Two Ways To Play

In the world of video games, the spectrum spans between two types of players. There are the casual ones who will play a little of everything that comes into contact with their system, and when they play, they just go until they feel like stopping, and then move on. Then there are the hardcore ones who will start a game and play it to its absolute conclusion. This type does not play just any game, but carefully select their next conquest like a general surveying the enemy. Your average gamer will range somewhere between the two extremes tending towards hardcore on some types of games and casual on others.

I was recently friended by someone who I failed to note played video games and even asked me about the Xbox on a prior occasion. Obviously, this time, I gave him my tag and once he sent the request, I was able to stalk ... er, I mean review the games he has played. Where my list is at 99, his is sitting at 442. Obviously, a part of this is because he has had his Xbox for longer than I've had mine (I found his oldest achievement to be earned on November 20, 2006 vs my December 25, 2011), but based on how incomplete his list of games is, I would put him as a casual gamer.

His list of games is littered with sort of begun games all nestled down around a handful of achievements with less than half being above the fifty percent mark. His overall percentage is 37, which considering just how many games he has on his tag is not exactly terrible. I noted a few games here and there that he was really dedicated to, completing them into the 80 and 90 percentiles, and he did complete 20 of them. None of this is meant to put him down or cause any insult, I promise. It simply indicates what amounts to an overall casual gamer.

I have another friend who recently found the true achievement site, and is casually working to get a higher completion on some of his games, but he suffers from a lack of play time, and as such, many of his games are still fairly low, but he is fortunate to only have 27 of them on his list to work with, but he has completed 3 of them so far.

Personally, I was casual for about a year before I discovered a fascinating achievement site at trueachievements.com where I completely junked out over the games and became a bit more hardcore (though not before I had all the earmarks of casual on my gamertag). As such, I gathered a handful of just really stupid games that I had rented and really disliked, and if I want to bring my overall percentage up, I now have to revisit them. Of my 99 games, I have a completion percentage of 47.89, and my overall goal is to eventually hit 80. I do have 50% on more than half of them, and I hope to hit a 50% overall rating around the end of the month, though by the looks of it, it will be a few days into November before I hit it. That site has some sweet tracking tools that I easily obsess over.

When you think about it, I'm sure we all start out as the casual gamer type regardless of whether it is actual games or other things in life. We begin by exploring and trying different things and build up a little experience with this and that before finding what we like and settling in. When we find our hardcore, we generally focus that attention on a small subset of where we start, much like the friend with nearly 450 games. He tried a lot, but devoted his attention to a certain type of game that he finds himself good with.

There are people out there who have changed gamer tags when they've moved from casual to hardcore so that they can control their completion percentages and ensure that they fully complete everything they touch and more carefully screen their games. While this is possible in the Xbox world, it hides a little of the truth of one's past by painting them as a perfect player when they really aren't. If I went to a new gamertag just to get 100%, I would have to replay so many games that I would lose more time than I would gain by starting new stuff. Yes, my percentage would be higher, but at a cost I'm not willing to pay. My tag with all its ups and downs is an accurate reflection of my Xbox gaming history, and really, there is nothing wrong with it.

This also serves as a sort of life metaphor where you can never escape from your past or even hide it as it all becomes a part of you. Yes, you have that Yoostar game on there with 12 achievements you can never attain. Yes, Transformers: The Game is there will all its gloriously horrible play control, and you never want to see it again. And yes, Child of Eden will forever taunt you with its achievements that are so hard to get, its True Achievement ratings are some of the highest on the site. Yet, how does this differ from bad decisions made and learned from in real life? Maybe you should have done this or shouldn't have done that, and all you can do is move on.

Naturally, the biggest difference is that anyone can look at your Xbox gaming history in all its glorious detail where your mind can be a closed book keeping your history carefully hidden. But just like having the Michael Jackson Experience and Just Dance Kids 2 in your gaming history doesn't make you a dance game enthusiast (ok, yes, and that Dance Central 3 sitting at 94%, whatever), elements of your past do not necessarily define your person at present.

I kind of went down a philosophical rabbit hole on this post, but no matter. Your past can make you who are, but it doesn't necessarily define you. Be yourself.

More Achievement Talk

So as I mentioned, I am an Xbox 360 achievement hunter. I love playing video games, and I love the extra layer of playability and gamerscore aspect of the achievements. As such, I have recently been going through games in which I have gained at least one achievement to see what I need to look into completing or playing more of. But like most gamers out there who played before they understood the far-reaching consequences, I have a few games in my list that I really wish I could get rid of. I am not going to create a new gamertag and start over though. I will live with my game choices and move onward.

Most of these games came out of renting games to see if I would like them or not (such as with the aforementioned Child of Eden). This is why I have games like this:

I'll admit that it was fun.

And this:

I've mentioned the princesses before, right?

The Kinect is tailor made to do these dance games that read the movement of the entire body and evaluate it to see if it matches what the pros are doing on screen. However, the prospect of dancing 1,000 kid songs in every language available on the disk to get all those achievements is not appealing to me. Yet, it is in my list, so I am stuck with it. If you don't play a game, and therefore, have 0 achievements, you can delete it. If you so much as grab one single achievement, you must continue to live with the shame of a single cheevo on that game in your game list. This versus the other shame of having that game in your list with a 100% completion on it. I'm not sure which is worse. That you can blame the kids for playing it on your profile or confirming that you committed the time to complete it.

Then there are games like this:

Tragically, the stare-off mini-game was cut from the final product.

I know what you're thinking: "But that's Transformers! It's gotta be awesome." That's exactly what I thought. I played this game on the Wii, and hated it. The controls were a nightmare. Then I got an Xbox, and figured that since I'd be using a controller, the issues I had with the Wii controls would be a thing of the past, and they were. However, the general play controls were still hideous, but that could just be me on car games since that's where I noticed most of my woes.

However, that game now has 2 achievements unlocked on my profile, so at some point (after what will likely be a sanity break after surviving Just Dance Kids 2), I will rent (or buy, if it is cheaper than renting) this game and try to get myself to 80%, which is my overall completion goal. Its problems are similar to this one:

Only the cover looks fun. Inside
this box is only tears.

When you say play control, you assume control is part of that equation. 2 achievements later, we decided this game was for the birds. Now it has its place of shame on my game list as well, waiting to be brought back to life (probably after one imbibes enough alcohol to not care how bad the controls are).

But beyond games that can actually be finished, there is this one:

I will credit it for the princesses' love of tribbles
before they saw Star Trek.

I've written before about the woes of this one. The game contains 10 (yes, 10) unobtainable achievements. An unobtainable achievement is a completionist's worst nightmare because that means that no matter what you do in this game, there are 10 achievements that you will never be able to get. I can get my 80% because I can get 40 out of 50 when I get to it, but 100% is impossible because the game's servers were taken down and haven't come back.

To my credit, I will revisit every one of these eventually to try and bring them to at least 80%, but I wish each and every one of these were gone from my list of games. Unfortunately, Microsoft has no intention of allowing people to do this at any time. Bummer.

Disney Infinity

So a few weeks ago, Disney Infinity hit the shelves. I had a pre-order on the thing, and immediately dropped too much money on it because there were some good sales on its stuff (seriously, the figures and playsets were half off). The expectation of the world was "Disney's Skylanders," but after much playing of the game, I can tell you that it is definitely not Skylanders.

