TTD NEWSBRACE: RHYTHM GAME ROXTRAVAGANZA

I am quivering in anticipation right now! Two of history's greatest rhythm game licenses just opened up their pre-E3 information floodgates, outlining the details and features new to their latest numbered/not-numbered-anymore installments: Harmonix's Rock Band 3 and Neversoft's Guitar Hero: Legends Of Warriors Of Rock! As upstate Minnesota's semi-reptilian rhythm game champion (I can almost 100% Pat Benatar's "Heartbreaker" on Hard drums), I find myself terribly excited and will undoubtedly pick up both games -- but video games are consumer products, as we all know, and I'm certain every fret-clickin' fleshbag on the block is anxious to find out the vital statistics between one and the other. That in mind, let's directly compare and contrast the two! Surely a clear winner can be found, for most of y'all:

Just one step closer to Separate Ways (Worlds Apart)! Also, one step closer to marathon-playsession-induced throat problems.

NEW FEATURES

Rock Band 3: Enhanced character models -- no word on whether you can add animating wings/tails to your characters or play bass alongside an octopus just yet, but they do look better, at least. World Tour mode is enhanced with more supplementary visuals, which show your characters physically getting from place to place and picking out songs. Hundreds of miniature achievement-like goals are there to collect throughout your band's quest. The addition of keyboard and harmonies allows for up to seven players in a band at once. Drop-in/drop-out gameplay, new song filtering options (show me "songs that get players angry about being able to download them", please), and Rock Band Pro, which requires special hardware that allows players to better transition from plastic-instruments to ones that can make actual music, singlehandedly defusing the smug one-liners of sarcastic roommates everywhere.

Guitar Hero: Warriors of Rock: There are enough enhancements to Quickplay mode to warrant the tacking-on of a plus sign at the end of it! These involve challenges available for all Guitar Hero-compatible content on your hard drive. However, the comprehensive Quest Mode is the focus; in it, you rescue the Demigod of ROCK N' ROLL from the evil beast of... something-or-other; smooth jazz, I guess? It contains heavily stylized characters and amazing mythical power-ups, with which your characters of choice can transform into terrifying, powerful beasts. This has the effect of, say, expanding your score multiplier from 4X to 6X. Narrated by Gene Simmons (bass player of KISS), dubbed "Honorary Voice of Rock N' Roll" by a group of Activision's most influential executives aged 40 and over. (Runner-ups for the title include Twisted Sister's Dee Snider, ZZ Top's Dusty Hill, and Bret Michaels of Poison.)

NEW HARDWARE

crganahl rockin' is sunthin' shawkin' when yer feet jes' can't keep still

Rock Band 3: A keyboard! Formerly described as a "keytar" by someone who "did the math" on keyboard + handle-for-transportation, it has 25 keys, 5 of which are visible during normal play (17 during Pro mode, with onscreen indicators to tell you where to put your hands at any given time). It's MIDI-compatible, which makes this the perfect opportunity to start composing brilliant faux-orchestral power-ballads with a shoplifted copy of FruityLoop Studio, if you please. A $40 MIDI controller "brain" allows you to plug in actual keyboards/drumkits, if you've got 'em. Drums and guitars have also been severely enhanced to accommodate "Pro" mode, adding three cymbals to the drumkit, 103 additional buttons to the existing guitar, and controller technology to actual guitar. All of these can be used on any difficulty level, ensuring a smooth transition to real-life musicianhood (completely straying from the precedent set by Guitar Hero Metallica's Expert+, which requires an extra bass pedal, a bottle of hooch, and a devil-may-care attitude to pull off correctly).

Guitar Hero: Warriors of Rock: A new guitar! Five buttons; the touchstrip was giving them problems, apparently, so they removed it. This one has its controller-components contained entirely in the neck! This means you can break the body of the guitar apart (smashing it after a successful set) and replace it with something that better suits your personal tastes, on the off-chance you don't like the one supplied to you by default. You could even just break the wings off and play guitar with a standalone neck, for maximum aerodynamics; the choice is entirely yours! Also note that the body has convenient airholes; not only do they make the guitar go faster, but you can stuff small bags of potato chips in 'em in case you need an energy boost during a set. If that's not a selling point, what is?

Stratocaster? Pff; no licensing necessary, here. Look at it! It's jaunty, plastic, and on fire!!

