Guitar Hero World Tour: First Look

As a longtime fan of the Rock Band platform (well, the year it's been out - and yes, this is a platform, not a game series, as it's branded and sold) I approached World Tour, or GHWT, with a bit of both skepticism and wonder. Skepticism, because Rock Band had taken the basic idea of Guitar Hero and taken it to a whole new level. Wonder, because the track list is completely amazing. The Doors, Steve Miller Band, The Eagles, Korn, Jimi Hendrix, Tool, and others - bands not seen anywhere on Rock Band. For the average gamer, it's pretty much a win-win situation. You can buy both games (GHWT and Rock Band 2) and they'll both work on just about any drum set, microphone, and guitars you hook up to your console; provided, of course, that they're rated for that console. However, from the business-minded perspective, however, one wants one to prevail over the other and all the music on one platform - if the music can't be available on both/all platforms, of course.

A note about platforms. When I was a kid, you played music on 12" vinyl disks called records. They had to be placed over a spindle (much how blank CDs come, actually) and onto a rubber turning table, and you had to carefully place this arm with a sensitive head onto a track on the record you could barely see. Doing so, it was easy to damage the head. The grooves in the record spiraled inward, and the head moved inward on its own, following the track. Some albums used two or three records, and both sides were used. Singles came on smaller records called 45s (the bigger ones were called 33s). We didn't ask why, though I'm sure the information's up somewhere. Then they came out with tapes. Quality wasn't as good but they were portable and convenient. And then CDs. Much better quality, just as portable, but less durable. Now we've got Mp3s. Can music get any better? Of course you have lossless filetypes like FLAC, which offer marginally better fidelity, and your 5.1 DVD audio, but what could we possibly do to improve music? We can't - we've reached an impasse. We're as good as we're going to get with listening to music. Oh, sure, one day we could maybe make a holographic environment where you experience a concert in person in your living room, but that's a century or more off. What about today? Today, Mp3s have traditionally been the best way to experience music, and Apple has made a killing selling them with iTunes. Guitar Hero and its predecessors were fun games, but Rock Band was the first viable way to experience music from the musician angle - you can sing (karaoke), play guitar (Guitar Hero), but you can also play bass and drums, and you can have four people doing all of this at once in a virtual band in your living room, and on top of that, they're selling songs - not songs you listen to, but songs you can interact with in the same way. So while these are games with game-like functionality, at the most basic level, they're the new Mp3s. The Rock Band store is the new iTunes. And, granted, while someone who's tone-deaf (like me) will stink at the actual game, that's just one element they're going to have to work on (and I've no doubt they are) to make this medium accessible to all, like Mp3s are.

The Rock Band 2 interface is very simple, largely improved upon from Rock Band 1. I tend not to think of 2 as a sequel to 1, but rather an upgrade. Like going from Windows 2000 to Windows XP, or more appropriately Windows Media Player 9 to WMP 10. While there are new features that make unlocking all the songs a fresh experience from the previous game, the game mechanics are really the same, just polished over. You select an avatar - a character to represent you. There are a couple dozen to choose from - equally men and women, various styles and attitudes represented, from tough to emotional, normal to very weird. It would be rather hard not to find a favorite avatar, and if you really want to, you can make your own, and customize his or her name, hometown (only about half a dozen choices), build, hair, face, eye and hair color, and clothing and accessories, even tattoos. You pick your avatar (and this is where you form your band, if you haven't got one established - those who want to play simply pick up the instrument of their choice and choose an avatar with it), you pick the song (or build a playlist - unlimited entries in RB2, six in GHWT), you pick the difficulty, and you play.

The gameplay is simple. All the vocalist needs to do is sing at the pitch and tone indicated by a line above the words. For the drummer and guitarists, a series of colored notes come down a road towards a stationary "hit bar", and when they pass under it, you do the corresponding action. For the drummer, a red note means you just tap the red drum pad. Two together, both of those pads. An orange line across the road means to hit the kick pedal. For guitarists, when a color comes down (say, green), the player holds the equivalent button on the neck of the guitar, and when the note crosses, they hit the "strum bar" (where you'd play the strings on a real one). Of course, this is much harder than it sounds. For the vocals, the system is very sensitive. If you can't sing, you simply can't do this. You can pass on easy if you know the song, but at harder difficulties, it requires much higher precision. A drummer must focus on three separate rhythms which are constantly changing. The guitarist (lead) must deal with complex riffs, power chords (more than one note at the same time - as many as four of the five), and solos. The bassist must often play the same note in rapid succession to keep the beat with the drummer. While the gameplay is simple in theory, mastery of the concepts is no simple or trivial task.