Now, the "buy stuff to play" is totally the Skylanders model that Activision saved its can with a couple years ago, but the game it is attached to is nothing short of genius. I sat down expecting to play a linear, story-driven game that progressed, predictably, through some Disney themed worlds, but instead, I was dropped into an open world where I was free to build and change it however I wished. I dropped on a playset, and while I was initially disappointed that I couldn't bring Sully from Monsters Inc into the Pirates of the Caribbean, I found a very expansive world to play within those playsets.

To clarify the playsets vs. the open world you start with: the base world of Disney Inifinity is whatever you make of it. They have a pre-built world to run around in and collect whatever, but they also have a ton of "toys" to add to it, and you have total control over that initial pre-build as well. Additional toys can be gained by playing the playsets allowing you to add everything that you used or found in the playsets to your overworld (I use the term loosely, since the game actually treats the "toy box" and the "playsets" as mutually exclusive elements that share the "toys").

The playsets that come with the game and that you can purchase are huge. The last two Skylanders games had additional packs with some characters and a special item that gave you an extra level to play. This level usually took about 30 minutes or so to work through, and maybe a little longer if you were really thorough about it. But like most of the Skylanders levels, once you were through it, you were done. The levels are all very linear and story-driven.

Each Disney Infinity playset will take a gamer 4-5 hours to fully complete. They are also open world, meaning that you can freely roam the levels to do side missions for people, play challenges, pick up collectibles that give you more toy box toys to build and play with or work on the storyline. They also had the good sense to package characters with the playset that you can't get individually, so you don't accidentally pick up, say, Lightning McQueen only to find he is also in the playset and end up with two.

The meaning of Infinity, though, comes from that toy box. The princesses got into that and played for hours. Rock girl played on one of the playsets here and there (because it had horses as toys to collect), but primarily played in the toy box just building and creating. I'm pretty much the only one to spend a lot of time in the playsets, though I've had my turn in the toy box as well. In fact, the toy box actually has 4 player support through Xbox Live, and I did play it that way one time.

What did four grown men do one Friday evening on Xbox Live? Why create a row of fans in the toy box and cruise their little cars back and forth to level up after gathering the achievements for playing a 4 player game and stacking four characters on top of each other (it was 4 Jack Sparrows, since you asked). Oh, why did we cruise back and forth over a row of fans? Well, little tip for you, here. Doing car tricks and sticking the landing is worth experience in the game. If you do nothing but tricks over a "bridge" of fans that keep you in the air, you'll gather a ton of experience. Since hitting level 15 with three characters is an achievement, it saves a whole lot of time. The playsets don't give you much in the way of experience for the upper levels. They'll get you to 9 or 10 on a play through, but I played the Monsters University playset for 3 and a half hours with Sully who started and ended on level 13. A few flights back and forth on my fans and ten minutes later, level 15.

My determination on this game? It's incredible. Very fun to play both in the playset and toy box mode, though I would have liked to see a little more freedom to play with any character in the play sets. With a lot of stuff to do in the playsets along with the infinite creative possibilities in the toy box, This game rapidly demonstrated its long-playable value and fun factor in my book. How does it compare to Skylanders? Well, the two only really compare when it comes to the fact that you have to buy the figurines to play the game. Beyond that business model (let's face it; that's what it is), they are very different games to the point of trying to compare Assassin's Creed to Gears of War. They're both third person perspective games, but one is an open world stealth game while the other is a linear, story-driven shooter. That's kind of how Infinity is to Skylanders. One is very open world and encourages free play while the other is very linear and story-driven to get you into the thick of battle ASAP.

What makes a family pick one over the other is where you want to spend all that hard earned cash when it comes to the figures and such since both are very expensive games to play. You can easily spend hundreds to get everything. I suppose it all depends on what you're looking for. I definitely think Infinity will cut into Skylanders' profits this year though, because Infinity isn't just another piece of Disney fluff. It's actually worth playing.

Magic 2013

I believe I've mentioned Games with Gold before, and I've diligently at least purchased every single title (whether I've actually downloaded/played it yet or not). So far, they've been an ok mix of things I've known about and other things I'd not considered, but this month, they've got me.

Stepping into the wayback machine, you may be aware that from 1993-95, I was in the U.S. Army Band as a trombone player (MOS Specialty 02E), and while I was in, I got hooked on a collectible card game called Magic: The Gathering. I played the crap out of this game and spent a ton of money on it. Thing is, Wizards of the Coast wasn't the recipient of most of my money. Instead, it was other players and card shops who got my hard earned cash because I wanted to get the coolest and rarest cards to complete my dream decks. My claim to fame was the ultimate discard deck that took down just about everyone it touched (except that one guy who played protection from black, though he conceded the first round when I made him discard his key card). Ah, those were the days.

Since then, I discarded every Magic card I owned (with the exception of some I placed in a binder as mementos such as a complete set of the Revised (otherwise known as the 3rd) Edition), declaring it far too expensive to play any longer. Time passed, but as time tends to do, old memories fade and sometimes, old friends come back. It worked for Doctor Who when I revisited that old friend a few years back, and now, Magic is back when it came up as a freebie in Games With Gold. I downloaded it and immediately set my completion percentage back 20 achievements (25 with the DLC I'll probably spring for).

The first thing it asked was how much Magic you've played: None, a little, or a lot. Well, I played a lot from 1994-1997, but none since, so I said a little. Overnight, I remembered how to play, learned the new terminology, and picked up 9 achievements. I've been pretty handily stomping the computer, and I'll have to take on those "beat a player on xBox Live" achievements here eventually. I figure I'll beat the campaigns and other "versus the computer" stuff first, and then hit up other players. Should be fun, and I'm kind of excited by the prospect. Since this is a free game to all Gold players, there should also be a ton of people out there playing it.

Where does that leave me on the original card game? Well, back in the day, the game was sold in starter decks of 60 cards and booster packs of 15. "Starter deck" is really a misnomer, since while you can play a game with a starter deck, it would be a royal mess of an attempt since the cards and lands are completely random. I've learned that modern magic is sold in intro decks, which are a complete pre-built decks that are immediately playable and require no real deck-building skill to just start. That was what always got people in the beginning. How do I start? How do I build a deck? Now that I have a zillion cards, what do I do with them?

Deck-building is a skill acquired through trial and error. You throw a bunch of like-minded cards together and hope for the best. When you're playing and find a card you hate staring back at you, you toss it and put in something else. The goal is to get a collection where you always have a card you like in your hand. Wizards of the Coast took care of that first, most difficult, step of the like-minded cards, and from there, it's up to you to change them out to make it your own.

Will I play the card game again? I'm tempted. I figured out while playing this computer version that I went about it the wrong way all those years ago. I obsessed over buying the best cards without playing the game for the fun factor and collecting whatever happened to be in the packs you can buy. Granted, I grabbed my share of random mixes, and oh yes, I bought entire boxes of boosters, but I was going for quantity as well as those precious rares instead of just using what I had on-hand to just play. If I went into playing again, I'd probably grab a couple pre-made decks of new cards, pick up some bulk randoms (Amazon has them in droves - 1000 cards for $20 and that sort of thing), and then set myself a periodic spending limit to not surpass for whatever else I wanted.

Who would I play? Same people I play all my other games with. Got the Princesses, the Queen, and the Engineer at the very least. I have my own CCG that I've been developing, and I know I'll need to take it into the world to show off, so having another game to tote with me to fit in would be useful. This is all musings at present, and I'm just playing the Xbox version for the moment, but the future is out there.

An Xbox Prediction

When I was resurrecting this blog again, I scanned through older posts and I ran across this one from December, 2011 only a week or so before we unwrapped our Xbox 360 for Christmas. In this post, I noted that my father-in-law made the prediction that if we got an Xbox, I would all but stop playing the Wii. Here is the actual outcome of that statement.