SONG LIST

Rock Band 3: 83 songs. Standout tracks of those announced so far:
2000s: "Dead End Friends" - Them Crooked Vultures
1990s: "Walkin' on the Sun" - Smash Mouth
1980s: "Here I Go Again" - Whitesnake
1970s: "Bohemian Rhapsody" - Queen
1960s: "Break on Through (To the Other Side)" - The Doors

In addition to these, Rock Band 3 is compatible with the 1200+ songs currently available via exported game disc or through downloadable content, either via the Rock Band Music Store or the Rock Band Network of independently-published game tracks.

Guitar Hero: Warriors of Rock: More than 90 songs. Standout tracks of those announced so far:
2000s: "Fury of the Storm" - Dragonforce
1990s: "Wish" - Nine Inch Nails
1980s: "Pour Some Sugar On Me" - Def Leppard
1970s: "Children of the Grave" - Black Sabbath
1960s: "Stray Cat Blues" - The Rolling Stones

In addition to these, Guitar Hero: Warriors of Rock is compatible with the 300+ songs available via exported game disc or through downloadable content available from the Guitar Hero Music Marketplace. "GHTunes" functionality, which allows players to compose five-key MIDI songs and upload them to an online database, is unconfirmed.

Jane's Addiction fans are covered, no matter which game you pick! Bohemian Rhapsody's also in both -- why'd I count it for Rock Band, again?

CONCLUSION

Warriors of Rock's setlist is bigger. So, if you're looking for something you can throw into your Xbox and plow through over the course of a few weeks with the guitar controller that's been laying around in your closet ever since Guitar Hero Van Halen, then you should absolutely pick it up and become engrossed in the Brutal-Legend-like yarn they dedicate their primary game mode toward spinning! For anyone else who wants a full-band experience that can serve as a platform for 99-plus percent of any non-Beatles songs you've purchased to date -- especially anyone who wants to don a pair of sunglasses with star-shaped frames and plonk out a simplistic-yet-functional version of "The Power Of Love" (preferably with a microphone in your face so you can sing while shaking your head 'no' as you play) on something people could look at and call an "actual instrument" without busting up afterward -- Rock Band 3 seems like the sensible choice.

In all seriousness, it feels like both games are the result of different philosophies by each developer/publisher! Warriors of Rock's upgrades are far more incremental in comparison. This may imply that Activision believes the music-game genre has found its niche. They can continue to rack up steady profits as long as each release is spaced out far enough apart from one another to keep Guitar Hero's brand equity from falling too fast. Rock Band 3's changes are so radical and crazy -- taking steps to legitimize and reinvigorate the world of music games, instead of resting on their laurels and leaving the mechanics as-is -- that making the comparison to Warriors of Rock feels almost cheap and flimsy. In that case, can you really even call them competitors anymore?

What? No, you don't hit the colored parts! Shut up! Leave me alone!!

Egh; this is complicated. Tell you what; just go with PowerGig: Rise of the SixString. It promises a three-person band experience more authentic than any Guitar Hero or Rock Band game released to date, while at the same time providing a drum controller even more ridiculous than the one included in Rock Revolution. It'll make for more entertaining YouTube videos, at least~

May Was Games, Part 1

Ignoring the precedent set by the May months of previous years, May of 2010 played host to one of the largest barrages of mid-year quality the game industry has ever seen -- after Activision took their prospective sales hostage with the release of Modern Warfare 2 last fall, it's understandable that rival publishers wouldn't want to compete. In part one of this four-part series, our two heroes take on a cubic-pixel sandwich encasing a delicious skateboard in the middle.

Picross 3D - May 3rd

The nation of Blockica has been overrun by "Grey Ones", an evil attacking force of grid-adorned rectangular prisms! It's up to you and your pet stylus Wisp to fight back against these evil creatures and quite literally carve out a new civilization for your countrymen, cheered on by a talking motor-duck and his clip-art compatriots.

Svet: This game sets my imagination afire! There are like a million puzzles in this thing, all of which are perfect for playing while lazing about with something else in the background -- cool jazz, Newsradio reruns, crazy cartoons, masturbation, and especially newspapers. The models you make are a little pixelated; I'd have preferred to work at a higher resolution -- carving out individual triangles and normal-map layers to create a stellar rendition of current-gen Mario's face, let's say. It would take several hours for each item to complete, but at least I'd be able to justify giving my Game-Reviewer's-Template review for this game a graphics score higher than a 2.5 out of 10.

