I seem to have gone off the console (in my case, the 360) for the portables (DS and PSP). The only game I’m playing on the console is Rock Band, and I’m not sure for how much longer. I’m trying to complete solo drums on hard and I’m held at the “nightmare” level by “Don’t Fear the Reaper” and the damned prog intro to the Boston song. It’s probably something about my brain that makes these two so hard; I had few issues with the other tracks at this difficulty level. But right now the gameplay is what could be described as brutally punishing, so I’m not sure how much longer I’ll hold onto this vain hope of completing the tour.
God of War: Chains of Olympus is mostly what I’m button mashing on the PSP. It’s pretty slick, i.e. well-produced, good difficulty curve, very similar to the PS2 experience of the original game. This isn’t my sort of game, but when something’s well done, I can deal with it. The PSP seems to provide a console experience, except portable, whereas DS games are more typically idiosyncratic thanks to the touchscreen and/or retro thanks to their 2D graphics.
I’m looking forward to Too Human when it comes out in a few weeks, and also to trying some iPhone games whenever I can actually find an iPhone.
Prolly the big ones are: a dashboard update to feature Mii-like avatars; a Netflix partnership – netflix members will be able to access the Netflix catalogue from their 360s; and Final Fantasy XIII will be on 360 as well as PS3.
The 360 will see an upgrade to 60GB of hard drive (it used to be 20). Also, there were release dates for Fable 2 (october), Gears of War 2 (november 7), and Resident Evil 5 (march 13 2009). A new Portal game, Portal: Still Alive, will come to Live Arcade sometime in ’08. The Rock Bandtrack list is revealed (“Livin’ on a Prayer”, sweet!) In non-sequel news, a karaoke game called Lips is on its way, and a camera-enabled game called You’re in the Movies.
There’s still supposed to be a big Bungie announcement today.
Some of these look pretty awesome. There are dedicated bass and guitar, a mic with controller buttons built in, a portable drum kit, and a deluxe drum kit with crazy fixin’s like a hi hat pedal – although I’m not even sure how that would work.
Beat “Vaseline” finally. To all you bitches who said I couldn’t do it, to all you haters out there, y’all can eat a warm di —
Oh wait. No one cares.
More Rock Band, again, mostly Band Tour, this time with occasional AR contributor Mags. We both foresook challenging difficulty levels for the larger cause, which was to win some roadies in some manner of rock-off. I didn’t know roadies were chattel, to be gambled away like so many head of bison. I’m also starting to realize that drumming is pretty good exercise for something that’s actually fun.
Flow on PSP. Have I mentioned this? It kicks all kinds of ass. I mean you can just play it on the web for free of course, and I know I’ve mentioned that before. But it’s perfectly suited for mobile use. I also love how it controls with one stick and one button. You can effectively control it with one hand while eating Cheetos™ Crunchits with the other.
I think Crisis Core may be losing me. I’ve put a few hours in now, and that might be all I have for it. It’s pretty good, just not awesome, and there are such games out there – too many, in fact.
So let’s see here. I didn’t get past “Vaseline” yet, but in my defense I haven’t played any solo tour since I last posted. I did do some band tour with Matt, who is a Guitar Hero guy and had never tried the Rock Band drums. He did really well. It’s actually much harder to play RB drums than guitar, I think, perhaps because even on easy you have to do a few things at once. But after a few songs he was all up in the 90%s.
We did one of those mystery sets, where you don’t know what the songs are going to be. At this point I was the drummer and was doing it on hard – our success would hinge on whether I had played the song before or not. The first two we nailed, the third – “Cherub Rock,” Smashing Pumpkins – kicked my ass. I failed about four times, and Matt’s patience was waning I’m sure, but on the fifth try I managed to hobble through and finish the song despite the angry crowd.
