The New Moon Trailer: OMG Squee!*

*Dis­claimer: I do not ever say things like “squee” or other words usu­ally belong­ing to the ver­nac­u­lar of 12 year old  fan­girls, but felt the dis­claimer was nec­es­sary to save me from hav­ing to explain myself to idiots who can’t tell when I’m being sarcastic.

Here’s what all the fuss is about:

If the trailer is any indi­ca­tion, I believe New Moon is going to suck and suck hard, but it’s really not the filmmaker’s faults.  My lack of enthu­si­asm for the movie can be blamed on author Stephe­nie Meyer’s dread­ful source mate­r­ial.  For your con­ve­nience, and for my own per­sonal amuse­ment, let’s re-cap Meyer’s super-epic plot to the sequel of Twi­light, shall we?

• It’s Bella Swan’s birth­day and her vam­pire friends throw her a party at their digs.
• At the party, Bella gets a paper cut.
• Jasper, one of the newest vam­pires, can’t con­trol him­self when he sees the blood.
• Pre­dictably, he goes into a rage and lunges for Bella.
• Bella’s sexy vam­pire boyfriend Edward Cullen (pause to swoon here) saves the day…
• …But then tells Bella he must leave her for­ever in order to keep her safe, then peaces out.
• Bella can’t han­dle him leav­ing and goes all emo, bor­der­line suicidal.
• That’s okay though, because there’s yet another sexy guy, Jacob Black, just wait­ing around to take Edward’s place.
• And Jacob just hap­pens to be a werewolf.
• Jacob tries to get Bella to “drop that zero and get with the hero” but she ain’t havin’ none, and con­tin­ues to mope around and do reck­less things, like ride motor­cy­cles and go cliff diving.
• At some point Jacob the Were­wolf saves Bella from Lau­rent and Vic­to­ria, two ran­dom vam­pires turned vil­lians, recy­cled from the plot of Twi­light.
• Then out of nowhere, thanks to some weird, poorly-explained mixup cour­tesy of Edward’s sis­ter Alice, who can see the future but fucks it up som­times, Edward thinks Bella com­mit­ted suicide.
• In true Romeo and Juliet fash­ion, Edward decides he can’t live with­out Bella either, and runs off to Italy to kill him­self too.
• But Edward’s a vam­pire, and sui­cide is eas­ier said than done.  Rather than try to explain about the evil Vol­turi and the other bull­shit sec­ondary char­ac­ters that Meyer pulls out of her ass when she needs a plot, Edward’s sui­cide attempt can best be expressed as: DEATH BY SPARKLES.
• Just in the nick of time, Bella saves Edward from expos­ing him­self thus sav­ing him from the Vol­turi and there’s a big dra­matic reunite­ment scene.
• Some other unim­por­tant crap hap­pens in Italy, then Bella, Edward, and the rest of the vam­pires return home.
• Bella wants des­per­ately to become a vam­pire, and so she calls a Super­friends meet­ing where all the vam­pires take turns vot­ing on whether or not it should happen.
• And like the end­ing of Twi­light, Meyer recy­cles the same “does Bella become a vam­pire or not?” cliffhanger in New Moon.
• The end!

It’s mind-blowing stuff, I know.  If you really want, feel free to read my less than glow­ing review of the New Moon book over at Ama­zon.  It’s just all so ridicu­lous, even for a fan­tasy book based on vam­pires.  Most of the book’s 563 pages is spent with Bella, as she pines away for her lost vam­pire love, and let me tell you, it was hell read­ing through page after page of this:

“I was not allowed to think of him. That was some­thing I tried to be very strict about. Of course I slipped; I was only human. But I was get­ting bet­ter, and so the pain was some­thing I could avoid for days at a time now. The trade­off was the never-ending numb­ness. Between pain and noth­ing, I’d cho­sen nothing.”

So by default, New Moon the film should at least be a slight improve­ment over New Moon the book, if only because the nature of the media spares you the lit­er­ary tor­ture.  But Hol­ly­wood isn’t dumb.  It knows there’s good money to be made by cater­ing to the overzeal­ous female fan­base that made the first film such a suc­cess.  Twi­light fans want hot vam­pires, mushy romance, and plenty of Rob Pat­tin­son screen time.  Make no mis­take, New Moon will be one big fan­girl orgy from start to finish.

But why take my word for it when you can read real reviews of the trailer writ­ten by (what I hope are) teenaged girls?

