, after the jump… (more…)
I love media. Really, I do. I love music, movies, TV, games, magazines, websites, podcasts, etc. At times, it’s even clear to me that I might go a bit overboard in the amount of media I consume in a given week, but this past week, I went cold turkey. I had access to nothing, zip, zilch, nada…
Wii developers have a special place in my thoughts. It’s not a pretty place. Hell, it’s not even a static place. In fact, the place set aside for Wii developers is on the move… and it’s not going to be a pretty journey I’m afraid. They’re on a crash course for the very same spot I’ve set aside for professional spammers.
Let’s jump into the flame war together, after the jump!
For those of you living under a rock, GTA IV came out April 29th touting many more than a dozen online play modes. For those of us with the (highly reviewed) PS3 version, the multiplayer modes have been a real sore spot, as a large portion of us have experienced periodic or persistent issues with the game. The problem seems to stem from faulty network code that even affects single player games while the network connection is active.
Today, Rockstar released the first patch for the game. A patch that according to early reports seems to have alleviated the issues. Honestly, that’s great. It’s what I’ve been wanting since I first experienced issues with the game-freezing. Not content to just give us a patch, Rockstar’s parent company Take-Two Interactive had to go and re-piss me off though… (more…)