Phen: After an extended playsession of Tetris, I often find myself picturing theoretical arrangements of a game in progress and where to place the next hypothetical piece. Very few puzzle games grip my attention long enough that I start getting Tetris-Vision, but Picross 3D is one of them. After solving a few puzzles, I'd set the game down and look around my cave, only to find that I'm seeing numbers scattered across the walls, describing the number of spaces separating every nook and cranny and providing clues on which spaces still need to be carved out. It turns out it's a platypus!

Skate 3 - May 11th

After your numerous adventures in San Vanelona in Skate (alternate titles: "skate.", "Skate OG") and Skate 2, you wake up in a newer, more colorful city filled with impossible architecture that just-so-happens to be brilliantly navigable with the control system provided to you! Your task is to rid this skater's Valhalla of as many neon blue icons as possible and help fill a progress bar with a million skateboards, preferably aided by up to three friends at once.

S: I've been playing this almost universally online with Phen! We spend endless hours dogpaddling in city water fixtures, throwing ourselves off tall buildings to break as many of our human avatars' bones as possible, and stacking ramps on top of each other to create more and more interesting ways to kill ourselves on park-editor architecture. My only complaint is the amount of useless numbers and multipliers that obstruct an otherwise-perfect view of the bottom of the screen, but I suppose they have to save some refinements for Skate 4.

P: I've been playing this game offline behind Svet's back, as well! The score-attack challenges are great, and I've been having a blast with the photo challenges -- especially the new Team Ads, which let you place a camera anywhere in the game world and snap a photo of your skater doing whatever you please, bails and inappropriate hand-gestures included. However, I know next to nothing about skater culture, so Skate 3's occasional name-dropping doesn't elicit from me the excited response I think the game expects from its audience. Playing S.K.A.T.E. against celebrity skaters is no longer required to progress in Skate 3, but it's been replaced with one-on-one score battles, and I still feel like my success is dependent on the game arbitrarily deciding whether my opponent bails at any given time.

3D Dot Game Heroes - May 11th

As a randomized cluster of dynamically-lit cubes that hover in a scattershot fashion above a 2.5-dimensional playing field, endowed with the mystical ability to sprout a giant sword from its center-mass, your task is to rescue the Princess of Oldschule from the Evil Draygun of Blast Processing, or some other such nonsense.

S: Hey, all right! Idea Factory apparently took some time out from creating stellar spinoffs of the Metal Wolf Chaos IP to revive the original Legend of Zelda in bootleg form, with the same snazzy washed-out colors, individually outlined pixels, and depth-of-field effects you remember from the NES days. I'm looking forward to the cheeky asides added-in by Atlus's brilliant localization team, which may serve as adequate field-dressing for what my preconceived biases have already labeled a barely-functional workhorse of a story. Haven't picked this one up yet, but I might when the clerk at my local Target isn't looking.

P: I also haven't picked this one up just yet, mostly due to the sheer amount of games on the table I need to plow through first! I'm looking forward to generating custom content that's as symmetrical as it is uninspired, just like I do with every other build-your-own-game game. Also, I never played a top-down Zelda game -- shame on me, I know -- and 3DDGH seems as good an analog as any.

Join us next time, where we wrestle pirate wolves, ghoulish nighttime townsfolk, and grizzly bears.

Splinter Cell: Conviction is more fun with a friend

In between our single-player runs of amazing titles like Just Cause 2 and Shin Megami Tensei: Persona, my pear-shaped comrade and I have found time to enjoy each other's company while we snap necks and turn out lights with deadly force in Splinter Cell: Conviction on the XBOX 360. A formal review of the solo campaign is inevitably forthcoming, but this'll have to do for now: "game's pretty fun."


The four-chapter co-op campaign serves as a prequel to the solo campaign, with players playing the role of two Agents, Archer (American, working for Third Echelon) and Kestrel (Russian, working for Voron). Gameplay in SC:C's co-op campaign is nigh-identical to its single-player counterpart, its stealth-action sequences bookended by weapon-stash checkpoints and co-op objectives that force both players to join up. Technically, one player could blast through the stealth-action sequence and wait at the checkpoint for his buddy -- the co-op maneuvers offered by previous Splinter Cell games have been stripped away for a more streamlined experience -- but where's the fun in that?