We also played some NHL 08, a game that had been gathering dust on my shelf since I got so pissed off at the failures of the Leafs that I tuned out of hockey altogether. It’s quite a good installment of the franchise – the stick control of shooting as well as movement is a nice touch. Matt would have murdered me and then made me cry if we had gone head-to-head, so we tried playing co-op. It’s fun, and challenging, and a bit frustrating. Part of it is that the game is simply not meant to be played this way, and it shows. If, say, I pass to a player that Matt isn’t controlling, it will put this player under his control – suddenly. If he was just pressing the button to change players but he gets switched before he hits it, the new player will wind up passing in a random direction, often icing the puck. This is annoying; the better behaviour would be to switch the pass recipient to my control, more like it plays in single player.
We lost a couple games in classic Leaf manner, so I suppose it was at least realistic.
Treat of the weekend: borrowing Nadine’s PS3 and firing up Metal Gear Solid 4. The PS3 is a magnificent piece of hardware (or this is what I was thinking until last night, when problems occurred). It’s packed to the gills with stuff that Microsoft will make you pay through the nose to get as an add-on, and hey did you know it plays Blu-Ray discs?
Oh, Metal Gear. The original Solid was one of those groundbreaking games on the original PlayStation – I loved that game, and I loved that machine. I mean I don’t even like stealth games at all; I got bored of Chaos Theory a few hours in. I think I actually love MGS games primarily because of the cutscenes, which transmit an auteur sensibility like few other games. That said, I wasn’t thrilled with MGS 2 and I don’t think I played 3. Anyway 4, so far, is a masterpiece. The gameplay is deep, fun and varied – there’s actually a lot more action in it this time around, which is excellent. And Old Snake is so exquisitely captured, both in voice by Mr. Hayter and in appearance by what have got to be the best animators in the business. This whole game is best understood as a methodical raising of the bar by which games will be judged. It’s a glove slap in the face of all other developers. In what other game could an 8-minute loading screen actually be a good thing? It’s rare that I disagree with what Tycho says, but this is one of those times.
Like I was saying I was all awesome drum tour on hard until I get to motherfucking “Vasoline”. I see it in the list, I’m like “aw yeah, I love that song, great break,” and then FAIL in the first 8 bars. That break did not like me. It just wouldn’t let me in. I practiced for an entire hour and still no MFing joy.
I hereby vow to not cut my hair until I DOMINATE Vaseline.
In other news, I’ve been toying around with some PSP games, which of course is postponing my completion of a swath of DS games including the excellent The World Ends With You. I’m a few hours into Crisis Core, which is pretty okay, and then I stop by EB Games again and pick up the Armored CorePSP version cause no one wants it and it’s only $15. About a half hour of play reveals it to be a long way from an A-list title and a long way from the mythic Great Mech Game that I know will be made someday but hasn’t been yet. Points off for not calling mechs “wanzers” like Front Mission, but extra points for the crazy deep garage. That’s what these games are all about – you can’t just slap a giant robot in a game and call it a day; if you can’t spend hours swapping out radiators and shoulder guns, might as well walk away with your head hanging low. Unlike Front Mission, the Armored Core series definitely transmits the might and majesty of these giant beasts, and both games give you the gearhead tweaking you crave, but Armored Core yawns when it comes to combat. It’s arena-style head-to-head tournaments and that’s it, no real campaign to speak of. If they could slap a proper story onto one of these games they could have a winner.
Like Sherman through the south I cut a swath through the videogame market, leaving the scorched and chapped husks of partially completed games in my wake. Is this article right? Is my attention span devastated by the internet? Isn’t it enough that I managed to put four whole hours into Crisis Core? Not continuously, though, I suppose…. sigh
Sigh. I’ve been working on a big review of GTA IV, but it’s taking me forever. I want to be thorough and fair. And you spend so many hours playing a game, it seems like a waste to review it in two paragraphs, so shit gets long. I also have perfectionist tendencies, so massaging every sentence of a multi-page review gets a little time-consuming and frustrating.
