NINJAS HAVE KIDNAPPED THE PRESIDENT!

So for Christmas I got a Wii. And it’s awesome. Truth be told, outside of Devil May Cry 4, Rock Band, some XBLA stuff and more recently GTA IV, most of my gaming this year has been on the Wii.

There are a lot of glaring problems with the machine (and I still think the controller kind of sucks), but in general, I’m pretty impressed by how much fun I’ve had with it. There are more cool games for it than I thought, given the crazy number of complaints that there’s nothing to play on the machine. But I have a bunch of titles for it, and I’ve had a good time with almost all of them.

There’s not much more to say about it, really, without diving into specific games (which are posts for another day), so I’ll end with two sort of controversial and completely true statements:

1. Motion control isn’t all that it’s hyped up to be. It actually sort of sucks, and most games are worse off for it. Note that I haven’t played Boom Blox yet.
2. Super Mario Galaxy might be the single most overrated game in the history of the universe.

Remember how down I was on Rock Band? Well, I was wrong. Guitar Hero 3, while having a better initial tracklist and a superior guitar controller, pretty much fucking sucks. Activision is doing a phenomenal job of completely running that franchise into the fucking ground. I mean, seriously. Def Leppard DLC? Guitar Hero Aerosmith? What’s wrong with you fucking people? You should be ashamed of yourselves. And now you’re jumping on the full-band bandwagon (there’s no good way to phrase that) with a drum set that’s incompatible with the existing kit that’s already wildly popular? I don’t doubt Red Octane’s ability to make a good peripheral (I use my GH3 Les Paul instead of the piece of shit that came with Rock Band), but you know what. Fuck you. Plain and simple: fuck you. I would buy your game if everything could be used together, but I need another bulky plastic drum set taking up space in my house like a goddamn hole in the head, so you assholes fucking lose.

You’ve shown yourselves time and again to be totally incompetent with the Guitar Hero brand with your shitty, almost non-existant DLC, puzzling spin-offs (again, Guitar Hero Aerosmith?), and your brazen “Fuck you” attitude towards your customers. Get fucked, Activision. You know things are fucking bad when you start making Electronic Arts look good.

Rock Band, on the other hand, is more fun, and their relentless DLC schedule has completely negated GH3’s initial song advantage. It’s about the best video game experience you can have in a group. My friends Nick and Paul actually come by every Friday night to play for a few hours. It’s goes without saying at this point that it’s totally fucking awesome, and Harmonix’s dedication to putting out and supporting a great product and treating their playerbase with respect has earned them a customer for life from me.

While I can’t speak for Pat, though I think he would agree with me, this blog has been problematic to maintain in recent months. It mainly comes down to an issue of time, and how I nor, I would imagine, Pat, have much of it.

Working full-time takes a huge chunk out of my day. I’ve been leaving around 6:30 AM and getting home around 5:30 PM. Then, I play with my son until he goes to bed around 8:00. Then I have time to either play games or write about them. So I play them.

This makes for a shitty blog, however, so I want to recommit to getting this thing updated. Over the next couple of weeks, I’ll slowly get caught up on the big videogaming-related shit I’ve been up to, and then hopefully going forward I’ll be able to do a better job on keeping up with everything. Fingers are crossed that it will go better than last time.

Anyways, I’m sorry we suck.

So my New Year’s resolution (at least one of them) is to write more on this thing. Or write on this thing more. Whatever. You get the point. So yeah, here goes.

Fucking Raining Blood. Check and mate.

I, like most gamers I know, have been eagerly awaiting Rock Band since it was announced. The ability to form bands and play over the internet together is fucking awesome. As much as I like Guitar Hero, I had sort of written the game off when Rock Band was announced. Not because I thought the third one was going to be a bad game, but because, you know, Rock Band.