“ok WOW!!! new moon is going to be AH-Mazing, i love kristen’s face when she say ” kiss me” her eye­brow is funny! and the were­wolf, i didnt even expect it to be that big, but OMg i love it!! but tay­lor GOOOOSSH!! i thought he was Hott, now he like fire! but edward was really sad!cant wait! woooo and bella looked eally pretty”

“The part when she got the paper cut and jasper tried to get her but, edward pushed her was so intensed i was like O.O”

“omg omg omg not going to faint but omg. that as freak­ing awsume. may i faint from how hot jacob is. p.s. i think the wolfy looks friendly”

“OMG! This movie looks even bet­ter than Twi­light! It’s dri­ving me crazy cause I wanna see it so bad! Idk if I can wait for Novem­ber 20 to come! Btw: Jacob, so hot!”

Well there you have it.

Moonlight: Well this really sucks…

Par­don the vam­pire pun, but there’s noth­ing worse than get­ting sucked into an awe­some new TV show only to find out it has already been can­celed.  My lat­est let­down was over the CBS series Moon­light, a show about a vam­pire P.I.  liv­ing in modern-day Los Ange­les who strug­gles with life, love and his oft-challeneged quest for redemp­tion.  Sounds cheesy, I know, and there’s no short­age of awful vam­pire shows—even some with strik­ingly sim­i­lar premises—but Moon­light was one of the best I’ve ever seen.  I typ­i­cally don’t watch many TV shows (at least not while they’re still air­ing), I guess because I hate com­mer­cials, wait­ing a week to find out what hap­pens next, and spoiler-happy ass­clowns online.  So most of my TV show con­sump­tion is done all at once in the form of down­loads, DVD, or Hulu, even though watch­ing shows all at once usu­ally means I’m unfash­ion­ably late to most fan­doms.  Which brings me back to Moon­light…

For­get for a moment that the name of the show is Moon­light, which is a bad idea for sev­eral rea­sons, the most obvi­ous being con­fu­sion with Stephe­nie Meyer’s much lamer Twi­light.  Also look past the fact that main char­ac­ter Mick St. John (Alex O’Loughlin) is bru­tally hot, which much of this show’s pop­u­lar­ity with a rabid female fan­base can be attrib­uted to.  Under­neath you’ll find an intel­li­gent, action-packed, funny, and yes, roman­tic super­nat­ural drama with high pro­duc­tion value, great direc­tion, and a kick­ass sound­track.  As far as vam­pire lore goes, Moon­light doesn’t devi­ate too much from con­ven­tional mythol­ogy, but does throw a few unique and inter­est­ing twists into the mix, like sil­ver as a lethal sub­stance, sun­light caus­ing pro­gres­sive degen­er­a­tion, and my per­sonal favorite, sleep­ing in freez­ers. For the geeks, there’s even a geek vam­pire with plenty of video game and World of War­craft references—even a full-blown Leeroy Jenk­ins bat­tle charge.

Crit­i­cally it seems Moon­light didn’t fare too well, with many hav­ing dis­missed the show as silly, or per­haps more detri­men­tal, com­par­ing it to Angel. But it was an obvi­ous hit with fans, hav­ing won a People’s Choice Award for Best New Drama, and its rat­ings were noth­ing to scoff at. So it’s beyond me why CBS would choose to can­cel a good show, espe­cially after claim­ing there were plans for a sec­ond sea­son.  I’m just bit­ter I started watch­ing it with­out know­ing it was already over.

Fans of the show can sign the online peti­tion to save Moon­light, even though most online peti­tions are like pisisng into the wind.  As for me, I’ll just have to be con­tent with re-watching the first and only sea­son and mourn­ing the loss of yet another good show that’s gone too soon.

LOTR Fan Film: $3,000 of Awesome

What can you do with $3,000 and a group of ded­i­cated LOTR fans?  Make a kick-ass fan movie, that’s what.  The Hunt for Gol­lum is a 40-minute fan-made film based on the Lord of the Rings books and movies.  And more impor­tantly, it’s good.  Sur­pris­ingly so.

Based on Tolkien’s appen­dices, The Hunt for Gol­lum remains true to its source mate­r­ial and fits in nicely with the three offi­cial Peter Jack­son films.  The story is a pre­quel of sorts that fol­lows Aragorn on his quest from Gan­dalf to track down and cap­ture the crea­ture Gol­lum, who knows the where­abouts of the One Ring.  It takes place before Gan­dalf returns to The Shire, to warn Frodo of the dan­gers of his burden.

Every­thing from the cos­tumes and make-up to the film’s score and act­ing is well done, and closely mim­ics Jackson’s style of direc­tion and visual effects.  The fight scenes were epic and well choreographed.  