Anyway, long story short I decided I needed to stop making a big production out of writing for this site so much and just let some shit fly. I’ve been playing Rock Band solo drum tour; y’all still playing Rock Band? I sure as hell am. Besides actual band playing, I went through guitar solo tour on medium, about halfway through it again on hard and then switched to drums. I got some of those drum silencers (which work fabulously, by the way) and now I don’t feel neighbour guilt about banging the gongs for an hour or two here and there. I had done some drumming in band play so I just said fuckit, I’m doing this on hard, baby. And, wow. Best time ever. Look out, Pert and Bonham. I tore through the first couple cities without failing once. I even got 99% on one song. Now, shit toughened up for real around “Blitzkrieg Bop” – definitely had to practice a few. But I am committed to excellence now. And hey, it’s kind of a workout! Sorta.
Okay so this article about the strobe light and smoke machine for Rock Band kinda freaked me out. Should we really add smoke and super flashy lights to an already intense visual and aural experience?
Isn’t this just begging for seizures and lung-related mishappery?
I think so…
And gods know I love me the Rock Band, but seriously, how much more giant clunky plastic carp does one need for a complete gaming experience. I feel as though we are in the 80’s again…power gloves abound…
I was a Guitar Hero & Rock Band hater. Well, that’s too strong a word – how about skeptic.
Fear and Doubt
For one thing, after playing Guitar Hero a handful of times, the games seemed harder for actual musicians than those with untrained ears, as we are aware of the discrepancies between notes in our ears and things our fingers were supposed to do. A music game that’s harder for musicians? What’s up with that.
Rock Band has the same problems, of course, plus the added concern that when you play in a group, the game’s reliance on visuals means you all wind up zoning out staring at your fretboard on the screen, not interacting with your fellow musicians at all.
And beyond that, the games’ core concepts are something to fret and skeptify about. They celebrate performance over composition, hero over musician, cover band over creators. They offer only simplistic imitation, not the glory of creation.
Others are skeptical for different reasons, fearing that fans may have less reason to go and see actual live shows when they can noodle and fantasize in their dens. Now magazine recently worried that guitar hero might be “exploiting real musicians”. (ah, good ol’ worrywart Now Magazine.)
Nonetheless, having resolved to give ‘er a shot, I bought Rock Band, and enjoyed the group sessions, but started to worry that I had spent almost $200 on a party game that might get used a handful of times.
Well, this might be the rationalization talking, but consider me a convert. There’s nothing like actually playing a game to blow all the doubts away.
Hard Rock
Initially I liked a lot of things. The interface and design are great, the tracklist seemed good, the humour spot-on, and dressing up my rocker – named Hardd, and given to ludicrous glam outfits – was alarmingly entertaining.
But the thing that has really convinced me is not Hardd but ‘hard’ mode. Medium was much better than easy, in terms of how the inputs correspond to the music. Hard is even better. I had heard this before, that once I got to hard I’d like it more, and that’s absolutely true.
Once you’re on hard everything starts coming together. You have to actually practice, just like with real music. So you practice, you get to know the songs, and eventually you can play them without looking at the screen – if this was the case for your entire band, you’d do away with one concern about Rock Band right there. Anyway, in practice mode, you can select the section(s) of the song you wish to go over, handy for those nasty, nasty solos (more on that in a second). A side effect of that routine is you start learning the actual structure of songs, which is certainly a musical endeavour in and of itself.
It has been said that playing drums on expert is roughly equivalent to playing the actual drum part. So, you could teach yourself to play drums through this game. If that’s not of musical value, I don’t know what is.
Bottom line is, once you’ve learned a song on hard, you’ve got a greater knowledge and appreciation of that song than you would typically get by simply listening to it. It’s something that approaches what you’d get by actually learning the song on real guitar, drums, what have you.