And while I’m still looking forward to Rock Band, I think I’m actually looking forward to Guitar Hero 3 even more. The guys over at ScoreHero.com recently visited Neversoft to play the new Guitar Hero and came back with the goods. It sounds fucking awesome. The controller looks sweet (confidential to Harmonix: Fender Strats are fucking lame) and it sounds like Neversoft understands the pressure they’re under. They know they have something to prove and they know that the Rock Band wolves are at the fucking door. They’re making a lot of tweaks, big and small, and the ScoreHero guys are saying that GH3 is a big leap forward for the franchise. Also, confidential to people who were worried about Neversoft and Activision filling Guitar Hero with bullshit tracks: the Tony Hawk games have had fucking kick-ass music for almost a decade. Get with it.

Speaking of tracks (take that, segue!) let’s go over the confirmed track listings for each game, shall we? I’ll make notes about my feelings for each one:

GUITAR HERO 3
01. “Barracuda” – Heart: This song is fucking awesome.
02. “Cherub Rock” – Smashing Pumpkins: I hate the Smashing Pumpkins, but this song would be awesome to play in the game.
03. “Cult of Personality” – Living Colour: I used to like this song when I was little. I think it would be great for the game.
04. “Even Flow” – Pearl Jam: Meh.
05. “Knights of Cydonia” – Muse: I don’t know who this is.
06. “La Grange - ZZ Top: ZZ Top fucking blows.
07. “Lay Down” – Priestess: This song is amazing.
08. “The Metal” – Tenacious D: Meh.
09. “My Name Is Jonas” – Weezer: Meh.
10. “The Number of the Beast” - Iron Maiden: One of the best songs ever written. HO. LY. SHIT.
11. “Paint It Black” – The Rolling Stones: The only Rolling Stones song that I like. I’m stoked on this one.
12. “Rock and Roll All Nite” – Kiss: The only better Kiss song they could have done would be “Detroit Rock City.” This song rules.
13. “Rock You Like a Hurricane” – Scorpions: This song is going to be hilariously awesome to play.
14. “Sabotage” – Beastie Boys: This song kind of changes things up a bit. I’m looking forward to playing the bass part!
15. “School’s Out” – Alice Cooper: The Alice Cooper song they should have had in 2. Totally awesome.
16. “She Builds Quick Machines” – Velvet Revolver: This band sucks.
17. “Slow Ride” – Foghat: Shitty song, amazing GH material.
18. “Suck My Kiss” - Red Hot Chili Peppers: This is a master track, so it should be sweet.
19. “Welcome to the Jungle” – Guns N’ Roses: Fucking finally. This song rules.

ROCK BAND
01. “(Don’t Fear) The Reaper” – Blue Öyster Cult: This song is awesome. I can’t wait to play it.
02. “Enter Sandman” – Metallica: This song is fucking terrible. Why wouldn’t you pick an old Metallica song?
03. “Go with the Flow” – Queens of the Stone Age: Meh.
04. “In Bloom” – Nirvana: This song would be sweet on drums, lame on everything else.
05. “Learn To Fly” – Foo Fighters: This song seriously sucks.
06. “Main Offender” – The Hives: This song rules.
07. “Mississippi Queen” – Mountain: Lame.
08. “Paranoid” – Black Sabbath: A sweet song, but the worst one from this album. “Fairies Wear Boots” would have been way sweeter.
09. “Reptilia” – The Strokes: The Strokes? Ugh.
10. “Rockaway Beach” – The Ramones: The Ramones? Are you fucking kidding me?
11. “Say It Ain’t So” – Weezer: This song sucks, but it could be fun to play.
12. “Suffragette City” – David Bowie: This song is awesome, but I don’t know that it would be that fun to play.
13. “Tom Sawyer” – Rush: Rush is one of the worst bands in the history of music.
14. “Vasoline” – Stone Temple Pilots: Ditto.
15. “Wanted Dead or Alive” – Bon Jovi: Are there even drums on this song? I guess it doesn’t matter because it sucks.
16. “Won’t Get Fooled Again” – The Who: With very few exceptions, the Who are a fucking musical crime against humanity.