Even Gol­lum looks and sounds great:

It’s an impres­sive accom­plish­ment for such a lim­ited bud­get (the entire cast and crew worked for free).  Huge props to the film­mak­ers, who are as tal­ented as they are ded­i­cated.  The film was released today, May 3rd, and is avail­able to watch free online.  You can also check out the mak­ing of this epic under­tak­ing here.  Visit www.TheHuntForGollum.com, or click  the ban­ner below.  If you’re a LOTR fan, I highly rec­om­mend you go watch it—NOW!

Nothing ventured…

Sur­prise is a rare feel­ing for me to get from most games nowa­days, but The Lost Crown is a rare breed of game—the kind that draws you in slowly, peel­ing away each rich layer of story, slow and method­i­cal.  You are Nigel Dan­vers, trea­sure hunter and para­nor­mal inves­ti­ga­tor, sent to seek your fortune—the ancient Anglo-Saxon crown—like many before you.  Atmos­pheric and steeped in mys­tery, the quaint Eng­lish sea­side town of Sax­ton and the sur­round­ing coun­try­side awaits your adventure…

Although “a ghost-hunting adven­ture” is indeed an appro­pri­ate sub­ti­tle for this game, I believe it’s also the thing that orig­i­nally turned me off, and the rea­son why I have not played this game until now.  I finally decided to give it a go after see­ing it so highly rec­om­mended here and here.  I remem­ber a few years back, see­ing The Lost Crown on the store shelves, and quickly dis­miss­ing it as some kind of cliche hor­ror title with vague, sim­plis­tic goals of cap­tur­ing proof of the after­life.  And while it’s true that you will spend a good por­tion of your play­time doing exactly that, The Lost Crown offers much, much more.

For starters, the game fea­tures a large cast of extremely well-developed characters—both liv­ing and dead—all with dis­tinct per­son­al­i­ties, back­grounds, & (often tragic) his­to­ries.  The quirky towns­peo­ple of Sax­ton are gen­er­ally a sim­ple and kind­hearted folk, but the small town’s more sin­is­ter res­i­dents (and past res­i­dents) are the kind you wouldn’t want to meet in a dark alley, or say, in an ancient grave­yard in the mid­dle of the night! Every sin­gle line of dia­log in this game is superbly voice acted.  The sound­track is richly lay­ered with Celtic music, ghostly voices, nature sounds, and a cacoph­ony of eerie effects.  It never felt repet­i­tive or unin­ter­est­ing, and each loca­tion seemed to have its own audi­tory iden­tity.  The starkly-contrasted black and white visu­als are also highly effec­tive in cre­at­ing the over­all mood.  Every scene fea­tures one small burst of color—such as the bright red of the phone booth, or the pale pink hues of the flowers—similar to those old hand-dyed pho­tographs.  But whether its min­i­mal­ist approach to graph­ics was a bold styl­is­tic choice, or a result of bud­getary restraints, The Lost Crown’s unique style oozes charm.

And I haven’t even men­tioned how good the story is yet!  Sax­ton can best be described as a mys­tery wrapped in an enigma.  As its super­sti­tious res­i­dents might say, “Not all is as it seems.”  Your adven­ture into the spirit world will uncover many grisly, ter­ri­ble secrets, but it will also help some of the poor souls who are still lost and wan­der­ing.  The Lost Crown is equal parts scary and sen­ti­men­tal, and this, I feel, is one of its strong points.  There are plenty of scares, but plenty of ten­der moments too.  The game is also sur­pris­ingly long, but I say that to its credit.  There are far too many adven­ture games out there that are big on gim­micks and short on game­play (cough, Still Life, cough).  The Lost Crown takes its time to tell its many related sto­ries, and wraps them all up in an ele­gant pack­age.  The game also boasts a good vari­ety of cre­ative puz­zles, and although chal­leng­ing, not once did I ever feel frus­trated by them.

The Lost Crown is not flaw­less, how­ever.  There were a few (minor) annoyances:

• Inabil­ity to skip through dia­log quickly
• Too wide of a range on click­able “hot spots”, which can be cause for confusion
• Nigel walks very slooooooooooowly…
• Cum­ber­some inven­tory; you will walk around car­ry­ing 20+ things at any given time

But these things are all for­giv­able, espe­cially con­sid­er­ing the small size of the devel­op­ment team, led by the insanely tal­ented game designer, Jonathan Boakes.  I loved this game so much that, before even fin­ish­ing it, I felt com­pelled to buy the Lim­ited “Pins & Nee­dles” Edi­tion of Dark Fall, Jonathan’s pre­vi­ous series of games.  Each edi­tion is hand num­bered & signed by the designer himself—I can’t wait to get my mits on this one!  And as for The Lost Crown, well…I will never judge another game by its cover again!