Even without specific co-op maneuvers, there's still plenty of opportunities for players to help each other out. If two targets are in each other's line-of-sight, both players can sneak up behind their targets and simultaneously choke-hold them before the other target gets a chance to radio for backup. Both players have a separate bank of Mark-and-Execute tokens, as well; if either player melee-kills an enemy, both players' tokens are replenished, and players can execute each other's marks. By flanking a large room from two entrance points and splitting up, each player has a different angle of attack and enemies visible on sonar. Since a fully-upgraded Five-Seven allows for up to four marks, a well-coordinated duo could drop eight targets with a single press of a button.


Screwing up in SC:C's co-op campaign isn't the end of the world, either. While setting off an alarm in Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory's co-op campaign meant guards donned body armor and whipped out their biggest guns, in SC:C it mostly just a few more guards come in and everyone's more alert, and results in a lower score at the end of the campaign. It's definitely easier to get through a level when players avoid detection entirely, though.


Ultimately, SC:C's co-op campaign is as entertaining as two players are willing to make it. While a team could play the game by sending one player in guns blazing until he reaches the checkpoint and waits for his buddy to catch up, the real thrill comes from infiltrating a room together, silently snapping the necks of every guard inside and reaching the next area without setting off any alarms. If you have a co-op buddy and you've been looking to scratch that stealth-action itch together, SC:C is the game for you.

Until Peace Walker drops, at least.

Humble Indie Bundle: wait, "indie" is a genre? :(

This week, five game developers threw on their scarves, cycled out to their nearest Starbucks, and teleconferenced through free wi-fi to band together and release the fantastic Humble Indie Bundle: five fully-featured games for the combined cost of $0.01 and up, which can be split between the developers and two charities of their choosing, at whatever ratio you desire. As of this writing, the average donation is close to $8; since there's no way to physically threaten a website, I decided to give them $15 from the shell PayPal account I use to harbor my ill-gotten e-cash, under the pretense that all charitable funds be given to that one organization that ensures I can post on Blogspot pages about my favorite graphic sex acts without it being all over the news. What can I say? The games looked good, and in my defense, I was drunk!

Torchlight: The sub-$20 price tag is a clear sign of its poor quality and distinct lack of fun game mechanics.

Reading forum threads online about the deal, it seems a few people are angry! I know, people getting inexplicably angry about something fantastic and wonderful on the Internet seems like kind of a stretch. But it's true; people are up in arms about having the option to pay as little as physically possible for five critically acclaimed indie hits! Their criticisms focus on 'indie' as a genre of games; as though they received their first indie 'hit' off of vile skunk-blunts like Braid, Passage, or Super Columbine Massacre RPG, and as a result, believe that all games made by small development studios are from starving artistes with a limited grasp on the concept of "fun". To them, all indie games may as well all be two-dimensional open-ended platformers about crying girls exploring handpainted barren landscapes, which end with messages like "SELL ALL YOUR POSSESSIONS" or "END THE CRISIS IN DARFUR" before the curtain-sprites draw closed and the player is booted to desktop.

Castle Crashers: A game about the grave consequences of military imperialism and traditional Anglo-Saxon attitudes toward the subjugation of women.

And hey, I could :colbert: my way through this and make believe that I actually dislike the thing that's good with a slew of cheeky asides that show my true feelings, but since it's the Internet, I can't take it for granted that people will know what I'm getting at. This attitude that all games made for under a million American dollars are nothing but smug, elitist garbage that puts 'story' and 'art' ahead of 'fun' needs to stop. All five games in this bundle were meant to be played, not to be run through so you can comment on the one-man "company"'s blog post about the amazing twist at the end where the main character straight-up dies. Of the five games in this bundle, none were made by Robert Pelloni or Tale of Tales Studios.

Trials 2: Second Edition; a game that bores you to death with its endless cutscenes, pretentious prose, and hamhanded messages.

