Blueshadow's Bon Jovi Blog » xbox 360

More RB3

admin — Sat, 30 Apr 2011 01:12:24 +0000

So I’ve been playing around with Rock Band 3 for awhile now. (I reviewed it on Monday of last week.) For whatever reason, this has been the most that I’ve played with one of the Rock Band games by myself in a long time. (They still get a lot of exercise at parties or anytime you have a few people over. As soon as the party really gets going, somebody spots the drum kit shoved over in the corner and wants to play, and sooner or later, everybody gets sucked in.)

But I think what got me was the new mechanic to get fans when you’re playing by yourself–having to hit career goals has been pushing me into new areas. I’ve been playing with the bass more than I have in a long time–and I forgot how much that actually makes you pay attention to the bass in the song itself. That’s one aspect of the game that’s really given me more insight into the separate parts of a song, now and again. It’s also gotten me to get the microphone back out and do the vocals.

Even though at first I didn’t think it had much to offer, I overlooked one big thing–engagement with the game itself.

Review: Rock Band 3

admin — Tue, 19 Apr 2011 01:29:08 +0000

I just got a copy of Rock Band 3 a couple of weeks ago. I wanted to play it for awhile before I reviewed it though, which is why I haven’t posted this before now.

I did not get the new set of controllers, so I haven’t tried Pro Guitar yet, and haven’t tried playing keyboards at all. Honestly, the keyboards don’t appeal to me; I learned how to play a keyboard years ago and I didn’t really like it then.

I did like that they changed around how you can customize your characters. It let me create my standard Richie and Jon characters–right down to the double-neck guitar–much earlier than I could in the first two games. That significantly increased the fun factor of the career mode for me.

I also liked the way that the set lists were more flexible than in the previous games. That let me go straight for the songs that appealed to me at that particular moment. This ability to tailor the setlist really has improved my engagement with this game.

That being said, I really don’t like the new interface in the career mode. While it is very functional, it lacks the expansive feel of the world map from the earlier titles, and instead it feels very claustrophobic and closed-in to me.

All around, I think the game has its good points, but doesn’t really have much new to offer someone like me who doesn’t have the money to spend on more controllers (or the desire to buy them).

Bladder of Steel – I did it!

admin — Tue, 09 Nov 2010 03:36:23 +0000

So, I decided to try for a couple of Achievements in Rock Band 2 yesterday–the ‘Vinyl Artist’, for getting through the entire Endless Setlist on Medium, and the ‘Bladder of Steel Award’, for not pausing the game while playing the Endless Setlist.

I had a bit of a mental debate before I started, as the only wired guitar controller that I have is the one that came with the first Rock Band game, and I don’t like it. I usually use the wireless controller that came with Guitar Hero 3 when I play, but I didn’t know if having your batteries die in the middle would count as a ‘pause’. I ended up deciding that the gain in accuracy was worth the risk and just minimized it by putting a fresh set of batteries in before I started. It turned out fine.

I actually found that the going got easier after the first twenty or so songs. I don’t like most of the easy songs in Rock Band 2, so the first hour or so felt pretty brutal. But after that, even though the songs were getting harder, I started finding that the going was getting easier because I liked the songs. (It also helped that because I liked the songs, I played those more, so I was familiar with them.)

The closest I came to failing out was actually on ‘Rock’n Me’ and that’s because I have trouble with the long strings of the same color. I had an easier time with the songs right at the end. (Once again, being a metalhead paid off–the songs at the end were some of my favorites from the game.)

In the end, I did it. I managed to get all the way through without failing, pausing, or having the batteries die in my controller, and got both Achievements.

As a side note, don’t try to do this the day after getting a flu shot. (I didn’t figure that out until I was already twenty songs into the Endless Setlist, and I was too stubborn to quit. My arm is still sore.)

Bon Jovi Greatest Hits for Rock Band 3

admin — Sat, 09 Oct 2010 02:26:00 +0000

Harmonix confirmed that there’s going to be a Bon Jovi Greatest Hits track pack for Rock Band.

I will admit that I was kind of hoping that the ongoing lack of Bon Jovi tracks in the store meant that there might be an entire game dedicated entirely to Jovi in the works.

However, with the release of the Greatest Hits album, the timing is good for a track pack like this. And if it’s based on the Greatest Hits track list, which is what the post from Harmonix said, it ought to be a decent assortment of songs. Plus, it means that I can finally have more than two Jovi songs to pick from when I’m playing around on a Saturday morning, which is a good thing. With this I can do entire sets of nothing but Jovi songs when I’m playing in the Tour mode!

I had been disappointed that there weren’t any Bon Jovi songs included in Rock Band 3, but a full track pack of hits like this more than makes up for it. And with the addition of keyboards in RB3, I’m really hoping that ‘Runaway’ gets included in this pack. The thought of getting to play along with Dave’s awesome keyboards in that song is the first thing I’ve seen that makes me think seriously about getting one of the new keyboard controllers.

Combine this with the rest of the great songs that they already announced for Rock Band 3, and you’ve got a recipe that guarantees that I’m going to be wasting plenty of time with Rock Band games again.

Rock Band 3 Songs Announced

admin — Mon, 30 Aug 2010 15:49:22 +0000

…and there’s no Bon Jovi. The complete official list is available from rockband.com.

I have to say that I’m a bit disappointed; the rest of the non-band-specific Rock Band Releases–1, 2 and LEGO–all had a Bon Jovi song on them. With the addition of keyboards in Rock Band 3, I was kind of expecting to see Bon Jovi’s ‘Runaway’ in the list.