Using Walkthroughs: When It’s Not Cheating

How many times have you got­ten stuck in an adven­ture game because you missed one tiny lit­tle pixel you some­how neglected to click?  Or because you couldn’t make sense of the con­vo­luted story hinted at within the 300 pages of books and diaries the game expects you to read?  Or maybe you didn’t real­ize that you were sup­posed to com­bine the rope with the rub­ber chicken (how silly of you) which turns out to be mirac­u­lously crit­i­cal in mak­ing your great escape.  It’s hair-pulling moments like these when the temp­ta­tion to use a walk­through is at its strongest.  It’s the inevitable eth­i­cal dilemma all adven­ture gamers must face: do I con­tinue to waste hours get­ting nowhere, or do I take one lit­tle peek at the answers?  We’re torn between the desire to feel sat­is­fied in solv­ing puz­zles for our­selves, and on the other hand, the desire to merely get on with the rest of our lives.

If you’re like me, you’ll reach one of these mad­den­ing impasses and at least try to give it your best shot.  You’ll click and double-click every­thing, retrace your steps, talk to every­one, and exhaust a good hour or two of play­time before your brain trans­forms into Jello and your once opti­mistic pow­ers of rea­son­ing dete­ri­o­rate into thoughts of obscene and utter con­tempt for the mak­ers of such mind­fucks, that were obvi­ously designed specif­i­cally to destroy you.  I’ve been there.

Case in point:  Last night while play­ing The Black Mir­ror, I got stuck in William Gordon’s tower study room and for the life of me could not fig­ure out why.  I knew I was look­ing for a diary, and I knew it would be in this room.  I picked up every object there was to pick up, tried com­bin­ing items to no avail, and clicked and double-clicked on every square pixel of screen real estate that I could.  Yet the game would not let me leave the room, stat­ing that “I need to explore this area more thor­oughly.”  When I real­ized I had wasted over an hour in this sin­gle room, I decided to sac­ri­fice my pride and guiltily con­sult a walk­through, feel­ing stu­pid and defeated.  And you know what it turns out I was doing wrong?  I needed to right-click on the damn desk drawer to find the secret hid­den diary, not left-click it.  (WTF!)  So even though I had already fig­ured out exactly where to go and what to do, an unfor­tu­nate tech­ni­cal­ity pre­vented my progression.

When it comes to adven­ture games, I believe there’s a fine line between dif­fi­culty and poor game design.

Let’s be hon­est, game design­ers some­times do things that are just plain stu­pid and/or  make no sense.  And it’s cir­cum­stances like the one described above when I will hap­pily con­sult a walk­through and not feel guilty after­ward.  When we learn puz­zle solu­tions in a walk­through, we will usu­ally expe­ri­ence one of two reactions:

1. Wow, how could I have missed that!??
2. OMFG that is SOOOOO stupid!

The first reac­tion typ­i­cally leads to feel­ings of guilt and shame for hav­ing looked up the answer.  But if it’s the sec­ond reac­tion, should we feel jus­ti­fied?  I say yes.  Can it really be con­sid­ered cheat­ing if a game’s poor design or quirky con­trol sys­tem prac­ti­cally requires you to cheat?  (Of course, the only prob­lem is, you won’t know the dif­fer­ence until you’ve cheated…)

So in the inter­est of restor­ing everyone’s dig­nity dur­ing our moments of des­per­a­tion, I’d like to pro­pose the following:

Using a walk­through is not cheat­ing when…

• You already know where to go and what to do, but can­not fig­ure out exactly how to do it.
• You dis­cover some­thing impor­tant or con­nect the dots ear­lier than the game’s pro­tag­o­nist, and you must then do exces­sive amounts of back­track­ing to bring your less intel­li­gent alter-ego up to speed.
• Ter­ri­ble con­trol or inter­face designs make oth­er­wise easy tasks exceed­ingly difficult.
• The game has known bugs that inhibit progression.
• Exces­sive use of red her­rings fea­tured in the game.
• Puz­zle solu­tions turns out to be almost com­pletely illog­i­cal, with no prior clues given for how to go about solv­ing them.
• Solu­tion requires com­bin­ing two com­pletely unre­lated objects in a non­sen­si­cal fash­ion to become key­stone of epic McGuyver-like proportions.

