games
Breaking News: NY City destroyed by pixels!
Posted By Jeff On April 10, 2010 @ 12:55 pm
If you’ve ever wanted to see New York city completely taken over and taken apart by your favorite 8-bit characters, now is the time to do so. Patrick Jean did an amazing job on this, I’m astounded and in awe.
PIXELS by PATRICK JEAN.
Uploaded by onemoreprod. – Arts and animation videos.
[Via Mashable!]
Games: Battle of the Bands
Posted By Jeff On January 15, 2009 @ 9:21 am
As promised last week, today we’re going to take a look at
Battle of the Bands
At first glance, this game looks like it can be a lot of fun. Well, it can once you get past the lack of content in the game itself. Lets have a look at some of what the game has to offer:
- A decent variety of songs (of course, no where near some of the more costlier games on the market)
- The joy of rhythm based games without the need to have any extras hanging around
- A quirky variation to the plain old ‘hit the notes and you win’ formula
Battle of the Bands offers some classic favorite songs such as Black Betty and Jungle Boogie; mixed in with some fun songs like Feel Good Inc. by the Gorillaz and Blitzkrieg Bop by the Ramones. Though the songs are few, they’re good to play.
Unlike some of the other rhythm games, Battle of the Bands uses only the wiimote to hit notes (left/right/down/stab/shake). It’s a fun concept, though a little tiring on the wrist at first on some of the higher difficulty levels. Also, if the wiimote is tilted it often doesn’t hit the note. Once you get used to this though, it’s a fantastic workout for your wrist.
Above all else what makes this game worth playing is the presentation itself. The game is one big battle, so you’re always in a versus mode against either an AI or a Player. Each band gets to choose a style of music, for example country and hip-hop. While playing, if the country team is in the lead the song which they’re playing will be done in a ‘country version’ (IE redneck accent and banjos). As the teams battle, the song jumps between the two bands’ type. It’s a riot when the types are conflicting as they switch seamlessly.
Another cooky part of this game is that you can attack the opposing player. Teams get the option of 3 weapons to use, all with different steak counts. Once a team has a streak to the length of the weapon, it will fire causing the other player to miss a beat if not blocked (hitting B). It’s quite off tilt to have a battle of the bands where you can shoot lightning at the drummer on the other team, but a blast none the less.
Overall, I can understand why this game is so cheap (I got it for $15) because though the concept of it is amazing, the final execution of it is lacking. If they had access to a larger library, or even if they had more modes or unlockable content it may have made it a little more interesting. For what the game is though, it was worth the cash and I’d suggest it to any music lover out there if not only for the music player feature that allows you to switch between styles without having to actually play the game.
Games: Rock Band 2
Posted By Jeff On January 8, 2009 @ 1:56 am
Today we’re going to get some rock off with our socks off with a quick review of Rock Band 2
For those of you unfamiliar with the ‘musical gaming’ genre, Rock Band and similar products often use controllers shaped like guitars or drums. You simply hit the colored buttons on the instruments in time with the colors on the screen to play the notes. A simple concept, but incredibly fun none the less.
What first made Harmonix‘s Rock Band stand out in comparison to it’s nearest competitor Guitar Hero is that it allowed players to not only play guitar, but drum and sing as well. Though this has been evenly matched by the most recent Guitar Hero World Tour
Aside from just hitting the buttons to match colors, I think a huge part of the appeal of these games is that you can be part of a band, not just somebody playing a game at home on a Saturday night. Rock Band 2 takes advantage of this by giving players the ability to not only form a band with friends at close range, but to join with anybody online. This, for me, is a huge factor as the people online can’t see you dancing around in your PJs while playing We Got the Beat by the Go-Gos.
Rock Band 2 has also capitalized on the character creation factor of games, giving users the ability to make their avatar as normal or bizarre as they want it to be with everything from ripped jeans to a Viking helmet. Along those lines, users are able to register their bands online and put their custom bands into cool looking photos. They can even print out stickers and make t-shirts! (Check out yours truly rockin’ out here)
But what good is playing when you don’t know any of the songs? Rock Band 2 has a ton of good songs, and (whenever Nintendo gets around to it) will feature downloadable content (DLC) to allow aspiring musicians to enhance their library even further.
The only fault I’d say (if anything) this game is lacking compared to Guitar hero is the ‘oddity’ factor. This is just playing songs, where as in Guitar hero there are ‘battles’ where you can throw off your enemy and random encores through out the game. It makes it good to spice up. Rock Band does this with ‘benefit shows’ and ‘TV recordings’, but the game play is still just playing the songs. It would be nice to see a mode to make it a little more interesting in Rock Band 3. (I have picked up another musical game today completely based around being strange, keep an eye out for a review)
So are any of you rock legends? Let me know in the comments below, maybe we can do some face melting some time. Rock on!
Jack Thompson
Posted By Jeff On August 8, 2005 @ 8:30 am
So Ctrl Alt Del has a nice piece written up about Jack Thompson today, and I feel that I just have to comment. I’ve heard of this guy before, and I thought even then that he was an asshat. I mean it’s kind of stupid to put all the blame for things on video games. If a 13 year old was playing a game aimed at a 13 year old and did something, fine. In that case you could put some blame on the game makers; but to go to the point of lawsuit is retarded. Unless the kid bought the game(Which most 13 year olds wouldn’t) you should first point blame to the person who gave that child the video game.
To continue with that thought, games aimed at 13 year olds (Rated ‘T’, ‘E’ or ‘K to A’) aren’t ever the games that are being blamed for stuff. Why? Because they’re aimed at 13 year olds and the ESRB knows what they’re doing! It’s always the ‘M’ rated games (17 years old or up) to blame. And it seems that most of the complaints are in reference of people under 17. I wonder who gave them the game…the parents maybe?! If anything, the parents should be kicking themselves in the ass for being so fucking worthless. The rating system is there for a reason. If you don’t take the time to look into it, that’s your own fault you sorry sac of crap.
Now back to Jack: You’re an idiot. Does it make you feel good that you’re helping people be stupid? Dumbfuck. I’m not going to waste any more words on you.
Conclusion: It’s stupid to blame video games for what the users do. The video games aren’t telling you to do it. If the majority of users started shooting eachother with rocket launchers we may be on to something. Until then, you can’t prove that the stupid people that are doing shit wrong are directly leaded to video games. Next you’re going to blame Atari for when people try to bounce balls off eachother. Assclown.
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