…and there’s no Bon Jovi. The complete official list is available from rockband.com.
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Archive for the ‘Video Games’ Category
Rock Band 3 Songs Announced
Monday, August 30th, 2010Rock Band: Bon Jovi?
Friday, June 11th, 2010It’s been confirmed that Rock Band 3 will include keyboards. Cnet’s article on the game has a picture of what the new controller will look like. (Honestly, while I might get the game, I don’t see myself shelling out more money for this particular controller. It’s not like anyone that I know is ever lining up to play with the drums when we get the game out.)
But, here’s my question: does this open the way for a Bon Jovi edition of Rock Band?
Think about it. Dave’s keys are a defining part of the Bon Jovi sound. This development would open the way for a true Bon Jovi experience in the gameplay–and would open the way for including ‘Dry County as a playable song. (My arm hurts just thinking about it.)
Up till now, the number of Bon Jovi songs available for Rock Band/2/Lego has been very limited. So far, all we’ve got are the songs that come with the discs, leaving us gamers with nothing more than the Big Three from Slippery When Wet. We’ve been arguing for a Bon Jovi DLC pack since the release of the first Rock Band, but haven’t got it so far.
At this point, with Harmonix and Activision cranking out Guitar Hero and Rock Band games for every band in the world, there’s got to be room for a Bon Jovi one. They’ve got the back catalog–and enough backstory–to fill up a game on their own.
Skill Atrophy
Friday, April 16th, 2010I haven’t really been playing any of the rhythm games, like Guitar Hero or Rock Band for quite some time. Been too busy playing stuff like the Ghostbusters game, Brutal Legend, and Bioshock lately.
But the other night, I just wanted a quick game to kill some time, and I didn’t feel like playing a battle against the AI in Brutal Legend. (That had been one of my go-to time wasters for awhile, but that lost appeal pretty fast.) So I put the first Rock Band in the Xbox for the first time in probably four or five months.
I, of course, assumed that I could pick up right where I left off and tried to play ‘Number of the Beast’ on Hard right away, and promptly failed out. Ultimately I came to the realization that I really do need to work my way back up to Hard, especially since hand-to-eye coordination isn’t really a natural skill of mine. And at the rate I’ve been going with getting distracted by other games, I probably won’t ever make it through all of the songs on Hard.
What’s really funny about the whole thing is that I can still do ‘Wanted Dead or Alive’ perfectly on Expert without a problem, but then again, practice does count for something.
Still playing Brutal Legend
Friday, March 5th, 2010I already posted when I finished the main story arc in Brutal Legend. Usually with adventure games like this one, that’s where I stop. Yes, there are usually still side missions left in many of the games that I’ve stopped playing, but for the most part it’s the main quest that I’m playing for.
Plus, I’ve been meaning to start Bioshock. I know, I’m way behind the times, but it was the release of Bioshock 2 that reminded me that I had wanted to play the original. And I still do want to play through that game, because everyone I know who has played it has nothing but positive things to say about it.
So why am I still playing Brutal Legend? Well, there are still a lot of side missions left; I’ve been mopping those up and collecting the rest of the solos, legends and landmarks. Like most Xbox 360 owners, I have to admit to having an addiction to that little ‘plink’ noise that the achievements make when they come up, and there are still plenty of achievements in Brutal Legend that I haven’t collected, and a fair number of them aren’t that hard to get. Just a lot of trundling around the map and finding stuff.
Ultimately, the answer boils down to one thing: escapism. Brutal Legend doesn’t pretend to be anything profound. It’s just fun. And a lot of the remaining items that I’m hunting for are stuff like the Legends and the Landmarks. If you’ve been reading the blog, you know I have a fascination with album cover art, especially from heavy metal albums. This game just lets me wander around through a heavy metal world. It’s fun.
I suspect that’s why I’ve been putting off playing through Bioshock. Because while that game promises a bit more substance than Brutal Legend, it’s also going to be a lot heavier. And that’s something that I’m a whole lot less likely to want to face when I come home from work in the evening.
Back up and running
Friday, January 15th, 2010I got my Xbox back from Microsoft yesterday–fully repaired and ready to go. Now that I have my game system up and running again, I’ll post more about Brutal Legend.
I have to say that I’m fairly impressed with Microsoft’s service during the whole repair process. Requesting a repair was easy enough and they got the system turned around pretty quickly. I wasn’t expecting to get it back for another week or so yet.