I remem­ber play­ing adven­ture games before the Inter­net.  Before walk­throughs, before Game­FAQs.  Before you could just Google a descrip­tion of the exact part of the game you were stuck on and be met with hun­dreds of detailed, pic­to­r­ial solu­tions.  Those were the days.  You felt a real sense of accom­plish­ment when you com­pleted games.  Nowa­days it’s far too easy to Google up the answers, or worse, unin­ten­tion­ally stum­ble upon cheats and spoil­ers posted online.  I guess one solu­tion could be to avoid the Inter­net com­pletely while you’re play­ing a game, but let’s be real­is­tic here.  These are the rea­sons why I’m thank­ful for sites like Uni­ver­sal Hint Sys­tem which is help­ful with­out giv­ing too much away.  After all, the very rea­son we play adven­ture games is because we enjoy games that reward us for our clev­er­ness and intu­ition, not pun­ish us with frus­tra­tion and feel­ings of inferiority.

A love letter to the Sega Genesis/CD

Remem­ber the sheer awe­some­ness of Sonic the Hedge­hog?  Remem­ber how great the 6-button con­troller was?  Remem­ber Sega Visions magazine?

I got my first glimpse into that 16-bit world one sum­mer when my older cousin came to visit and brought along his shiny new Sega Gen­e­sis.  All I knew at the time was that it wasn’t a Nin­tendo, the only con­sole I’d ever really known.  The Sega Gen­e­sis was black and mys­te­ri­ous, almost as if it were inten­tion­ally designed to be in stark con­trast with the pedes­trian light gray of Nin­tendo.  I had no con­cept of graph­ics, hard­ware, or these things called “bits.” I just knew video games were fun to play.  But when my cousin showed me those early Gen­e­sis games for the first time–games like Golden Axe and Alex Kidd–my world changed.  These games looked like noth­ing I had ever seen before.  I vividly remem­ber the first time my cousin and I played Altered Beast.  The char­ac­ters looked real. The sound effects used real voices (POWER UP!).  It blew my lit­tle 7-year-old mind.  Sud­denly my Nin­tendo games seemed bor­ing and amateur.

And you must admit, the graph­ics were amaz­ing for 1990.  It was at a time when most kids had never heard of Sega Gen­e­sis, and if they did, their par­ents prob­a­bly couldn’t afford to buy them one.  And if they could, good luck con­vinc­ing them it was some­how dif­fer­ent or bet­ter than “that Nin­tendo you already have.”  Lots of beg­ging and tons of chores later, I was one of the proud but few kids in my neigh­bor­hood with a Sega Gen­e­sis.  When I went to the local video rental store (this was before Block­buster), I was one of the hand­ful of cus­tomers who had any rea­son to go near the small but brand spank­ing new selec­tion of Gen­e­sis games.

Two years later, Super Nin­tendo arrived.  And inven­tiably, us kids were divided on whose video game sys­tem was supe­rior. (Funny how some things never change.)  The lucky kids had both.  The rest of us were forced to choose one or the other.  The Super Nin­tendo kids were the soft­ies, the kids with the “toy” con­sole.  Us Sega kids were the hard­core gamers, the ones with the con­sole that actu­ally showed blood in Mor­tal Kom­bat.  Choos­ing your alliance was crit­i­cal to your social sta­tus and geek cred, and I defended my console’s honor with a noble fist.  A side-by-side screen­shot com­par­i­son of every sin­gle game looked more real­is­tic on the Gen­e­sis, and that was all the jus­ti­fi­ca­tion I needed.  And though years later I even­tu­ally did get a Super Nin­tendo (and yes it was a great con­sole) for the major­ity of the 1990s I was first and fore­most a Sega girl.

Remem­ber this?

Nat­u­rally when the Sega CD came out, I knew I had to have that too.  And like the Gen­e­sis, the Sega CD blew me away with its graph­ics and sound.  Video games on a com­pact disc?  Sega has always been ahead of its time.  (Their exper­i­men­ta­tion and for­ward think­ing is per­haps the rea­son for where they’re at right now, but that’s another blog post for another time.)  Before Playsta­tion, even before the Pana­sonic 3DO, us Sega CD own­ers were play­ing mas­sive games with full-motion video and CD-quality sound.  The Sega CD is also the con­sole (or should I say pseudo con­sole) that really ignited my love for adven­ture games.  Willy Beamish, Snatcher, Rise of the Dragon; no other con­sole was putting out games like these.  I remem­ber lust­ing after the CDX, one of the first multi-purpose con­soles on the market.