As of today, two years later, I actually have all but stopped playing the Wii, but not for the reason that he suggested, which was that once I experienced games on a superior system, I would leave the silly Nintendo behind. In the end, it was less about the games and more about the infrastructure. The Xbox has a massive online infrastructure that allows social gaming along with its massive achievement system. I play multiplayer games with people not in my living room, which was a requirement on the Wii. That is cool. Completed the Gears of War 3 campaign on hardcore recently with a friend of mine (we're presently working on 50 waves of Horde mode), and playing through the Gears franchise with him has allowed us to chat pointlessly more than we ever did face to face.

I've mentioned the introvert bit before, right? On a scale of 1 to 10, I rank an 11.

Beyond that social aspect, it's the achievements that draw me in. When playing on the Wii and every system before that, you play games and as soon as that final boss falls, you're done. There are other games that allow some measure of item collection, and the Lego games actually had a completion percentage, but unless you were just obsessive (which I wasn't really), you normally just called it done when you watched the credits. Just getting through the game was usually enough. There was no incentive to do it again because why? I have a hundred other games right behind you waiting to suck up my valuable time. (That's not an exaggeration.)

But the Xbox is different. Beyond playing just the game, it gives specific achievements that you gather while playing and specific tasks to complete as part of the game. The achievements drew me in to the point that I have even replayed some games I finished on the Wii just to get the Gamerscore (again, Legos). Yes, the graphics are exceptional, but I play games for the games, not for the graphics, and that extra layer of challenge is really something. Once I get that 100%, I find playing the games with others very enjoyable (such as Uno Rush), and achieving that 100% makes you actually quite skilled at the game (I'm a rather formidable opponent on Uno Rush).

So did his prediction come true? Sort of. If there were a FPS on the Wii and Xbox, which would I go with? Hard to say, to be honest, since I'm not a huge fan of that game genre. My stats show an overabundance of Action-Adventure games, actually, which are the type of games best played with a regular old controller anyway. The shooter games I have for the Xbox aren't available on the Wii. At this point in history, however, I would probably get the Xbox version, both for the achievements, and (I do have to admit) the superior graphics, since 3x the resolution really adds a lot to the games. (I tried to play the new Tomb Raider game via RCA cables instead of the HD I'm used to, and the menus were nearly unreadable at the lower resolution.)

I will also note that for the first year after getting the Xbox, I regularly switched between it and the Wii, playing both systems. I had a lot of games to complete. The real switch to just the Xbox happened when I requested the next Lego game (I think it was Lego Batman 2) for the Xbox instead of the Wii. I don't know that I've played a Wii game this year at all.

So a lot changes in two years. That was to be expected. The Wii is actually on its way out completely, having been supplanted with the Wii U, and I don't see myself getting that system unless they really blow me away with a game that I must have. The Kinect on the 360 is serving the interactive purpose at this point, and it does a great job. The next gen of Xbox has an even more improved Kinect right down to detecting your heart rate, so that's a tough act to follow. I suspect Nintendo has its work cut out for them in not only that department, but also in the social aspect. I've not heard of Wii achievements or equivalent yet. The PlayStation Network has a trophy system, which is just like the Xbox achievements, but I believe the Wii is still isolated (correct me if I'm wrong).

But this will change someday as well. After all, I played the 8-bit Nintendo once, and then moved to the SNES. Picked up a Nintendo 64, then a Gamecube, then a Wii, and in each change, the new system supplanted the old after a time. Someday, I'll get a system from the next generation, and the 360 will fade into the shadows (but probably less so due to the achievement system that does carryover over to the next Xbox as your Live Gamertag lives on).

Time is a cruel master, but as the new replaces the old, we must always try to keep up with the changes.

Child of Eden

As you must be aware, I am a big gamer. Been playing video games since the Atari 2600, actually completed the original Contra game in two lives (died once at the boss at the end, ugh), and have owned nearly every Nintendo system up to the Wii (can't see any games I want to play on the Wii U). I am presently embroiled in the Xbox 360 where I am definitely an achievement hunter, though a friend of mine calls me a achievement whore, which is completely untrue since I really enjoy playing the games but the achievements give me an extra layer of play. I've only had the Xbox since December 2011, but I'm doing all right for a veritable newb on it.

Anyway, what I'm coming to you on here is a game called Child of Eden.

Pictured: What Dante saw on his way down.

This game boats Kinect controls on a rail shooter that is reminiscent of the old Mind's Eye videos. It's a visual trip and rather enjoyable to watch. However, as a Kinect game, it was a nightmare to play. Normally, Kinect games can wear you out because of their physical nature (some more than others). This one just left me sore. That was last January (as in 2012).

However, since I took on a mantle of achievement hunter, I started going through all the games I'm stuck with and reborrowing/renting them to see about getting a few more achievements here and there. My Mixer friend had this game and absolutely hated it as well. I did some reading and found someone loved the game Rez HD, which was the precursor to this game and made by the same developer, and they played through this one as well. They really liked it, but played it all with a controller instead of the Kinect. When they talked about the Kinect controls, they indicated that it was interesting, but recommended using the controller the first time. I figured I'd give it a try, and my friend was all too happy to be rid of it.

I read up on the achievements, popped it in and had a go.

Mmm, trippy...

It was easier to play, but man, it is a very difficult game. I haunt a site called trueachievements.com, and that site gives what's called a true achievement ratio based on how many gamers have acquired a particular achievement versus how many have started the game (started is defined as having at least one achievement). Generally, the higher the ratio, the harder it is to get the achievement.

Child of Eden has some of the hardest achievements among every game I currently have started, which is 96 of them as of the time of this writing. Yeah, out of 96 games, Child of Eden dominates the upper end of the scale. Sometimes, this just indicates that people start games but never finish them, but in the case of this game, I believe it. not only is it devilishly hard just to finish a level (on normal, by the way; there is a hard level as well), there are achievements for hitting every enemy and getting persistent multipliers on every level on both difficulties.

I tried variously going for all enemies and high score on level one. Have yet to do it. There is an achievement for gathering all collectibles. This one involves playing all five levels...12 times each. I really should have included that one in my dumb achievements post. Talk about artificially extending gameplay.

What do I think of the game itself? Well, the graphics are gorgeous. The actual game mechanics are nice and easy to learn. When I set the difficulty on free play (can't die), it's kind of nice. But man, trying to play the game itself is nightmarish, probably because I keep getting wiped out. And go ahead and try the Kinect, but expect to play the game with the controller.

Images from Child of Eden

Skylanders Vs. Disney

A few months back I wrote about the next generation of Playstation vs. Xbox and how backwards compatibility should have worked its way into the systems. Here we have another choice before us in regards to the swappable games that are coming to the table this year. A couple years back, Skylanders swept the world and parents groaned at 32 characters priced at $10 each. The next year, they introduced Giants priced at $15 each along with a new set of characters. As such, a fortune was spent on these things.

Disney has decided, as Disney tends to do, to use this tech and make their own swappable game called Disney Infinity, which takes their extensive catalog of characters and makes them into figurines you can play with in their game. It's going up against Skylanders 3, called Swap Force, which takes that tech a step further by allowing certain characters to have mix and match arms and legs. The catch for this is that the new Skylanders games takes a new portal. It might or might not take the old characters (probably will), but that means for all intents and purposes, we (who did purchase the last two games) will be starting over since our old portal won't work on the new game.