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Brutal Legend is Awesome
Wednesday, December 16th, 2009I picked up a copy of Brutal Legend on Black Friday, when Best Buy had it for $39.99. I had been hesitant to pay the full $59.99 price tag after all of the talk that I had heard about the real-time strategy portions of the game. For years I’ve had problems with RTS games. I’ve just never done well with them. (It’s odd, because my day-to-day life is an exercise in multitasking, but I can’t handle the level of multitasking that RTS games require. Silly, but true.)
But at that sale price, I figured it was at least worth a shot. Especially since I had been looking forward to it so much since I had first heard about the game. Black Friday was nuts, but I did manage to get all of the stuff that I went out for. Brutal Legend turned out to be the closest call on that count though. I got one of the last Xbox 360 copies that my local Best Buy had, at least from what I could see in the bin. I had to dig pretty far down into the bin to find it.
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Brutal Legend comes out today
Tuesday, October 13th, 2009Just a reminder: Brutal Legend comes out today, for those of us who weren’t at Gamestop at midnight.
(No, yours truly was not among them. One, I needed sleep last night. Two, I don’t have $60 to drop on a game at the moment. Household repairs have a way of derailing the ‘entertainment’ section of the budget. I will start posting more about my experiences with the game when I can afford to get it.)
Brutal Legend Demo Reactions
Monday, October 5th, 2009I finally got my hands on the Brutal Legend demo yesterday. (I only have a Xbox Live Silver account right now, so I had to wait.)
The opening sequence was awesome. I had already seen it in one of the gameplay demo videos that had been posted over the last several months. However, being able to watch it on my TV instead of on a grainy web video on my monitor was awesome. I also turned on the blood and gore and turned off the swear filter, just to see what was filtered out of the demo video. As far as I can tell, the swear filter is going to end up being more of a matter of a personal mood–the game is actually funnier with it on. The blood and gore is going to end up being dependent on my mood too–seeing the heads pop off of the members of Kabbage Boy was funny, but slightly gratuitous.
The basic single-player battle system seemed to work well for a hack and slash player like myself. I always have trouble avoiding hitting my allies in other games–big battles in Oblivion, for instance, were always a problem for me. However, the AI on the allies in this game seem to be good at staying out of my way. The controls were simple and relatively intuitive, especially for the guitar-based magical attacks.
I did have some trouble controlling the car, but I believe I may have been attempting to steer with the wrong thumbstick for some reason. I’ll have to play the demo through again to see if that is the case. It may take me awhile to get the hang of driving, but the problem that I had seemed to be all from mishandling of the controller and not the game itself. As long as I had the thumbsticks under control, the car itself, along with its steering and acceleration system, was also simple enough to handle.
Unfortunately, the demo didn’t answer the biggest question that I had–the prominence of the real-time strategy elements of the game. I never really enjoyed RTS games, mostly because I never really got to be good at them. This still leaves some questions for me as to whether I really want to purchase this game. If there is a stronger RTS element to the game itself, I most likely won’t enjoy it as much.
Guitar Hero 5: Hair Metal Strikes Back
Friday, September 11th, 2009If you’ve been following the news about Guitar Hero 5, you know that all anyone can talk about is the fact that they made Kurt Cobain into a playable character. This leads to the inevitable: making him sing ‘You Give Love a Bad Name’. (The videos of it all seem to be getting removed; the one featured in the article at Blabbermouth.net got taken down. A search of Youtube should turn one up though.)
Dead people as playable characters is a tad bit creepy, as has been pointed out on other sites. That seems to be another trend; Cobain is in Guitar Hero 5, and all of the Beatles, alive and dead, are in the Beatles edition of Rock Band. That being said, Cobain is a lot creepier than the deceased Beatles. I think it’s because Cobain looked like a zombie when he was alive. Making him a playable character in a regular GH game, where he can be plopped into all sorts of random scenarios (like singing ‘You Give Love a Bad Name’) just makes the zombie comparison a natural.
The Beatles in Rock Band don’t seem to have the same ‘ick’ factor. Maybe it’s because I’m far fonder of the Beatles. But Harmonix was far more respectful of John, Paul, George and Ringo when they created their game. Placing the Rock Band versions of the Beatles into the detailed recreations of real venues or into the period-accurate “dreamscapes” while playing their own music prevents the disconnected ‘eww, zombie!’ reaction. The characters are always in a proper context, and it’s more like playing along with the Beatles than manipulating their corpses.
And yes, I may be forced to purchase the Beatles edition of Rock Band. My parents found out about it.