Although it even­tu­ally became unpop­u­lar, I kept right on play­ing my Genesis/CD, even when the games began to dis­ap­pear from that local video rental store.  There were so many great games, the con­sole kept me play­ing for a long time after its even­tual demise.  Over the years other con­soles came and went in my life, and some­where in between I got Sat­urn and Dream­cast too.  But my fond­est Sega mem­o­ries cen­ter around the Genesis/CD years, which to this day remains my favorite con­sole of all time.

I guess what I’m really try­ing to say is, I heart you, Sega. Thanks for mak­ing my child­hood a lit­tle more awesome.

Coraline: A modern day Wizard of Oz

“You prob­a­bly think this world is a dream come true… but you’re wrong.”

Cora­line is one of those movies I knew I would love before I even knew any­thing about it. Between being writ­ten by fan­tasy god Neil Gaiman, directed by Henry Selick (The Night­mare Before Christ­mas), and fea­tur­ing dark and dreamy stop-motion visu­als, it just had my name writ­ten all over it. Nev­er­mind that I had never read the story*. I knew I had to see this movie the moment I heard about it.

And I was not disappointed.

From begin­ning to end, Cora­line is an absolute delight on the eyes and ears. It was sort of like watch­ing the inhab­i­tants of a Vic­to­rian doll­house come alive and invite the entire toy box over for tea. Every char­ac­ter was lov­ably quirky, funny, and mem­o­rable; includ­ing the per­son­al­i­ties of the not-always-inanimate objects. Even the voice act­ing of Dakota Fan­ning and Teri Hatcher, two actresses whom I ordi­nar­ily don’t care for, was very well done. I found myself so absorbed that it didn’t even occur to me which famous per­son I was lis­ten­ing to, which is one thing I typ­i­cally dis­like about ani­mated films–I tend to hear the celebrity, not the character.

And the visu­als were top-notch, as usual, which seems to be stan­dard for all of Henry Selick’s pic­tures so far. Kudos to LAIKA ani­ma­tion stu­dio and the hun­dreds of tal­ented peo­ple who brought the world of Cora­line to bril­liant life.

But Cora­line isn’t just eye candy. Like most of Gaiman’s sto­ries, Cora­line has a good mes­sage, and deliv­ers it with a bit of clever wit wrapped in child­like intrigue. Movie­go­ers may find Coraline’s sto­ry­line sim­i­lar to Mir­ror­mask, another of Gaiman’s stories-turned-movie, in which a young girl becomes dis­en­chanted with her life and par­ents, escap­ing to a dream­world where the grass seems greener at first, but soon dis­cov­ers it to be a warped and night­mar­ish ver­sion of her own reality.

I’ve seen some crit­ics already refer to this movie as a clas­sic, and I don’t think I would dis­agree with that. In many ways, the story of Cora­line is rem­i­nis­cent of another clas­sic, The Wiz­ard of Oz. And like Dorothy, Cora­line reminds us that there’s no place like home.

*Note to the book Nazis: Cora­line is pretty faith­ful to its source material.

Rock Band 2: The Perfect Game?

Okay, I know Rock Band 2 has been out for a few months, but after get­ting it for Christ­mas and being com­pletely con­sumed by it ever since, I feel more than a lit­tle com­pelled to declare my love for it.

My pre­vi­ous Rock Band expe­ri­ence had been lim­ited to a one-night stand with Rock Band 1 at a seedy karaoke bar in Bal­ti­more where the gui­tars and drums had seen bet­ter days and the same bunch of drunk douchebags kept get­ting up to play “Wanted Dead Or Alive” over and over and over again.  And know­ing how expen­sive it was to buy the whole out­fit, I fig­ured I’d wait it out and keep myself occu­pied with the Gui­tar Hero series I already owned and loved for PS2.  Besides, I had heard about Rock Band’s hard­ware issues, the drums break­ing, the guitar’s strum­mer suck­ing, and felt fully jus­ti­fied not ever buy­ing it.

So when Rock Band 2 came out and I heard about all its fea­tures, new songs, and improve­ments over the orig­i­nal Rock Band, it imme­di­ately went on my wish­list.  But being some­what broke around that time and try­ing to save money for Christ­mas shop­ping, I held off.

And then I got Rock Band 2 for Christ­mas, and I felt like Ral­phie open­ing his Red Ryder BB gun.