With Giants, the old portal worked, and the game functioned as a sort of upgrade to the first one, so we just got the game with the included Giant but no portal, and simply built up the collection while using our old Skylanders. Now, with the need to start over, we're leaning toward the Disney game for its familiarity and just having a new game to play instead of a rehash of an old one. And since Skylanders was expensive to play, we will likely go with only one of the games since we'll want all of the characters. However, unlike the way we did the Skylanders, where everyone got whatever characters they wanted (meaning we have multiples of several characters) and maintained their one character, we're only going to get one set of characters for everyone to use. Cuts down on that expense and the question of who wants what. We see one we don't have, and we'll pick it up.

Will we get the Skylanders Swap Force eventually? I couldn't say at this point. We're kind of over it and looking forward the allure of the Disney version of the figurine game.

Games With Gold

I've spoken before of being a big gamer. The image there in the upper right hand corner of this page (at least as of right now) is my Xbox Live avatar that will update as I change his appearance on Xbox Live (yeah, I know how cool that is). In fact, I woke up just this morning and played a little on Lego Harry Potter Years 5-7 and nabbed me another achievement in doing so. Nothing starts the day out like an achievement...well, I suppose a lot of things would be better than that, but when you normally get up too late to do anything, you take what you can get, I suppose. Anyway...

Today is a special day for people who have Xbox Live Gold. Twice a month, Microsoft has taken it upon themselves to give away a game to everyone who has the Gold membership in a program they call Games With Gold. They select which game is free, of course, but you purchase it from the download store via Xbox Live, and it is yours whether you actually download it or not. One of the game in July was Assassin's Creed II, and while I've already gotten 100% on that game, I still "purchased" it so it was in my purchase history and if I so desired, I could download it at any time, and not concern myself with keeping the physical disc.

Game they've offered to their subscribers so far were Fable III in June, which I will play when I get through Fable II (that I paid all of $5 for quite some time ago ... I'm really behind on my games); Defense Grid Awakening (an excellent tower defense I've nearly completed) and Assassin's Creed II in July; and now in August, we got Crackdown for the first half of the month, and today, the game is actually a two for one in that we get the retail game, Dead Rising 2, and also the Xbox Live Arcade prequel Dead Rising 2: Case Zero.

I've not played Crackdown yet, and I probably won't get to Dead Rising 2 (either one of them) for some time either. This is primarily because I'm working to bring my overall completion percentage up, and the only way to do that is to play the games currently present in my profile. If I were to start yet another game, that would add X achievements to the total and bring down my percentage until I work through those achievements. Now, I've read about both of these games and I'm honestly looking forward to playing them, but even in hobbies, you gotta make your priorities.

Because video gaming is a serious hobby.

Just ... five ... more ... minutes.

No, it's not. I will be the first to tell you that nothing I do in the video game world affects my real life. Well, except for chatting with people I know over an Xbox Live Party. That's still pretty cool, and kinda builds those social points ... er, because life is totally a game of the Sims ... or something.

Obligatory public service announcement.
Oh, look, a GameCube! Mmmm, GameCube...

Eight Stupid Xbox 360 Achievements

I’m a gamer. Once the princesses go to bed, and the Queen has realized that my stare has that glassy look to it, I’m left to my video games sometime between 9pm and midnight. I play because I enjoy it, and when I discovered that the Xbox games have all those wonderful achievements, I quickly entered the ranks of the achievement hunters. 

Some of you may not be aware of these achievements, so I’d like to let both of you know that most of the achievements have been related to actually achieving something, such as beating the game, tracking progress, accumulating collectibles, and outscoring other people on Xbox Live as well as highlighting facets of the game you might otherwise miss (would not have caught that you could throw sand in an enemy’s face in Assassin’s Creed II without them), but in other cases, achievements feel like the developers have run out of ideas or were simply high when they made the list. Accomplishing these tasks in game are worth something called Gamerscore, which is little more than bragging rights, though Xbox has had a rewards program that gave you a little 2% discount if you hit 25,000G along with a couple of other very minor perks.

This is not a comprehensive list of the best or worst of these achievements gone weird, but more or less those that I’ve run across in my own gaming that I thought were just strange or really pointless. 

Skylanders: Spyro’s Adventure: True Portal Master

Unlock all other achievements

The first Skylanders game brought some piece of the video game into the real world in the form of $10 figurines that everyone had to have to the extent that stores were sold out of them for months after the Christmas of 2011. The game had the usual achievement fare of completing levels, opening bonus areas, and completing the final with a single Skylander, but then there was this rather pointless one. The game has 38 total achievements, and no one who plays the game will ever have 37 because the final achievement, worth a whopping 80 Gamerscore, is to accumulate all of the other achievements.

What’s wrong with this is that the point of accumulating achievements is to get them all, so having an achievement whose sole purpose is to count the other achievements is a waste of space. Why not just spread those points out to the other ones?

Batman: Arkham City: Storyteller

Have 12 murderous dates with Calendar Man

Arkham City was the follow-up game to Arkham Asylum, and both of them are really exceptional to play. Because the game is a open world sandbox environment, the achievements are generally related to gathering collectibles, hitting milestones, and completing the myriad of missions that are presented. This is one of those missions (sort of). 

Calendar Mar is located in a jail cell under the police station, and to get this achievement, you have to visit him on some very specific days – 12 of them, obviously. Which days, you ask? A holiday in each of the 12 months of the year, of course. This means to properly acquire this achievement, you have to interrupt your holidays to see Calendar Man and chat over the course of an entire year. Miss the holiday? Well, there’s another one next year.

Or you can do what most people do: disconnect the Xbox from the net and change the date. It honestly makes more sense.

Portal 2: Professor Portal

After completing co-op, complete Calibration Course online with a friend who hasn't played before

The first Portal game was genius, and the second took it to new heights with a hilariously involved storyline and some mind-bending puzzles along with an ingenious co-op mode. Not only that, but you could play this co-op mode over Xbox Live and lose that annoying split-screen. Then you look through the achievements and after you chuckle at hugging three people over Live, you get to this one.

After you complete the co-op game, you have to locate someone who has never played co-op and complete the Calibration course. This is not as easy as it sounds. The achievement site I frequent has an entire message board dedicated to finding Portal 2 co-op virgins whose “cake has not yet been tasted.” I get that they wanted to highlight the online aspect of the game, but randomly finding someone who bought Portal 2 and never played the co-op is no small task.

I found a friend of mine at work who had just started the campaign portion of the game, and commanded him to not start that co-op without me. Yes, I said commanded. What?

Rabbids: Alive and Kicking: 3 of them

The Raving Rabbids series is supposed to be stupid humor. They don’t pretend to be anything else. It’s all about burping, farting, and slapstick, and the Kinect version of the game holds true to that. In fact, this particular game should have been bundled with the Kinect since it uses the peripheral to an extent that no other Kinect game I've played does. It would stand to reason, then, that the achievements would have some silliness to them. In fact, a lot of the achievements involve doing exactly the opposite of what you’re supposed to do in the mini-games. Silly digresses into pointless, however, when the first achievement anyone gets is this one.

Welcome to HQ

Launch the game for the first time

Yes, that’s an achievement for managing to start the game. Well done, soldier, you found the word “start” on the screen, and dutifully followed its instructions. Why might this be here? Oh, there is a possible, quite diabolical reason, for it. You see, when you start a game you can remove it from your list of game sin Xbox Live provided you haven't acquired any achievements. Once you get even one achievement, you're stuck with it forever. This is why I have The Michael Jackson Experience in my game list. One stupid achievement, and there is no deleting it...ever.