More Fears Allayed
And let me confess that one of my doubts isn’t valid at all. Musical performance shouldn’t be categorically considered inferior to composition. This is a rockist assumption perhaps; since the Beatles pioneered the reliance on original compositions, we’ve been considering musicians who don’t write their own material to be inferior. But no one judges Yo-Yo Ma that way, and we still celebrate Sinatra, etc. etc. Just because Rock Band and Guitar Hero don’t allow composition, that doesn’t mean they’re not musical. There is plenty of musicality in learning and performing music.
And the games’ potential impact upon the music industry? Well, you have two trends. One is people going out to Rock Band and Guitar Hero nights at bars. It certainly gets rid of the ‘parents’ basement’ category of concern. I suppose you could still worry that such nights sap audiences from actual music performance, if you’re the worrying type, but that seems petty and misguided given the thrust of the second trend, namely, people actually spending money on downloadable songs for Guitar Hero and Rock Band. At $2 a song, i.e. more than the going rate for MP3 downloads, people are perfectly willing to pay for music in this context, which is no small feat considering current music industry market conditions. Bands like Motley Crue are releasing new singles in Rock Band, and smaller bands are gaining exposure and fame via their inclusion even in the download section. And with full album releases now upon us, shit is just getting hecticker.
The upshot is that these games represent a significant new trend, not just in gaming (we knew that already) but within the music industry at large, an industry starving for significant new trends that don’t involve lawsuits and plummeting sales.
Solos and Composition
Let me just make one small complaint, though, about how these games handle solos. Even the least imaginative cover band doesn’t ape a song’s guitar solo note for note, yet these games expect you to do just that. Given that both drum and vocal parts in Rock Band periodically encourage you to improvise, surely the same policy could be applied to guitar solos. I know things don’t work the same way with guitars, and this would take some new code, but it certainly would add a new aspect to the gameplay that would be in keeping with rock tradition.
And that said, it’s only a couple of leaps from there to full-on composition through these interfaces. Again, the drums and vocals are already there; it’s the guitar and bass that are constrained by their limited number of ‘frets’. But even mapping common chords to the guitar buttons could allow for some basic Ramones-style songwriting. If you let players choose the button mapping and key beforehand, you could have an incredible tool for idea sketching, improvisation and musical collaboration. I know that games more devotedto that exist and more are on their way, but still.
To sum up: Rock Band & Guitar Hero: good. Past me: wrong. Present me: awesome. I actually enjoy changing opinions on things, especially from the negative to the positive, as it’s far more illuminating than just sticking to your guns. So I’m thrilled to have been wrong.
Plus, it means I get to enjoy my newly-downloaded Sabbath pack. Despite the near-impossible solos.
This really should be a WTF Wednesday post because it’s just so stupid. Why would you deny the basic and essential features for a game like Rock Band?
Stephen Totilo over at MTV Multiplayer got some answers and seems to think that there is an online future for the game on the Wii. I say if it’s not there when the gate opens trust nothing! All my friends who have the game have already downloaded additional songs. It’s like one of the first things you do! There’s five extra songs in this version. Five. Because that is a satisfying number.
We recorded this yesterday after a nice Rock Band session; it’s Mags Nadine and D and we discuss that very same band-rocking game, party games, casual games, genre in games, and more about Playstation Network and Xbox Live Arcade games. Plus, many tangents! And a botched opening.
Just saw this over on Kotaku and I am totally stoked. Loving the songs themselves? Not so much (I don’t recognize any of the three tracks offered). Loving the idea of giving away DLC tracks with the sountrack CD? Abso-freakin’-lutely. I had a similar thought myself back when I first heard that Harmonix would be offering complete albums as DLC for Rock Band. How awesome would it be to pick up the new “insert name of band here” album, and along with it get the entire album as playable content for RB/GH3? Sure, there’d be a premium price for the DLC version, but that’s nothing new; special editions for new CDs abound and we gladly pay more for an extra live track or two. Now, instead of a live track I get to play along with the band? Count me in.
I’ve always been a fan of this kind of “trans-media” entertainment, and this announcement gives me hope for bigger and better things to come.
