To preface this review, I thoroughly enjoyed the first guitar hero game on the ps2 back in the day. Boston, David Bowie and Rob Zombie headed the superb playlist. I still listen to some of those songs and I loved the way everything was made. You actually felt like you were playing a guitar and helping out the band. Expert was hard, but it wasn't impossible. I would stay up till 4 in the morning so that I could unlock all the songs and get better. Yes, I was that guy when it came to guitar hero.
This one has changed everything about that. First of all, the playlist is horrible. Most of the songs I've never heard of, and I would have no wish to hear again. A lot of the songs are from bands that I knew or thought I did but they didn't have songs that I recognized. It seems like they took the hardest songs from a band that they could find. Should Tenacious D even be considered as a rock legend? Should Dragonforce?
This brings me to my next point. The joy of the first game was that the notes that you played actually made it sound like you were playing the song. If you missed a note then the whole song went awry. Now it feels like you're not even needed to play the song. Almost like the backup vocals. Or the tambourine player dude guy. Now the whole point of it is to react to the colors as they pass over the bar. There's no rhythm to the game anymore. I would do just as well without the sound as with.
I'll be in the middle of playing a song and suddenly a random note will pop up and you'll lose your 50 note streak. It's very frustrating. In fact the only song that felt like the old school was one I downloaded. It's the only song I'll continue playing on it and enjoy it. All the other songs are just meh. That one song is Top Gun's Theme song. And it actually feels like you're playing it. That is what GH3 should've been. Not some mish-mash of notes that you randomly have to play and hope you hit them. You should feel the rhythm and know when you need to strum.
~j
Friday, December 19, 2008
Friday, December 12, 2008
WARHAMMER Chronicles: Episode 11 - Cast bars and melee
Well, back from a 2 week hiatus I logged in on Friday night last week. Everything seemed a little drearier when I did but I'm gonna blame that on the fact that I was so doggone tired. Well, I logged in. Scenarios didn't pop for about 20 minutes. I'm not sure what the deal is here. I thought my server had a very high population and all that but for some reason or other no one wanted to play on Friday. It's probably WotLK from WoW destroying the WAR's playerbase.
Anyways, when I did finally get in to a scenario something strange happened. I couldn't heal anyone. Suddenly, even though I was back to mork specced I couldn't keep anyone up. I could barely keep myself up under attack from an IB that was wielding a 1 hander. If a BW decided to attack me I was a goner. I haven't experienced that since I first started playing a shaman and decided that INT + WP was better than wounds. I don't know why though. Tanks would die under my watch. A DoK was outhealing me. I couldn't do anything. That's when I figured it out:
My cast bar was bugged. Every single non-instant spell that I had took .5-2 seconds longer than it was supposed to. The cast bar would fill up. Then my character would sit there, wait for a few seconds, and then cast. It was the most frustrating thing as a healer I've ever experienced. No wonder other DoK's were better healers, all their heals are all instants. I got so fed up with it that I couldn't even enjoy Gork Sez Stop (I promise to write a post about the hilarity of this spell at some other time). I ended up rolling a black orc just to have a melee I could run around with.
I figured that since Melee had all instant attacks that they would have the advantage for the next few days. Well, I was right. What I was wrong about was that there were 20 million blackguards and KotBS running around and that meant there weren't any healers. So, I'm sitting there as a black orc and getting no heals and dying over and over again. It is a little frustrating at times.
All in all though, I really like the BO, I'll keep him along with my Marauder as fun little alts. I want to get my shaman to 40 though. At least they've fixed the cast bar by now.
~j
Anyways, when I did finally get in to a scenario something strange happened. I couldn't heal anyone. Suddenly, even though I was back to mork specced I couldn't keep anyone up. I could barely keep myself up under attack from an IB that was wielding a 1 hander. If a BW decided to attack me I was a goner. I haven't experienced that since I first started playing a shaman and decided that INT + WP was better than wounds. I don't know why though. Tanks would die under my watch. A DoK was outhealing me. I couldn't do anything. That's when I figured it out:
My cast bar was bugged. Every single non-instant spell that I had took .5-2 seconds longer than it was supposed to. The cast bar would fill up. Then my character would sit there, wait for a few seconds, and then cast. It was the most frustrating thing as a healer I've ever experienced. No wonder other DoK's were better healers, all their heals are all instants. I got so fed up with it that I couldn't even enjoy Gork Sez Stop (I promise to write a post about the hilarity of this spell at some other time). I ended up rolling a black orc just to have a melee I could run around with.
I figured that since Melee had all instant attacks that they would have the advantage for the next few days. Well, I was right. What I was wrong about was that there were 20 million blackguards and KotBS running around and that meant there weren't any healers. So, I'm sitting there as a black orc and getting no heals and dying over and over again. It is a little frustrating at times.