Anyway, if you managed to start the game, and forget to quit, you might just come up with this one. 

Marathon

Play for 2 hours, 3 minutes and 59 seconds in one session.

The joke, of course, is that at the time of the game’s creation, the best marathon time was 2:03:59, so they decided to tell everyone to play a physical video game for over 2 hours in one session. Still, that one isn’t as good as this one.

Still At It?

Play 6 months after your first game

Like in Arkham City’s storyteller, one is tempted to fiddle with the dates.

Most Lego Games: Use One Character to Defeat Another

The Lego games have always had a wonderful sense of humor that they inject into culture’s biggest franchises, and along with that humor, they throw in some achievements that make you feel led by the nose to do something that you would never do in the course of playing the game. These involve choosing two specific characters, loading a specific level, and then using one character to kill the other. Sometimes, as in the case of Harry Potter: Years 1-4’s Role Reversal, doing this involves finding a very specific character only available very late in the game, such as Voldemort, who is only available after you've completed the game to 100%, but most of the time, the characters are just match-ups the creators thought would be funny. Normally, you tend to be respectful of your pathetic AI sidekick and just leave him alone to chase butterflies, but to grab that low-hanging Gamerscore fruit, you have to get violent on your sidekick, such as with:

Lego Star Wars: The Complete Saga: Love Is…

Crossover: Destroy Jango Fett with Boba Fett.

or

Lego Batman 2: Green Lantern's Light

Defeat Sinestro as Green Lantern

And while we’re on the subject of Lego…

Lego Harry Potter Years 1-4: Quiet, Please!

Turn the sound and music down to 0 in the options menu whilst in the library

I want you to read that very carefully. The developers want you to be aware that you can turn down the music and sound effects from the options menu. Normally, they include that sort of information in the manual no one ever reads, or that they stumble across exactly one time while looking for the red brick menu and accidentally hit options instead, but this one decided that turning down the internal game volume was so important, it warranted a special achievement to have you do it...in a very specific place in the game.

Fable 3: We Need Guns, Lots of Guns

Collect all 50 legendary weapons. They won’t all appear in your world, so trade with other Heroes!

Oh yes, the exclamation point is part of the wording on this one. Fable III has some wacky achievements anyway, such as marrying a friend’s character over Xbox Live and having a baby with them, but this one is especially warped. The game, itself, only contains 24 of these legendary weapons, and they appear randomly meaning that your playthrough and your friend’s playthrough might gather different weapons, and the social aspect of them game allows you to trade these things. But do the math there and understand that everyone else is working to get these together. In addition, you have to have all of these in your possession, not having simply owned it at one time or another, so you have to hoard them until you have the achievement. 

Sure, marrying your buddy is weird, but collecting an item that doesn’t exist in your own game is beyond that, in my opinion.

Dance Central 3: We’re Friends, Right?

Link Dance Central 3 to your Facebook account.

This is another one of those achievements that is intended to highlight an aspect of the game that you might have otherwise overlooked, and I picked it over a couple of other achievements that are also a bit silly such as skipping songs and playing for three weekends in a row because it involves the world outside the game. Sure, Facebook is the world’s largest social media platform, and the chances that your average player has a Facebook account is almost guaranteed, but to require someone who is playing a game to have an account there seems over the top to me.

Yoostar 2: Red Carpet Superstar

Achieve 2,500,000 Fame.

I throw this one in last because when the game came out, it was an achievement in the vein of the Gears of Wars franchise’s “Seriously” achievements (no, just kidding, nothing is that crazy), but what happened with Yoostar made this one much, much worse. Fame on Yoostar was supposed to have been acquired through posting the crappy movie scene remakes you made on your Kinect to their servers and people vote on them or something like that. I don’t really know because the Yoostar servers are down, never to return, so this achievement, and the others from the game that have to do with the social aspect of the game, have the worst categorization an achievement hunter can come across: Unobtainable. 

I’ve searched for a reason as to why this happened, but never came across anything. If anyone ever played this game, they’ll never have 100% completion in their game lists.

A Case For Backward Compatibility

So with the announcements for the Playstation 4 and Xbox One out of the way, they both have something very critical in common: neither are backwards compatible. Backwards compatibility allows one to use the previous generation's stuff on the new generation, and in terms of video game systems, this would mean that PS3 and Xbox 360 games would be compatible on their successors. However, this is not the case.

Now, the reasoning behind not doing this is two fold. First, they want to upgrade the systems and their graphics and hardware, etc, so they tell us that the old software is simply not compatible with the new. Seems a tad unlikely, really, the it is impossible for the old stuff to work on the new, since the new is more powerful in terms of processing, etc, and they have access to the proprietary coding for both. They'd have us believe that playing the old games on the new system is like trying to play VHS tapes on a DVD player, yet a Bluray player will run not only DVDs but VCDs as well.

Their other public reasoning is that people don't buy a new system to play old games on it. This is true, of course, but they miss the circumstances under which someone would buy a new system when they own the old one. Follow me on this line of reasoning.

I own a Wii. The WiiU is backwards compatible just as the Wii was backwards compatible with the GameCube, which I also owned. I love my video games and played the heck out of those systems. They still work, but when the new stuff comes out, I start looking to see what's new. With the WiiU, I know I can continue to play all of my existing games and use my existing Wii remotes, so I can simply consider the system an upgrade and replacement to what I have and then explore the new games at my leisure.

However, for me to purchase an Xbox One or PS4, I would need to see what new games are being released and have a gaming need to buy one system or the other along with the motivation to replace all hardware and make sure I had yet more space around my TV and in my receiver to accommodate the extra system alongside my existing system, since I would have to keep it hooked up for some time to finish out whichever games I still had to get through. After all, old systems don't die because I new one comes out.

I feel like neglecting backwards compatibility because you don't buy new systems to play old games misses the market that owns the existing systems and simply want to upgrade. For me, I would probably grab an Xbox One sooner if I could consider it an upgrade for the hundred games I now have. I will need considerable motivation to plunk down $600 to play a $60 game. "Must have" only goes so far.

Follow Up to the Xbox vs. Wii post

Well, I did get an Xbox for Christmas. I have since completed the first Assassin's Creed on it and play Skylanders on it (yes, I have at least one figure from each element, but I only bought them in stores for the retail; none of that scalping nonsense). I have since also completed Dead Space Extraction on the Wii, and I'm presently playing Zelda: Skyward Sword (27 hours in, I'm getting close to the end...I think). Having experienced the Xbox, has my previous opinion changed?

Not at all. They are both commendable systems that play different games in different ways. Zelda with the Xbox controls would be like Twilight Princess on the Gamecube. Sure, it'd have impressive visuals, but it would not be as interactive as it is on the Wii. It's a rather amazing game in how you play it. The Wii Remote controls the sword one to one, and you have to make some big swings to get the desired results; a flick of the wrist doesn't do it.

With the Xbox, I've decided to do some low level aerobics while playing since it involves sitting there with a controller, playing old-school style. Now, we do have the Kinect, and I have to move furniture to play that one, but for the majority of the nearly 2 dozen games I have (it's been out awhile and many of the classics are really cheap), I'll be physically idle with only my fingers getting a workout.

However, I will say I like both systems. The Xbox has some great games that I'm really looking forward to, and the graphics are amazing on my 1080p HDTV. The Wii remains the king of motion control and no fun is lost between them.

