Month: October 2008

Guitar Hero World Tour – First Impressions

I think it may be because I’ve been playing another, similar, instrument based rhythm game for the last year, but I really don’t like Guitar Hero World Tour, so much.

I may be biased, since right out of the box, the snare pad on my drumkit doesn’t work right. It’s one of those “only register every other note” broken ones.   I’m still waiting to hear back from RedOctane’s support as to when I’ll get a new one.

The guitar’s decent.   It’s a lot like the GH3 controller, in its clickiness, and button feel.   Nothing too impressive.   I do, however, like the “mash here for StarPower activation” button.   Though it hurts like hell if you mash it too hard.

I think it’s the game play that I didn’t like that much.   Given, I’ll still play through it once, to get whatever achievements I can get. But I won’t have the desire to go back and play it every night, like the other game.

The game play is, well, confusing.   Lots of random things popping up on the screen that don’t make sense. In Guitar Hero, when you get a streak, it’d pop up and tell you.   In GHWT, stuff pops up, but you’re not really sure what for.   Just random “Score streak”, and “note streak” stuff popping up.   It’s tough to tell.

It’s also extremely tough to tell when your vocalist is about to fail.   When an instrument player is failing, you flash red on your note streak.   (Which we’re all used to from virtually every rhythm game there is.)   The vocalist doesn’t do that.   There’s a “health meter” sort of thing off to the left, for each instrument, but it’s tiny, and you don’t have enough time to stray your eyes over there, to check on yourself.

The graphics are cartoony, just like the other GH games.   It’s not as polished, or clean, as the other game.   The menus take too long to load, and if you’re playing with a group of people, it “saves” everyone’s content separately, which takes longer to get things done after sets/songs.   With just my wife and I playing, it took an average of 17 seconds to save our content after each set.   The other game takes less than 2 seconds.

My biggest pet peeve is the thing I was the most excited about: The Tool setlist.   I think any Tool fan was psyched about this.   Why am I pissed?   Because you have to pay money to play the setlist.   Not real money, but the money you’ve earned in the game.     So, my wife and I spent two hours playing setlists to earn enough money to play the Tool songs.   They were fun, but not $8,000 fun.

Now, let’s move onto the actual gameplay.   I’ll admit it, I’m pretty decent at guitar, even at the Expert level, on the majority of rhythm based games.   With that said, and reading my post on Guitar Hero: Aerosmith, I can say that the games have gotten easier.   At least in my first run through of about 15 songs or so. (I’ll post again once I’ve finished the entire game.)   Guitar Hero II was pretty tough. Guitar Hero III was even harder.   Guitar Hero: Aerosmith was a joke.   And so far, Guitar Hero World Tour, is a joke, too.

Speaking of jokes, the game play is a lot more forgiving than the other game.   I purposely played notes for an entire verse of “Vicarious” close to a second early (before the note crossed the line where you’re supposed to play it), and didn’t miss a single one.   If I tried that BS in the other game, I’d have failed.

Check back in a few more days, once I’ve had a chance to go through the support process to get a new drumkit, and had the chance to finish the game on guitar, for my final thoughts.

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You’ll notice, in my first impression review, that I did not mention the other game by name.   My disclaimer here is that, as you know, my wife works for a competitor.   Therefore, I didn’t mention the game that GHWT’s competitor makes by name. But I think you all know what I’m talking about.   Read any other review on the internet for an accurate comparison between the two.   (PS, I think this is a bogus situation, and would love to write about how one game is far inferior to the other, but I don’t want to get my wife in any trouble.)

Wii Fit Update, Again

I woke up early this morning, and made myself get out of bed when the alarm went off, with the sole intention of doing my half hour Wii Fit workout, which according to the Wii Fit software, hadn’t been done in 24 days.

It also informed me that we’ve had it for 39 days, meaning I have only my half hour workout roughly a dozen or so times, including the couple days I took off, when I was “serious” about losing weight.

Needless to say, I’m not bringing lunch to work anymore, and I’m eating just as much fast food as I was before I started dieting.   However, the half a dozen cans of Coke I would drink during the day, and with meals, I’m no longer drinking.   I’ve been drinking water at my desk at work, and Coke Zero at home (and also when we go out to lunch, if they have Coke Zero, which most places don’t.)

So, when it came time to do my “body test” this morning, I was scared that it’d be like “you’re fat, stop being so fat, stupid American. With your cupcakes and ho-hos. Fat. Fat. Fat.”

To my surprise, quite the opposite.   Since 24 days ago, I’ve lost 5.6 pounds, and rougly 1 on the body mass fat index portion.

I haven’t changed my diet in any way, really, aside from not drinking Coke a zillion times a week anymore.

I suppose I’ve been working out a bit, if you can call Rock Band and Rock Band 2 drumming on Expert for a few hours a week, a workout.

I think the reason I never really try hard to lose weight is because I don’t see any immediate effect, and that discourages me.   However, this nearly 6 pounds down, and having Wii Fit tell me I’ve only got 12.5 more pounds to lose, to make my “goal”, is encouraging.

I’m going to get up early every day during the week, and do a half an hour work out. And try to squeeze it in on the weekends for an hour, and see what happens.   I’m optimistic at this point.

Rock Band 2 Release Party M&Ms

I didn’t bring my camera to the party, in fear that someone would mistake me for one of the hired photographers, but I did take some pictures of the “goodies” from the party, that we brought home.

Harmonix had M&Ms printed with the four icons from the game, and we brought a bunch home, so I could take pictures, because they were so cool.   Check them out (click to enlarge):

Rock Band 2 Release Party

I’m pretty psyched for tonight.   My buddy Justin, Christine and I are heading to the Hard Rock Cafe in Boston for the Rock Band 2 release party, being held by Harmonix.

Not sure what the night has in store for us, aside from food, drinks and live band karaoke.   It should be a good time.

Hopefully there’s some people taking pictures, since I didn’t bring my camera to the office with me, and don’t have time to go home and get it.