Consistently good gameplay is rewarded in the form of points - each note is worth so many points. If you do ten in a row, your multiplier goes up - they're worth double points. Another ten, they're worth triple. After thirty, you're at 4x. Bassists, for some reason, can get up to 6x (50 note streak). Additionally, there are white notes which give you a different score: Overdrive. Deploying this doubles your scoring on top of any multiplier you have, and if you're in a band, multiple bandmates in overdrive raises a band multiplier. Two members in overdrive means a 4x score. All four - 8x. So your bassist can have a 6x personal multiplier; your vocalist, guitarist, and drummer 4x each, and the whole band making 8x that. On top of all this, the math nerds at Harmonix have determined what you should be able to get points-wise, and as you rise up through the rankings, you get stars depending on how you rank against what they think you can get at your difficulty level. One star is easy - you will probably fail a song if you don't even rate two or three stars, anyway. It goes up to five stars, six if everyone's on Expert, but there's no sixth star, the five just become gold. At the end of the song, in addition to seeing your final star rating and points, everyone is shown their percentage of notes hit and highest note streak (phrases for vocals).

So, what does Guitar Hero World Tour do, if anything, to improve on this tried and true formula? That's the real reason we're here - not to pat Rock Band and Harmonix on the back for revolutionizing music, but to see what Rock Band's first real competitor brings to the table, and what it's worth. Some would argue the table belonged to Guitar Hero to start with, but even if that's true, Rock Band added three places to what would have basically been a table for one, and in any case, the field is much more even now. Both games offer a game with singing, drumming, two guitarists, and band cooperation. So, how do they measure up?

First things first, we had to watch the intro movie. Rock Band starts with a montage of a band playing atop a moving car, then a semi, and then a bus, falling from the last and miraculously landing on the next, all playing to "Highway Star" by Deep Purple (which is playable in the game). Rock Band 2 steps it up with 2 bands dueling atop 2 cars and playing chicken, to the music of "Hello There" by Cheap Trick, also playable. So I expected something awesome out of GHWT. We get a guy coming out on a rock stage with a flute; he plays and the audience starts to fall asleep, so this guy pages a rock band, and the four members are at different places, and all have a watch or phone or something which blinks with the Guitar Hero "GH" logo when they're supposed to jam. They take over the show and rock everyone's socks off. This video seems to go on about a minute longer than it perhaps has to and lacks the awesomeness the Rock Band videos brought. But don't take my word for it, watch all three, courtesy of YouTube:

Watch the Rock Band 1 intro:


Watch the Rock Band 2 intro:


Watch the Guitar Hero World Tour intro:



But OK, it's just an intro movie. And I'd like to point out that they all look and sound embarrassingly bad compared with my TV and sound system, but you get the idea. Let's get started with the actual game.

For about ten minutes, we all sign in. At first we were just going to jam, but it confronted each one of us with the prompt to sign in. Bad timing. We have the new Xbox Live Experience, and we got it from the leak, so we can't get online. So the logins took twice as long as they usually would. This isn't GHWT's fault, though, it's Microsoft's - releasing faulty operating software early has finally extended to the Xbox. But, we have word it's supposed to unscrew itself on the 19th. So we all sign in. Once each of us signs in, we're prompted with a question asking where we want to save our save data. There's only one choice - the hard drive. So we all go through the motions. I remember this being equally stupid on Rock Band 1, but not so much Rock Band 2. We were all a little unnerved that we had to spend 10-15 minutes getting from the end of the intro video to the setlist. (And, for the record, my wife and I were the only Rock Band faithful there - her brother and his friend started with Guitar Hero 2, when it first came out for the Xbox 360. And then they went on to GH3, not "jumping ship" to Rock Band but rather, following the evolution. They didn't rent GHWT, but rather rented it - used to the RB system, I guess they were wanting to decide whether to buy GHWT so soon after buying RB2.)