The Wii is not a Kid System

Sure, the Wii has lots of games that are family friendly and kid friendly, and I'm sure it is safe to say that it has more family games than the Xbox360 and PS3. however, that does not make it a kid system. You know what I played on the Wii last night? Call of Duty: Black Ops. It's rated M, if you're keeping score, which is not the rating you drop on a kid's game. It's actually a fairly difficult game too. Know why? Has to do with how you aim the gun.

If I were playing this game on the Xbox, I would be using the dual stick controller to both look around and move and aim. I've played Xbox games. In fact, after playing Halo on the original Xbox, I reconfigured Metroid Prime (which I still believe is the best first person shooter there is) on the GameCube to mimic those controls. Perfect FPS setup. Come to think of it, Metroid Prime on the GameCube was easier than it is on the Wii. Oh, yeah, they redid the game for the Wii to incorporate that pesky Wii remote. You know, the device that set the Wii apart from it's competitors and catapulted it to the top of everyone's game? Now you have to aim with your hand and arm instead of a couple of control sticks.

The Xbox and especially the PS3 both have exceptional graphics. I'm not going to pull any punches there. The visuals on those systems are a sight to behold and without argument, they both possess superior system hardware. Thing is that while Microsoft and Sony upgraded their graphics (and that's it, by the way - their controllers were pretty much identical to their predecessors), Nintendo kept the same engine that the GameCube had (that's right, the Wii has the GameCube's guts), but revolutionized HOW you play the games instead. That little aiming deal you can do with the Wii remote makes the Wii the ultimate first person shooter game system. What better way to aim a gun than to hold the gun in your hand and aim it? They actually have Wii remote holders that resemble REAL guns, complete with the trigger in the right place and they're black with no silly orange barrel.

In fact, the Wii has a type of shooter game that the other systems don't (or don't have many of considering how silly the game would be). It's called a rail shooter. Think of it this way: pretend that haunted house ride at the fair where a cart takes you through the horrors of the phantasmagorical has lots of enemies popping up all over the place and you have a gun to blow them all away. But the cart keeps moving. That's a rail shooter. The game controls your movements and you control the gun, freeing you up to just blow stuff up. Some of the better rail shooters on the Wii are based on the Resident Evil and Dead Space series, all of which are M rated games complete with the blood and carnage you might expect. Still not kid's games.

I have a box full of Wii games that are not for the children or the faint of heart. Some of them are easy. Some are hard. Some require a great deal of problem solving. But I wouldn't let my kids play half of them, which is a far cry from the system that started it all for some of us, the 8-bit NES. You'd be hard pressed to find a NES or SNES game that kids shouldn't play, and those systems defined the home video game landscape.

My father-in-law thinks that if I got an Xbox, I would leave the Wii and never return. I disagree. If I had an Xbox, I would still get any FPS games on the Wii, if a Wii version exists (I'm looking at you, Modern Warfare 3), for the fun of playing the game as opposed to the superior graphics. Visuals are paramount in movies, but with video games, you have to enjoy the game first. Those beautiful visuals don't make any difference at all if the game isn't fun to play, and if I'm holding a gun on screen, it is far more immersive to hold it in my hand than to move an auto-locking reticule around the screen with a control stick.

Twilight Princess

On August 29, 2007, for some reason I can't fathom, I stopped playing The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess on the GameCube after 46 hours logged while at the doorstep of Hyrule Castle preparing to get into the final level of the game. That date was the last saved date when Rock Girl decided she wanted to start her own game. She played for 55 hours or so before she and the Queen asked if I would look at my game and see if I could actually finish it since I hadn't touched it in over two years.

The only Twilight Princess I'd played since then was a short play of the Wii version of the game. I really have no idea why I never finished the game. I never even entered the castle. I completed the Twilight Temple, and then stopped. So, since they asked, I figured, "Why not?" I prepared myself for a bit of a steep learning curve since I knew there were a few special sword moves that were essential to playing the game and instrumental in completing several key battles.

So I started playing. After some digging through the menus and playing with the controls, I found the button strokes for the special moves, and I was on my way. I went into the final level with 0 potions, and since it had been so long, I had no idea where to find any, so I just went in as I was, with (I think) 16 hearts and three empty bottles.

The level was setup as a series of one on a dozen or more enemies which really served to get my Zelda chops back in a hurry. It was just like riding a bike. I dominated the lower levels of this temple, no matter how many enemies they threw at me. The mini-bosses (and there were several) were no match for my too-long-dormant skill and I wiped them out with hardly a heart lost in the process. The puzzles in the temple, while mildly clever, were mostly easily deciphered (with only a couple causing any sort of long thought). It was all a matter of figuring out what everything did and doing something with it. I even rocked the spinner climb up the stairs bit, which the Queen and Rock Girl got a kick out of. 

Now, LadyBug and Sassy Pants were there, but they only mildly enjoyed the hopping around as neither of them play the game. They did watch for a little while though, especially when I got to the end.

Reaching Ganondorf was really easy in the end. I walked in and the cinema sequence began before final battle part 1 began. Part 1 was easy enough and more about patience and timing than skill. Part 2 was a bit annoying, but once I got the hang of it (and a tip from the Queen (the only one I needed) who was looking at the strategy guide), that one was also defeated.

Then came Part 3. Oh, I hated Part 3. This part left be complaining to high heaven about this game. Nintendo does some really strange things sometimes. They create these battles that are difficult enough, but not so difficult or repetitive that you want to throw your controller at the screen (too many times). Part 3, however, was one of those one off Nintendo battles that was more irritating than it was difficult where the enemy had a tendency to get you over and over and over again if your timing was bad. Well, timing was only a part of it. Thinking about how I eventually got this section figured out, it was a combination of timing and placement of self as well as general persistence that won it. I think the persistence part was the most annoying of them all because it had to do with a horseback ride. Ganon's horse goes slightly faster than your horse (naturally), but you still have to catch up to him, so you have to whip the crap out your horse to get her to go faster...and then you run out of hits so you have to wait for it to charge back up, which sets you back a little bit...and then Ganon releases his undead horsemen to whack you (as if his own hits weren't enough). After I got him figured out, I knew the point of his undead entourage, but it was still annoying. The whole ordeal (which probably cost me more lives in a single battle than any battle in the entire game, primarily due to my lack of potions and the game's tendency to start you after a game over with only 3 hearts) made me compare it to Metroid Prime.

I love Metroid Prime. It's a great game. Fun to play. Awesome play controls on both the GameCube and then the Wii revision in Metroid Prime Trilogy. The maps are great. The bosses are challenging but fun to fight...until the end. And this is just Metroid Prime because I haven't played the other two games to their final bosses yet. Metroid Prime gives you a save point at the beginning of the final level, and then expects you to traverse this entire final level every time. This level is long and time consuming with its endless supply of Metroids constantly attacking you out of holes in the ground. Yeah, they have no end because the ground is reproducing them, so as soon as you finish one set (they're made in twos), you have about 30 seconds to move before another set is on you. And these Metroids are the classic freeze and kill variety. No, these are the ones where you have to use a specific beam-and-missile combination after freezing them, so not only do they both consume a lot of time, but they consume a lot of resources to get past them. Hence, after fighting a grueling battle through this level that takes probably 30 to 45 minutes, minimum, you get one point to recharge your missiles, fight a few more of these dreadful Metroids, and then face off against the big bad bass, Metroid Prime. The thing is huge, uses a gross amount of resources to defeat, and I have yet to do it because once it beats you, you have to start all over at the save point...yeah, another 30 to 45 minutes of an uphill battle fighting those danged Metroids again. Hence, when I was actively playing it, I tried once a day since that was all the Metroid I could handle, and then I finally stopped. I had gathered every item in the game, and still couldn't defeat the Prime boss, nor did I have the patience for that final level. But I digress...hugely.