However, on the plus side, I’m actually really psyched about the rest of the list. I like it a lot better than the track list from Rock Band 2–even without a Bon Jovi track. So it’s definitely on the list to buy for me.

Sure, some of the songs in the list have been on other games before, like ‘Smoke on the Water’ and ‘Free Bird’. But those are all pretty great songs–and ‘Smoke on the Water’ was in the first Guitar Hero, which I’m pretty sure isn’t even available for the Xbox 360. I’ve only ever gotten to play that one when I was visiting a friend who owns a PS2, so I’m perfectly happy to see it in the list of tracks for Rock Band 3.

‘Heart of Glass’, ‘Radar Love’, ‘Crazy Train’… This track list really packs in a lot of my favorites.

Skill Atrophy

admin — Fri, 16 Apr 2010 22:54:03 +0000

I 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

admin — Fri, 05 Mar 2010 13:02:42 +0000

I 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.

So I finished Brutal Legend…

admin — Mon, 15 Feb 2010 15:17:46 +0000

I finally finished Brutal Legend this past weekend. It’s taken me awhile to finish the game, even though I didn’t find the main story mode to be particularly difficult or long. (Having the Xbox decide to develop the Red Ring of Death does tend to put a crimp in my gaming schedule.) Honestly, I could have done with a longer story mode. I didn’t find anything to be all that great about the multiplayer mode, especially since none of my friends have Brutal Legend. If a few of my friends were interested in playing some stage battles, I might get more mileage out of it. But as it stands, the multiplayer mode holds no real interest. (Most of my friends would rather play Halo Wars.)

The rest of my follow-up is after the jump. Consider yourself warned: there are spoilers after this point, so if you’re haven’t beat the game yourself and don’t want the end spoiled STOP NOW.

….that should be sufficient spoiler space, even for a big monitor…

Like I said above, I found the story mode to be a tad short. I just feel that there were so many more things that they could have explored in the world created for the game. Maybe the problem is that the game as a whole was too easy; I was able to blow through it far too fast. (I should have cranked the difficulty up I guess.) I suspect that part of the problem was the hybrid nature of the game; it can’t make up its mind whether it’s a RTS game or an action game, and it winds up being both, and dumbing both down a lot. Neither mode has a lot of subtleties to it. The stage battles can get a little more interesting, but compared to other real-time strategy games that I’ve played, it’s pretty simple.

That being said, I did enjoy the stage battles, but that’s mostly because I am epic fail at playing true real-time strategy games. As I’ve said before, I just don’t seem to have the multitasking ability necessary to keep up with those games. I’m always too slow at playing them. The simpler systems in Brutal Legend operated at a level much more in keeping with my abilities.

Overall, I found this game to be incredibly gorgeous from a graphical perspective. I am easily impressed on this count, mostly because I hadn’t really gotten any up-to-date game consoles in a long time. (Really. The last two consoles that I had before the Xbox 360 were a Nintendo 64 and a Wii, neither of which is particularly impressive from a graphical perspective these days.) But even so, from a design perspective, this game impresses me. It certainly holds true to an artistic style that just screams HEAVY METAL. What’s astounding is the number of variations on that theme that they came up with–more that I had ever realized were possible. (The Drowning Doom ventured a little far from the heavy metal and are edging over into Tim Burton-esqe Goth territory, but that’s a relatively minor quibble. Drowned Ophelia looked totally awesome. That’s next year’s Halloween costume there.)

I was playing with the blood/dismemberment and swearing filters turned off. I have to play back through again with them turned on, just because I want to see how they manage the end of the game without any blood or dismemberment. I figure that they would have to keep the whole thing with the heart dissolving, even though that’s kind of gross (and dismemberment-y) because of the plot point that it made.

All told, I’m glad I bought this game. It’s been one of the most fun games that I’ve played in a long time. (The Ghostbusters game for the Xbox is probably a close second when it comes to pure fun.)

Back up and running

admin — Fri, 15 Jan 2010 17:30:54 +0000

I 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.

Anyway, now I can get back to playing Brutal Legend again. I had just gotten up to a good part when the stupid console froze up and died. I really wanted to see what kind of character the Fire Baron would turn out to be. Rob Halford certainly sounded like he was having a good time doing the voice for General Lionwhyte, so I’m interested to see how he does with the character that’s actually based on him.

Brutal Legend is Awesome

admin — Wed, 16 Dec 2009 15:04:51 +0000

I 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.

I just popped the game in for the first time about a week ago. (I was trying to finish up the Ghostbusters game before I really started Brutal Legend.) And it turns out that Brutal Legend is, indeed, awesome. I had a mental image of a heavy metal Ocarina of Time, and that was basically what the game delivered.

The solos actually work better than the songs from Ocarina of Time, and actually have more of a Guitar Hero influence–you call up the solo and it displays it on the screen and you just have to tap the buttons at the right time. It works better than having to remember a pile of random button sequences, at least for me.

I’m still having trouble steering the car, though at least now I’m trying to steer with the correct thumbstick. I don’t know what kind of mental block I had the day that I played the demo, but I don’t have the same level of trouble that I did before. I’m still having problems, but they’re the usual problems that I always have in racing-type games. I oversteer. I always oversteer.

I did make it far enough into the game to get to the very first stage battle, which is the first time that the RTS elements come into the game. All told, it’s not that bad. I won the mission pretty handily, which is more than I usually do when I’m playing real-time strategy games. At least for me, the simplified orders system that Brutal Legend uses works pretty well. It lets you get down and dirty in the action, and just yell to your troops to go beat on whatever needs pounding. Nothing complicated. And it’s introduced in a really good way.

All told, I’m glad that I finally got this game. It is every bit as awesome as I had hoped, and that’s a rare thing to find.