Fun Solo Play

I took it home and set it up imme­di­ately, where it is cur­rently dom­i­nat­ing my liv­ing room.  I cranked the vol­ume on my sur­round sound sys­tem and tried a cou­ple of Quick­play Solos on the gui­tar just to warm things up–I’ve had dif­fi­cutly putting it down ever since.  Since I was already famil­iar with the Gui­tar Hero series, I had no prob­lems play­ing gui­tar for Rock Band 2 and was suprised at the qual­ity of the gui­tar con­troller.  Very smooth, nicely weighted, and realistic-looking.  Next I tried out the drums, which I had never played before, and I admit it took some get­ting used to.  My hand-eye coor­di­na­tion is awe­some, but my foot-eye coor­di­na­tion?  Not so much.  Hit­ting those beats embed­ded in the foot pedal beats were rough, and I’m glad nobody was around on my maiden voy­age of rock to watch me make a com­plete fool of myself.  But still, the drums are FUN.  Sur­pris­ingly so.  And I’m get­ting bet­ter.  Then I tried out the mic and sang for a few songs (again grate­ful that nobody was around) and by that point the sun was com­ing up and I couldn’t tell you where the time went.

Awe­some Multiplayer

The next night I invited fam­ily over, anx­ious to try out the mul­ti­player.  I should pref­ace this by say­ing  that except for my brother-in-law, my fam­ily does NOT play video games.  But with a few drinks in them and my sin­cere promise not to laugh, they let loose–on Easy mode, of course.  The game­play is so infec­tious on mul­ti­player since everyone’s try­ing to do their best so they don’t screw up the song for the other peo­ple in the band.  And it helps that the music is great.  I was really impressed how much fun it was for a bunch of non-gamers.  Also, the char­ac­ter cre­ation process was really fun; every­one had a good time with that.

Tour Mode is Addictive

Then my boyfriend and I started a band (I’m the drum­mer, he’s the lead gui­tarist) and play­ing through all the venues and rack­ing up fans and cash is super fun.  Although I think some gigs com­pletely whore you–$20 bucks for a 5-star per­for­mance?  Seri­ously, GTFO.  Warn­ing: play­ing Rock Band 2 with your sig­nif­i­cant other will lead to argu­ments.  Like when I want to spend all our money on cute slutty out­fits for my char­ac­ter, and he wants to save up for bet­ter qual­ity instruments.

New to Rock Band period?

Here’s why you should buy Rock Band 2 instead of Rock Band 1:

• Abil­ity to pur­chase lots of addi­tional tracks = unlim­ited replay value
• Improved drum set, com­pat­i­ble with cym­bal kit add-on (sold separately)
• Improved gui­tar with bet­ter strum bar and more real­is­tic feel
• You can import all the songs from Rock Band 1 (for $5/500 points)
• No Fail mode
• Online world tour play

I can’t see any rea­son to even go back and pur­chase Rock Band 1.  Rock Band 2 is really that much better.

Awe­some solo game?  Check.  Awe­some mul­ti­player game?  Check.  Kick­ass music?  Check.  Fun for both gamers and non-gamers?  Check.  Just a few rea­sons why I think Rock Band 2 is the per­fect game.

2008 Kind of Sucked for Gamers

Neko qui­etly reflects.

So it’s New Year’s Eve, and right on cue my annual bout of gamer’s ret­ro­spec­tion is kick­ing in.  This is nor­mally the part where I look back on all the games that came out dur­ing the year and reflect on how awe­some the year in gam­ing has been.  But as 2008 comes to a close, I’m left feel­ing more dis­ap­pointed than affec­tion­ate over this past year’s offer­ings.  And I’ve come to a some­what alarm­ing real­iza­tion: 2008 kind of sucked for gamers.

2008 was sup­posed to be “the year for gamers” right?  But what did that really mean?  For the video game indus­try (well, except per­haps Sony) it meant huge sales fig­ures and over­hyped sold-out game launches, despite the fail­ing econ­omy.  (What recession?)

But for us gamers, 2008 was mostly a year of sequels and rehashes that we gladly lined up and shelled out big bucks for–again.  Block­buster titles like Grand Theft Auto IV, Fall­out 3, Fable 2, Gears of War 2… Notic­ing a pat­tern here?  Where was the orig­i­nal­ity and inno­va­tion in 2008?  And I’m not just talk­ing about killer graphics–that’s some­thing none of these games were short on.  I’m talk­ing about the game­play itself.  Riv­et­ing and unpre­dictable sto­ry­lines, amaz­ing char­ac­ters, truly immer­sive worlds you can spend hours get­ting lost in–where were these things?  The games of 2008 seemed to be all style over sub­stance, more hype and high-tech than mov­ing and mem­o­rable.  Brit­tany Vin­cent over at TGR sums up my feel­ing exactly.  Where is the heart?