The setlist... Ah, so many good choices. The biggest problem that faced the early Guitar Hero games and the first Rock Band game was the old chicken and egg problem. The copyright holders of the biggest names in rock were unsure of this new technology. They didn't want to put their bands' names on something that was unproven. Smaller bands and up-and-coming bands, and classic rock acts afraid of being forgotten couldn't wait to get on board, and while I don't want to label anybody, it was these braver people who tested the waters and paved the way for the bigger bands in later games. Whether the best rock band(s) is/are in Rock Band or Guitar Hero, and ultimately which game has the best setlist, depends upon who you like. If you're with me and agree that Led Zeppelin is the greatest popular music act of all time, then the best is yet to come - Led Zeppelin have songs in neither game franchise, as of yet. If you favor The King, keep waiting. Elvis isn't in either of them, either. But if you prefer The Beatles, run out and get Rock Band 2, because they've signed with Harmonix. But don't rule out Guitar Hero - their list of exclusives is pretty impressive. It includes Korn, Steve Miller Band, The Eagles, Van Halen, Jimi Hendrix, Tool, and others. Harmonix's exclusives include The Beatles and AC/DC. Guitar Hero also has Metallica, but Metallica released three songs as downloadable content and one song on each Rock Band game *before* going over to Guitar Hero. If you like classic rock and you have no intention of paying to download additional songs, I must rule that Guitar Hero: World Tour has the better soundtrack. And I love some good classic rock. Including DLC (downloadable content), Rock Band and Guitar Hero are evenly matched. Most of what I've chosen almost equates our Rock Band setlist to GHWT's. While our 190 songs total on RB is impressive, we don't have Hotel California by The Eagles. We don't have Purple Haze or The Wind Cries Mary by Jimi Hendrix. We don't have Sweet Home Alabama by Lynyrd Skynyrd - though we do have Gimme Two Steps and Simple Man. But we don't have Sweet Home Alabama, which is only the best song they've ever recorded. We don't have Band on the Run by Wings. And while we don't have Up Around the Bend by Creedence Clearwater Revival, we do have Fortunate Son - but we had to pay extra to get it - and it's a cover. But the setlist isn't just kind to a classic rock fan like me. Jen and her brother picked Freak on a Leash by Korn, Misery Business by Paramore (only the song that made them - RB only has their second single, Crushcrushcrush, and a B side nobody cares about), The Middle by Jimmy Eat World (also on RB2, oddly enough), and a couple others that are similar to or by artists on RB. Korn aside, when it comes to modern music, I think GHWT and RB are more evenly matched. Throw in DLC, and it goes to RB's favor.

But how about the gameplay? That's what it really hinges on, how well the game plays. It's pretty much the same as Rock Band. The vocals are still on top, and the drummer is still in the middle. However, Star Power (GH's Overdrive) is now shared by all and accessible by all. So if you have a slacker in your band, the rest of you can earn and your slacker can use the star power to save himself. This is important, because while in RB, every band member has three "lives" (after failing the first two times, they can be "saved" by someone else deploying Overdrive), in GHWT, there are no second chances, and there are no individual failures. While everyone's individually rated, if one person goes out, the whole band fails, and that's it. (Also, Star Power no longer runs until it burns out, it has a set limit - it's like 20-30 seconds.)

There are a couple of new features, and they're interesting. First of all, the game has a child's mode. I saw it first at the demo at Walmart, and didn't understand it at first. It's nothing but purple bars across the screen. And they mean "do anything". In beginner mode, as it's called, you can literally play any note you want, as long as you time it with the purple bars. I thought I'd seen the end of them, as the bassist. I was wrong. I'm playing (on Medium), and all of a sudden one comes at me! So I just play it like the note before it, and I "miss". It takes me a dozen such "notes" to learn that a purple bar on bass not on beginner means you strum without holding ANY neck buttons. Who woulda thought of that? Our drummer could never figure out how to deploy Star Power until asking on GameFAQs. Bunch of rude, self-righteous (and mostly underage) pricks who spend more effort telling you to just search than they would just answering your question and being done with you, as if searching helped, but anyway. We found out the drummer must strike the two middle drum pads at the same time to deploy. We never did figure out how to make the singer deploy Star Power. Our fault for not going through Training; the game's fault for not being as helpful as the previous ones (GH2 and GH3, or one of them anyway, would prompt you, in the middle of a song, with a drawing, to tilt the guitar up to deploy star power if you had it built up and weren't using it). For the guitarist (and to a very lesser extent, the bassist) occasionally two or more notes will be connected by a thin purple line. These notes can be hammered on (if you don't know what that means, nevermind). The vocals looked easier, but if you ask Jen about it, you'll get a lot of dirty four-letter words. She was getting 78% on songs she can get 100% on on RB due to the way GHWT tracks the vocals. She was consistently the weakest link in our band when in RB she's up among the best. There was nothing wrong with the game she brought, it really was a difference in the tracking of the tone and pitch. I'll have to look more into this myself, but she said she's asked around and has found people with similar experience and opinion of the GHWT vocals.