It feels like a lot of the negative energy focused on indie titles seems to be based not so much on games like AudioSurf as it is on games in the vein of VVVVVV; games that have a strong focus on original characters and a creative visual style that may be different from the norm. I realize that some games have aesthetics that can be difficult to swallow, and I know the sub-$20 price tag sure does make you wonder about the value you're really getting, but neither of these traits makes independent games fundamentally different from their big-brand equivalents except in terms of whether they were put in front of a focus group or not. I'm willing to bet most of the indie stories critics call "pretentious" would be right at home in a Square-Enix or Grasshopper Manufacture game, and the "gimmicks" that forumgoers whine about would fit in perfectly along Nintendo's release lineup. As far as pure quality is concerned, the distinction is meaningless.

AaaaaAAaaaAAAaaAAAAaAAAAA!!! A Reckless Disregard for Gravity! Don't let Dejobaan's stunning reputation fool you; I bet it's filled with memory leaks and horrible crash bugs! If only there had been an Activision label in front of it.

...But that's just my opinion, and you know me -- always ranting like the distinguished, erudite dragon I am. Go, comrades; check it out for yourself! Maybe you'll find something of valoh who am I kidding World of Goo is in it GET IT NOW

Videogame artists need your support!! *buys ten copies of Eternity's Child*

So, Double Fine came out with Brutal Legend last year! Though I had to switch the soundtrack to smooth saxophone rhythms in order to play it without getting a horrible pounding headache, I think we can all agree that it was new, interesting, artistically inspired, cleverly written, and ultimately beautiful! You couldn't describe it in a single sentence, though, unless you decided to fudge a few facts: "Jack Black kicks metal ass in a rock-inspired open world" doesn't begin to describe the Pikmin/Sacrifice-ish proto-RTS enhancements they added onto what was initially sold as a God-of-War-style action-slasher game, and ultimately, it was a wash. People defended it to the death, though, citing the genius of Tim Schafer, creator of the stylistically perfect Psychonauts, and how he had done the game industry no wrongs up to that point -- and he really hadn't, but this came with an unintended side-effect. Schafer has unwittingly created for himself a cult of personality, mostly through amazing blog posts and wonderful adventure games; games where the focus is on the writing. Brutal Legend attempted to nudge the focus over to the game underneath the writing, far more than Psychonauts did; as a result, a lot of people -- myself included -- were totally baffled and disappointed. Tim's writing was good, but it wasn't enough to make me want to play a game I didn't sign up for.

eddie riggs in mouse-cursor mode! yech.

Believe it or not, this tragic story has a moral! People, don't buy games just because of the personalities behind them! Games can be artistic masterpieces, but they're also consumer products that you're expected to interact with -- and that interaction can be difficult to get a sense of until you see videos or play the thing itself. Wait until the overall "picture" of any given game is complete enough to see if it's fun, first! If it isn't, you can still feel free to attempt to sway market forces in the direction of an artist, personality, or game development wunderkind, but ultimately, your money is sending the message that you're willing to consume anything a certain person-of-games is willing to throw out onto a disc. This is bad business from a consumer standpoint; it hardly ever works; it only results in bitter disappointment!

hey these 'headbangers' have cromagnon heads and fat necks! that's funny for more than two seconds, right?

Maybe this is a side-effect of an instinctive behavior of Internet people to dramatize something they're passionate about? Regardless, here are some words to live by: Videogames aren't "causes" that need to be "supported". Brutal Legend sold at least a million copies worldwide, according to dodgy site VGChartz. That means it probably turned a profit (especially considering most of its development costs were likely already paid for by Activision), but even if it had failed, it wouldn't have been a death knell for the concept of "good writing" or "decent storytelling" in video games. Plenty of video games are written well -- the Persona series, the Telltale adventures, Banjo-Kazooie, Borderlands, and Prince of Persia are all brilliant examples of games that have excellent and clever dialogue, a few of them have a narrative structure that trumps anything Brutal Legend was capable of, all but one of those games/franchises have seen moderate success, and most of them are way sexier, too! You shouldn't feel obligated to buy a game you feel weird about, just because Internet people tell you it's "important" -- unless, of course, that person is me!

And if a game you're looking for focuses all its promotional media on the non-game aspects of it, wait for a review before you buy it! I've learned my lesson; have you?