Once I figured out the secret of that horse battle, it was on to Part 4, which was a classic one on one sword fight between Link and Ganon. I ended up using a single special move over and over again after scavenging all the hearts (and fairy) from the ring of skulls inside the battle wall. I really dislike these battle walls, since they swipe a quarter heart form you wehn you hit it, but the bad guys, of course, can do what they wish without damage.

Anyway, it only took a couple of times, and Ganon was down. It showed that I was, indeed, at the end of the game when I inexplicably stopped playing, and that even after almost 2 1/2 years, I was able to play the game just fine.

 I also found that the Wii's motion controls have spoiled me. Two years ago, I was not interested in the Wii version because it was identical to the GameCube version. Well, after having to aim with the control stick again, I wanted the Wii version so I could just point at the screen. Funny the way that these things change you.

So, I finished another game. Rock Girl got a kick out of watching it, though she was shocked at how much I had done in 46 hours and how she wasn't even close to the end after as much time as she had put into it. I assured her that I was able to do this due to this being my sixth Zelda game along with over 20 years of playing video games. But it was fun to play it again, and once I get through my Metroid Prime Trilogy (whether I defeat the big bad bosses or not), I might look into Twilight Princess again.

The Sets Grow

So last night I was origianlly going to play piano with the guy who plays drums, but he was still getting in from his business trip, so we're looking at tonight. Instead, I played on Rock Band and Guitar Hero. Yeah, both of them. I recently ordered from eBay at a killer price a Rock Band Guitar (that's pink for the Queen and Princesses) and the Guitar Hero drums.

Now these drums were a little tricky until I discovered that the orange and yellow cymbals were labeled left and right and I switched them. Now, it works much better.

So I quickly jumped it from Hard to Expert, and found that while pretty much any song will work all right on guitar, some songs should not be used for drums. Since I can do the expert level, I like to think I'm a pretty capable player, and when it comes to some of the easier tunes, I can nail them to the wall. Such was the case with the first song of this particular set. I got five stars on it.

The second song was called "Some Might Say" and it's by Oasis. I don't know what it was about this song, but I could not get the beat at all. The pattern on screen was very, very easy, but I couldn't lock that beat for anything. I would get in a groove, and then the beat would go away. I have one suspicion here: the drummer on Oasis wasn't consistent. They were able to map the song easily enough, but I imagine I would have to pay almost deadly attention to the little dots on the screen to get it down, just because the tempo is inconsistent enough to not let me zone out and play. It's just not good for us human metronomes.

Admittedly, I did kick into that one after playing Rock Band for an hour and a half, but for the encore song of that set (after I narrowly got through Some Might Say), I got 99% and five stars, so I'm pretty sure it isn't me.

So at this time, I have two guitars, drums and mic for Rock Band, and one guitar, drums, and mic (which is the same Rock Band mic) for Guitar Hero. My second GH guitar gave up the ghost. Well, actually pieces of both guitars died -- the strum bar on one and the green and red buttons on the other. So I took the neck of one and the body of the other and put them together. All I need is another GH guitar and I'll have two complete rhythm games.

To top it off, the Rock Band drum pedal works as the second bass pedal for Guitar Hero. Unfortunately, it won't work as the primary pedal for some reason. Can't figure out why. I woudl use it as the primary if I could thought. The GH pedal sucks. It feels flimsy, and it's really easy for it to accidentally slip on some of the harder songs and register an unintended bass hit, which spoils the streaks. On the bright side, it appears to be a cheap midi drum pedal, so it is possible that a better constructed electronic drum kick pedal will work on it. In addition, the cymbals just plug in to the kit using 1/8" jacks, just like a electronic drum kit does, so it's also possible that you could get some real electric cymbals to use with it. The red, blue, and green drums are fixed, though, so they aren't going anywhere.

The most interesting aspect of the GH drums is the MIDI port in the back. Yeah, a MIDI port. I suspect that you could hook this toy up to a MIDI sound generator and use it as a simple drum kit apart from the video game. It's not a bad little set. The cymbals are raised, and the drums have a more durable pad to them than the clickety-clack construction of the Rock Band drums. Where RB clicks, GH thuds.

That being said, they're still both equally fun, and the extra drum and different layout is taking some getting used to. The most significant change is that on RB, the crash cymbal is usually the green, but on GH, it's the raised orange - green is just another tom. Hence "Enter Sandman" is a totally different experience on GH than on RB.

It's too much fun, and I ended up playing for about 3 hours last night, so I got nothing done that I actually wanted to, like practicing the real guitar. I played a little piano and a little guitar, but I recalled that I hadn't checked the music stores this month for new stuff. I was going to do that "real quick," and ended up playing for a while on RB. Well, an hour and a half later, I thought I'd see if GH had any new stuff "real quick," and once I reviewed the store, I played another hour and a half. Oh well.

Guitar Hero: Metallica

So the time has come for yet another music rhythm game to hit the market. If you've read my blog much, you know I love these types of games. I used to be big on the platformer games, but these have taken my heart since they couple video games with one of my other loves: music. I'm actually running a bit behind on my collection of these games, though, and I'm not sure I'll catch up before this Metallica game comes out. 

I still lack the Rock Band track packs -- all three of them. Thats 40 random songs and an entire disk dedicated to AC/DC. I also happen to need (yes, that's a need) Rock Band 2. Now, I know that seems a bit strange going for random songs, but I only play it to play the songs. I actually don't care what the songs are. In fact, I've discovered some new (and old) songs that it turns out I like. I would never have discovered these if not for Guitar Hero and Rock Band. I love that Rush song, "Tom Sawyer," but I wouldn't have known it so well if not for Rock Band. Metallica is actually another one, since I've enjoyed a couple songs from previous games.

But here's the most interesting part (to me) about this upcoming game. If you've ever, ever seen a picture of the Metallica band, you might notice the drummer has two, not one, bass drums at his disposal. This new game is going to be a full band game meaning guitar, bass, vocals...and drums. So how is it fair that the real drummer has two drums and we only get one? 

Get this. The game will be sold as a stand alone, not a package containing the guitar, drums, and microphone, but sold separately will be...a second bass pedal. Time out! A second pedal? Meaning that we can actually play some double pedaled bass drum?! I don't have the Guitar Hero drums, but with this revelation, the need for such an extraneous item becomes even higher on the want list. I can't help but wonder how you work a double pedaled bass drum if the drums only have one plug for the pedal. 

The geek mind works and I wonder if they're using a splitter to plug in both pedals. And if that's the case, could a similar principal be used on Rock Band to plug in a second pedal? Ah, imagine the possibilities. Those annoying speed bass pedal songs would be so much easier having a second pedal down there. I know, they're supposed to be possible with only one pedal, but my leg wears out on some of those expert level parts. Oh well...

So, though I'm not a huge Metallica fan, I do enjoy some of their songs, and I'm a sucker for these games, so I'll be wanting this one too. Of course, it's supposed to be a bit harder than GH World Tour, but the Metallica songs that are in the other games are in the upper levels, so that's to be expected. I probably won't get it on March 29, when it comes out, but eventually...it will be mine, too.