What was this year’s big “it” game?  GTA IV, accord­ing to Spike TV who awarded it Game of the Year.  Seri­ously?  I won­der how dead the horse has to be before the game com­pa­nies stop beat­ing it.  I don’t think I could bear another Call of Final Grand Theft of War 5 release.  I don’t care how real­is­tic a game looks if that’s the only thing worth play­ing it for.  I don’t care if I can pick up and throw every object I see.

What I do care about is “that feel­ing” and I’m sure you know the one I mean–that euphoric feel­ing that can only come from play­ing a really amaz­ing video game.  And that’s some­thing 2008 hasn’t given me.

Sony PS3 Sales Slip, Not Surprisingly

Today CNN Money reports that sales of Sony’s PS3 have plum­meted 19% from last year’s fig­ures and the con­sole is lit­er­ally “dying on the shelves.”  Mean­while, Xbox 360’s 2008 sales have improved over 2007 and Nintendo’s Wii con­tin­ues to be a sell­out since its launch.

So why am I not surprised?

Huge Pric­etag

When it launched in Novem­ber 2006, the PS3 cost $500 for a 40G model, and $600 for a 60G model.  And that price only included one con­troller and no games.  Who could afford to spend that kind of money on a bare-bones video game con­sole?  Cer­tainly not me, and I’m a sin­gle adult in the 18–35 demo with a great job who loves video games–their tar­get mar­ket.  So I can’t even imag­ine how par­ents strug­gled to afford this price-bloated piece of plas­tic plus a $60 game game or two, try­ing to give their kid a merry Christmas.

But even though the console’s price has dropped sev­eral times and there’s now a wider range of mod­els to choose from, the still-pricey PS3 con­tin­ues to strug­gle.  If Sony’s con­sole sales hadn’t been dis­ap­point­ing since launch, I might chalk it up to the reces­sion, but that’s not easy to do when nearly every other game com­pany seems to be thriv­ing despite the economy’s cur­rent hard knocks.

Con­sole Competition

When it comes to video games, Sony is a rel­a­tive new­comer to the scene com­pared to Nin­tendo who has main­tained a huge fol­low­ing since the orig­i­nal NES ignited a love for video games in many of our hearts as kids in the 80s.  And over the years, Nin­tendo has always put out qual­ity sys­tems (I like to pre­tend Vir­tu­al­Boy never existed) with great libraries of games that have been fun and inno­v­a­tive.  The Wii, despite its silly name, was des­tined to be just as suc­cess­ful.  So why did Sony think it was a good idea to choose a launch date for PS3 so close to the Wii’s?  This is where I think they really under­es­ti­mated the competition.

The PS3 also launched at a time when the Xbox 360 had been out for a year already.  But Microsoft had been qui­etly bid­ing its time improv­ing the 360’s hard­ware, build­ing up a solid library of games, and win­ning play­ers over with its Xbox Live expe­ri­ence.  If Sony was expect­ing 360 own­ers to buy a PS3 as well, they cer­tainly didn’t have much of any­thing new to offer.  I’m will­ing to bet that most peo­ple who already owned 360s went out and bought Wiis instead.

Noth­ing New to Offer

Sure the PS3 has “amaz­ing graph­ics”, which has been its main sell­ing point.  But is that all that really mat­ters to gamers?  Sony’s sales have indi­cated oth­er­wise.  Other than improved graph­ics and offer­ing a Blu-Ray player at a time when most peo­ple didn’t even know what Blue-Ray was, what else did the PS3 offer?  Cer­tainly not an impres­sive library of games or inno­v­a­tive design over its pre­de­ces­sors.  Even the PS3’s con­troller design was more of the same.

Dis­ap­point­ing Game Library

The PS3 launched with a pretty under­whelm­ing selction of games that either nobody heard of, or titles that had already been out a long time on the 360.  Com­pare that to Nin­tendo Wii, whose launch titles included mega hits like The Leg­end of Zelda: Twi­light Princess and Metroid Prime 3: Cor­rup­tion.  Sony should have off­set the console’s huge pric­etag by at least offer­ing more com­pelling titles, espe­cially at launch.  If a con­sole has great games, gamers tend to over­look the price, no mat­ter how ridicu­lous.  After all, what good is a tech­no­log­i­cally supe­rior video game sys­tem if it doesn’t have good games?   Like many, instead of buy­ing a PS3, I waited to see if any titles would launch later on that com­pelled me enough to pur­chase this sys­tem.  Two years later, I’m still wait­ing.

It will be inter­est­ing to see what Sony does to try to win over gamers and dig itself out of its hole.  CNN sug­gests deep price discounts–that would cer­tainly help.  I guess.  My advice to Sony: count your losses and just focus on Playsta­tion 4.