All in all though, I really like the BO, I'll keep him along with my Marauder as fun little alts. I want to get my shaman to 40 though. At least they've fixed the cast bar by now.
~j
Tuesday, December 2, 2008
Guest post by TD on Left 4 Dead
As I have discussed with anyone who would listen, the zombie apocalypse will not catch me unawares. I have marked such places that would make good supply stores, which places to avoid, what places would make good fortifications, and how many women we would need to maintain genetic diversity. I also have a carefully hand-picked group of friends with which I plan to survive Armageddon, each bringing a uniqueness to the table that increases our group dynamic (sort of like Final Fantasy but less gay) thus furthering our chances of repopulation. Since training for the final days of human society is rather difficult to simulate, we have turned to Valve’s morbid co-op masterpiece, Left 4 Dead.
Like surviving the brain-hungry horde (or just really pissed off sick people, depending on your movie), Left 4 Dead is best tackled as a team. The single player is good and has excellent AI. That is all I shall say about masturbation mode. In a group is where the fun begins. I took this to a friend’s house and we played some split screen, which means we still had two AI controlled team mates (although we could have opted to bring some people in over XBLive). Fueled by Irish Car Bombs and Scotch--we’re multicultural--we picked our projectiles (I’m an automatic shotgun and molotov cocktail guy myself) and took on The Director.
“The Director” is really just a clever naming of the game’s dynamic placement system. Based on your performance, the number and difficulty of zombies will ebb and flow. Don’t think that playing badly means you get an easy game, its more concerned with pacing than it is with you surviving. But by simply naming the system, we now have an evil force. Sure there are masses of undead, scattered boss zombies and obstacles, but the real nemesis is The Director. Like mice in a maze, he leads us down dark allies only to be vomited on by slyly placed boomers or strangled to death by smokers hidden on foggy rooftops. Everything might be going just fine but suddenly the music spikes and mosh pits of angry undead come screaming at you from all the city’s orifices. Why? The Director decided you weren’t moving fast enough.
Much like the discussions at the water cooler in my future compound, war stories abound from a single play session. Remember that time when I was at 1 health point, limping along at half pace, yet we all still managed to slam the safe house door on a Director controlled horde of angry undead? What about the time you shot at a lone zombie but hit the car behind him, thus setting of its alarm and summoning his five hundred buddies? Remember me telling you witches really “aren’t that bad” when we encountered one? All these events happened in a single night of play. What kind of mayhem could we be up to given a week’s time?
Whether or not you intend to survive the coming cataclysm or become my prey, Left 4 Dead exemplifies Valves obsessive drive to create superior products. Made by guys who obviously watched a lot of movies, the music, lighting, grain, and hundreds of undead model types would make George Romero proud. And considering the massive success of their previous games (ahem, Counter Strike and Team Fortress) is it really any surprise?
~TD
Like surviving the brain-hungry horde (or just really pissed off sick people, depending on your movie), Left 4 Dead is best tackled as a team. The single player is good and has excellent AI. That is all I shall say about masturbation mode. In a group is where the fun begins. I took this to a friend’s house and we played some split screen, which means we still had two AI controlled team mates (although we could have opted to bring some people in over XBLive). Fueled by Irish Car Bombs and Scotch--we’re multicultural--we picked our projectiles (I’m an automatic shotgun and molotov cocktail guy myself) and took on The Director.
“The Director” is really just a clever naming of the game’s dynamic placement system. Based on your performance, the number and difficulty of zombies will ebb and flow. Don’t think that playing badly means you get an easy game, its more concerned with pacing than it is with you surviving. But by simply naming the system, we now have an evil force. Sure there are masses of undead, scattered boss zombies and obstacles, but the real nemesis is The Director. Like mice in a maze, he leads us down dark allies only to be vomited on by slyly placed boomers or strangled to death by smokers hidden on foggy rooftops. Everything might be going just fine but suddenly the music spikes and mosh pits of angry undead come screaming at you from all the city’s orifices. Why? The Director decided you weren’t moving fast enough.
Much like the discussions at the water cooler in my future compound, war stories abound from a single play session. Remember that time when I was at 1 health point, limping along at half pace, yet we all still managed to slam the safe house door on a Director controlled horde of angry undead? What about the time you shot at a lone zombie but hit the car behind him, thus setting of its alarm and summoning his five hundred buddies? Remember me telling you witches really “aren’t that bad” when we encountered one? All these events happened in a single night of play. What kind of mayhem could we be up to given a week’s time?
Whether or not you intend to survive the coming cataclysm or become my prey, Left 4 Dead exemplifies Valves obsessive drive to create superior products. Made by guys who obviously watched a lot of movies, the music, lighting, grain, and hundreds of undead model types would make George Romero proud. And considering the massive success of their previous games (ahem, Counter Strike and Team Fortress) is it really any surprise?
~TD
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