Drum Pads

So I did get Rock Band the day it came out, as you know, but one week later, tragedy struck. As I was playing with The Engineer (who actually stayed until 2AM that Saturday night/Sunday morning I picked it up), the yellow drum pad all but stopped working. If you tapped it in the right place or pounded on it really, really hard, it would respond, but tapping it normally produced no results. The Engineer was initially concerned that he had broken it since I'd harped on him a couple times that evening for pounding a little harder than I liked, but he would not have caused the damage. After all I saw people pound the snot out of the demo drums at Wal-Mart when it first came out, and those drums kept on ticking. The green one gave out first over there after a month of abuse.

So I looked up the address for the warranty. It was a very, very easy process online and after some encouraging messages on EA Games' site stating a replacement assembly would be sent within 48 hours, I fully expected my replacement drum pads to show up before or just after we left on our Roaring River trip. No drum pads came. The Engineer checked for these when we were gone, and they didn't come. I waited Monday and Tuesday, but still nothing.

So I checked for emails. The only email I'd gotten was the original confirmation email, which stated another would be sent once the item was shipped. No other email was received, so I immediately started looking for their phone number, which I knew full well I'd seen in the original process, and that it was a 24/7 number. No dice. The number did not exist anywhere I looked, so I just sent an email, to which they responded very quickly.

So I'm waiting again for another confirmation email that the item was shipped. I was hoping to have my replacement pads by this weekend, so we could all play on the drums again, but no email yet. For the quick and painless process it appeared to be in the beginning, it's getting tiresome. the most amusing part, though, is that I'd sent my email stating all my numbers, and that I had a Wii, and that while it requested proof of purchase, it also said don't worry about it since the Wii version just came out. My canned reply I got said the warranty period was extended and my replacement peripheral would be shipped right out. I think I got the wrong canned reply...

All the same... Still waiting...

Guitar Hero: Aerosmith

Sunday July 1st brought the release of the second Guitar Hero game for the Wii only a week after the release (finally!) of Rock Band. What's the music geek to do? Why, buy it of course! After all, I'd had enough left over from my birthday money to get this game in addition to getting Rock Band. What surprised me initially, though, was the game was priced at nearly $60. This was odd considering Guitar Hero III was only priced at $50, and in all honesty, despite the fact that Aerosmith only contains a little over half the number of songs on GH3, I expected a $50 price tag. I went ahead and got it, but The Queen wanted to get online as soon as we got home to see if anyone had a special price on it, since Wal-Mart honors competitor ads.

Didn't take long before we found a 49.99 cost on the game, so I marched myself back to Wal-Mart to get a reduction from my 59.74 to 49.99. Initially, the person behind the counter said that for competitor ads that reduce a price by $10 or more, they required the ad. Never heard of this before, but I argued that the reduction was only 9.75, not 10 (thank you very much, weird Wal-Mart pricing). After he checked with someone else, I got the reduction.

Now to play it. GH: Aerosmith was a refreshing and interesting change from GH3. The charts were constructed a bit differently. Medium was actually medium, and not "hard without the orange button". Hard was a bit more difficult, but not "expert without three button chords". Expert requires some fascinating finger positions that remind me of actually playing the guitar, instead of an overwhelming focus on three button chords and cripplingly fast solos. It has a lot of challenge to it, but instead of being insane and frustrating to play, it was a lot of fun. While difficulty is a nice factor in a game, frustration is not. It's entirely possible that Raining Blood on GH3 is actually that hard to play in real life, but it's too much for a video game played on a toy guitar. On Aerosmith, I completed the hard level fairly quickly, though they also enhanced the "pling" sound when you miss notes, so I admit that on some songs, I sounded more like I was playing the slots instead of Aerosmith. No jackpots, unfortunately.

But it's a fun game, and I hope when they come out with Guitar Hero: World Tour, it retains the sort of style of charts that this version has. Definitely worth playing. The only thing I wish it had was a co-op career like GH3 had instead of plugging the co-op under multiplayer.

Rock Band Anticipation

Come Saturday night at midnight, Rock Band will finally be available. As you well know, I want this game. I have the precise amount I need to get it, and I just can't wait. I've been playing Guitar Hero III since I got it back in February, and then we got the second guitar in March, and we've been playing 2 player since then. I've played all 70-odd songs on that game multiple times, nearly completed hard, and am on the 7th tier of expert. I love playing Through The Fire and Flames on Free Play on Expert (I use the no fail cheat, but have fun anyway; that's why I have to play on free play since the cheat doesn't work on career mode).

Probably my greatest triumph (so far) is finally getting through Raining Blood on hard. Dang, that has got to be one of the hardest songs ever in this game. It wouldn't be so hard, but there's no discernable rhythm to follow during the hardest part of the song, which the game refers to as "Mosh 1."

Nonetheless, I finally got through it, and now I'm onto another very, very difficult tune: the Devil Went Down to Georgia face off against Lou, aka "the devil." This is proving to be quite the challenge, but unlike Raining Blood, it's a lot of fun because I know the song, and I like to listen to it. This challenge will be much like trying to perfect Through the Fire and Flames since it's just a good song, although trying to best Lou will be quite hard since the difficulty is on par with Expert.

I'm sure Rock Band will grab my attention for quite a time once I get it, though, and Guitar Hero will be shelved for a bit. I will still play it though, since I haven't completely finished it yet. I've found it is hard to balance the games I have though. I know. My problems are hardly on par with a world crisis, but I've got all these games that I haven't finished yet, and no time to play them all. I've only gotten a few levels done on Mario Galaxy, and I really need to get back into that one because it's a lot of fun. I have Lego Star Wars and Lego Indiana Jones that need some TLC. Star Wars I've just playing again (but for the first time on the Wii), but Indy is a new one, and I've barely scratched the surface. Then there's Raymon Raving Rabbids, which I've finally gotten to a point that I "get" the game and it's fun and there's a ton of levels left on it. I enjoy Wii Sports and Wii Play, but I can't get to play them enough either. It's like I need to ration my game time, but there's so many awesome games for this system that I get on one and just keep playing and playing until I look up and it's 1:30am (again).

And then, not only do we have Rock Band working muscle into the crowd, but there's also Guitar Hero: Aerosmith to compete with that release, and then on July 15, an expansion to Rock Band with 20 more songs to try and master. In addition, Metroid Prime 3 is a ton of fun and interactivity, Force Unleashed (with 1:1 lightsaber control and interactive force usage...drool...) in September, and Clone Wars (different from the one on the GameCube) in November that I also want to get ahold of. All this and then I still need to play a lot of my GameCube games that I still haven't gotten through, most notably Metroid Prime 2, which will help in explaining the back story of 3. I basically have so many video games that I am one happy Geek to have so many excellent choices.

To add more fuel to the fire, I love watching movies and have no shortage of those either. In fact, I have a list of some 1200 movies that I've only seen 200 of. That's a tall order and probably several years worth of movie watching, not including the movies I will see that aren't on that list. If I were a total junkie, I'd go for 3 movies a day for the next year to get them all in, but I don't have that kind of time what with all the video games I have to play (not to mention that family I need to take care of; yeah, they kinda take priority). So I am lucky to get one movie a day and that's if I don't play any video games. What I wouldn't give for my profession to be watching movies... I would be good at it. I know what makes a good film.

Still got the iPod going with the Rock Band songs, but for the moment, they're mixed with Guitar Hero III to provide some familiarity. I got The Engineer lined up to go with me to WalMart to grab the game. Gotta go with someone at midnight to ensure you're not molested in the parking lot. After all, I'll be walking out with a $170 game. Can't have any extra "help" coming out of the store.

And of course, I'm going to try and get a song in once I get it home...