So there are thirteen GH3 songs that I’m looking forward to on some level, and maybe four songs that I’m looking forward to for Rock Band. As of right now, the scales are tipped towards GH3. Both games have in the realm of 50 or so songs left to announce, but if you were to project the percentages out as they stand, there’s already a pretty big gap this early in the process. I’m hoping that both games announce some more recent tracks instead of leaning so heavily on old shit. There are a lot of sweet metal bands out there that would be a perfect fit for both games.

Perhaps even more distressing for Rock Band is the fact that Harmonix and MTV brought Steve Van Zandt onboard to help pick music for the game. Yes, that Steve Van Zandt. The fucking old guy from Bruce Springsteen’s E-Street Band. I actually don’t think that it’s humanly possible to get less cool than that. There goes all your street cred, guys. I’ll take Priestess any day of the week, thank you.

So that’s sort of where I stand right now. I think that the idea for Rock Band is amazing and I don’t doubt that it will be an awesome game, but it’s really tough for me to muster much enthusiasm for anything that Steve Van Zandt is associated with, not to mention that they’re 16 songs into the final list and I’m not really feeling it. For the moment, I’m much more excited about Guitar Hero 3. While not quite as ambitious in scope, Neversoft seems to be making some great steps forward with it and they’re really honing and perfecting the concept. Maybe most importantly, at least for me, that’s where the songs are. While I know that I’ll eventually end up with both, right now GH3 is my must-buy.

Geometry Wars got released (via Steam) on the PC for the low, low price of $2.50 yesterday.  This may seem trivial to almost everyone who reads this blog, but when you’re a broke student who bought a MIDI controller instead of a 360, $2.50 is the right price for what was actually the primary reason I wanted one.

The second reason right now is probably Catan, which I’m sure you’re aware is fairly widely available as pieces of plastic and cardboard at stores.

So I mentioned that I’ve been playing Pokemon Diamond lately, and the other night I sat down to play for a bit before I went to bed. I’m in some town, I’m not sure which one, but apparently there’s a stadium where they hold Pokemon contests. “Sweet,” I thought to myself. “An opportunity to fucking steamroll a bunch of guys with my Monferno.” Unfortunately, when they said “Pokemon contests” they didn’t mean arena combat, but a fucking beauty pageant.

What the fuck?

It seriously took me like ten minutes just to read the fucking instructions for the different events. I ran through a practice round on one of them, turned my DS off and haven’t picked it up since.

Why do developers feel the need to cram a bunch of bullshit that has nothing to do with the core of their game into their, well, game? Are all the Pokemon games like this? For all I know, it could take five minutes to get through it, but I haven’t been able to muster up the willpower to bother with it yet.

I guess there’s really no point to this. My apologies if you read this far.

I know people give dashboard themes a bad wrap, and I know they’re a scheme to get you to throw away more money in the Xbox Live Marketplace, but you know what? I fucking love them.

The problem is when companies take a sweet theme and fucking ruin it by putting some stupid text in the middle of the picture. Take the new Matrix themes, for instance. I would actually buy all of them, even though they’re overpriced and should be free, because they look sweet. But for some reason, whoever made them decided that they needed to put the movie logos all over them. Nice going, assholes.

So here’s the deal: if I’m buying something, chances are I’m doing it because it’s something I’m familiar with and enjoy. I know it’s the fucking Matrix. I’m buying it because it’s the fucking Matrix, and I sure as hell don’t need a fucking logo to tell me that all of those lines of code are the fucking Matrix. When you put the movie logo in the middle of that, it just makes it look stupid.

Whoever is making these things needs to stop looking at them from a marketing/branding perspective and think about what looks best. Compare the Matrix ones with the new Command & Conquer themes. These are themes done right. They feature sweet artwork and assume that if I’m wasting over a fucking dollar on them, I’m probably a fan of the game. Hence: no logos making something that could be sweet look fucking stupid. Nice work.

The “fuck PCs” wagon, that is. I never even got a game installed.

That being said, Brendan decided to buy a Macbook Pro, and there are rumblings that we’re going to start up a Diablo II game in the near future. Goddamn that game fucking rules.