Phen's Incredible Backlog, Part 1

Keeping one's library of dragony things in a massive pile is great for lounging and rollng around on top of it, but not so great for keeping things organized! As a result, my massive collection of games to beat and review here -- for that is the true purpose of this blog -- keeps getting buried under other games, movies, peripherals, baseball caps, myself and occasionally a good friend. So, what haven't I been playing lately?

The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess (Wii)

Last known position: Link just turned into a wolf! This game is awesome.

Reason for hiatus: I picked up this game at launch; every time I sit down to play it, something even more amazing comes out and pulls me away. I've been told the game gets better than what I've seen so far; the bar's already been set pretty high!

Resident Evil 4 (GCN)

Last known position: I have to escort the President's daughter through a fork in the road!

Reason for hiatus: it's hard to refamiliarize myself with the game's controls and plot points when I'm thrust headlong into an escort mission! My pear-shaped companion assures me that the Wii version is better; one of these days, I'll borrow hers and start fresh.

Metal Gear Solid: Portable Ops (PSP)

Last known position: I just fought and bested this game's Mr. Freeze analog!

Reason for hiatus: said fight was a major pain! The fight itself was a kick in the jaw when I'd gone through the game leading up to it without firing a shot, came into the level without any weapons, and had to restart the mission with more adequate equipment. On top of this, I had to cheese the fight itself, due to poor controls. I'm pretty pumped for Peace Walker, and letting this game collect dust until that one comes out is starting to sound more and more appealing...

So, there it is! As much as I hope to get through these games soon, the next few months promise to be a sexplosion of even more amazing media to consume, so my hopes aren't very high.

Moral Choices

While I don't play as many role-playing games as my pear-shaped counterpart, I've noticed a pervasive trend in her games where the player is forced to make a decision that will upset the very balance of good-and-evil in the game's universe depending on the choice the player makes. This choice typically boils down to selecting between two clean-cut dialogue options or actions; buying a seasonal gift for the crippled boy with the funny accent is Good, while torching his village and laughing as he awkwardly hobbles away is Bad.

I don't mind this perceived open-endedness – it makes the game's plot seem less on-rails, even if it sometimes just forks into two paths of equal length – but it seems like developers keep trying to make the moral choices exceptionally "game-y" by linking them to a slider that arbitrarily shifts between More Good and Less Good. I'm sure this is easier from a design perspective: the plot can fork based on the world's general perception of a character, rather than having the world specifically reference the player's various Good and Bad actions. But it leads to an unintended gameplay mechanic where "morality" becomes another meaningless stat for the player to level up, or down.

Because I have some personal experience with it, I'll loosely use Fallout 3 as an example here. If I pick some guy's lock, my Karma takes a small hit. If I pick several hundred locks, my Karma plummets until I become The Dreaded Baron Phenoix, Picker Of Locks, feared across the lands for my lock-picking ways, and I'll even get a shout-out from the Galaxy News Radio DJ, Three-Dog, about how dreadfully feared I am. However, if I then give some bottled water to a beggar a thousand times, I'm a Paragon Of All That Is Good again and I can venture into a distant town and walk the old lady across the street. Picking all of John Q. Owns-A-House's locks should put me on bad terms with John Q., and rightly so, and I wouldn't find it unfair if John Q. subsequently packed up his locks and skipped town before I could do him any favors. But I would think I could pick every lock in town and still maintain a moral high-ground over someone who dropped a bomb on it.

As far as moral choices in dialog options goes, in Fallout 3, it usually works out like this: if you ask to be paid, you're a bad person. As a result, during my Good Guy run, I did everything everyone asked and refused their rewards at every turn, not because I'd "feel bad" if I asked for compensation, but because I didn't want my Karma to go down. Conversely, on my Bad Guy run, I still did everything everyone asked, but made sure to ask for a hearty reward for my efforts.

Fallout 3 almost does a few things right. For example, it's possible to put a bullet in Three-Dog's head. This isn't the result of a dialogue tree nor is it guided by some sort of prompt, the game simply puts the player in a situation where one is armed and in the same room as Three-Dog. Killing him actually effects the world: he'll no longer DJ GNR and his plot missions and sidequests will be inaccessable. However, this causes other characters to be annoyed with you at worst, and at best indifferent toward you after you've satiated that thirsty beggar a few times.

Maybe on my next playthrough I'll just rummage through Three-Dog's stuff and steal his wallet. That'll show him.