I think the best part of the game is actually after each song. You can pull up a detailed stats sheet that shows each band member's performance on each part of the song. Following that, you can see why each band member got paid what they did. You get bonuses for all sorts of things, some stupid stuff, too. Like you get a $10 bonus if you never used star power. You get bonuses for four and five star performances (both if you got five stars). There are so many things that contribute to your pay. Seeing a bandmate getting paid for something you didn't encourages you to try that on the next song. And of course, like with RB, the money goes to customizing your virtual rocker's apparel and accessories. This is superficial offline, but if you're playing online, and you're really proud, you can put all that money into some pretty special stuff and show it off online, and people who know what that stuff costs will recognize it for your accomplishments.

All in all, I really like Guitar Hero: World Tour. It's not as good as Rock Band 2 - which has had the benefit of a prior game and has shown that it's learned from its predecessor's mistakes. GHWT shows none of this. Maybe they saw a couple things that didn't work in RB and avoided them, but there are some real pitfalls in GHWT itself that I think should have been caught in the beta testing phase. This game could be so much better, but it feels like it's relying more on the Guitar Hero name than a solid foundation. I think, as a recommendation, whether you should buy this game depends solely on what you think of the set list. If you're looking at the set list and you're nodding your head, excited by what you see, go ahead and buy it. Especially if you have Rock Band or Rock Band 2 already and the instruments. It's worth $60. It also comes in three bundles I've seen. You can buy it with one guitar, with two guitars, or with the drums. If you have the Rock Band 1 instruments, it might be worth it to buy GHWT with the drums, as the drums are better (and you get 5 instead of 4). But if you have the superior RB2 drums (well, they're better than RB1 drums) stick with those. GHWT will modify the drum track based on what drum set you have plugged in. If the setlist doesn't impress you though, stick with RB. GHWT has some cool features that bring a lot to the world of interactive music, but overall the platform is severely lacking. And while there are a couple DLC tracks for GHWT that are worth having (more or less depending on your taste, but I'd only get 1 or 2), there are a heck of a lot for RB. As I say, we have 190 songs. When we get LIVE back on Wednesday the 19th (stupid Microsoft) we'll get the free 20 Harmonix released a couple weeks ago, and we have enough points to get another 10 or so, so we'll be up to around 230. Two hundred and thirty tracks playable from one game is pretty damn impressive. (Note that this includes 55 of the 58 songs from Rock Band 1, you can export them for use in RB2 for $5. But it's still a lot!)

Thanks to Wikipedia for the encyclopedic links (every link in this blog entry) and YouTube for the videos.

History in the making

I can't begin to express how happy I was to come into work to see that Barack Obama had led by a landslide. I keep thinking I'm dreaming, but I haven't been working at this place long enough to dream about it (God forbid). I can't say as I'm surprised Obama won the race, but I really thought John McCain had it and I was prepared to support McCain as our next President. I voted against President Bush both times, but after he "won" in 2000, I supported him. After 9/11 and his connections to that event became highlighted, it became hard. I joked about this guy backed by a horrible speechwriter who's got a problem speaking publicly to start with as much as the next guy, but I'd like to say I always respected the President. You kind of have to; he's the President. Bush made it pretty hard with one boneheaded speech after another, one stupid decision after the next, but in the end, over eight years, he still served his country, perhaps to the best of his ability, based on the values he was raised on.

Race was always an underlying aspect of this race, though neither of the candidates touched directly on it. I wasn't aware when it happened, but reportedly Obama ended a speech asking "America, are you ready?" and he later admitted that what he was asking if we were ready for, was to elect our first black President. I missed that. But I've heard McCain say on numerous occasions that a "person like Obama" is "untested" (I suppose, implying that old white men are tested). John McCain can try to claim to not be a racist, and he may not be, exactly, but he had to overcome the horrible odds of running against the possibility of a first black President. Rather, McCain was running against history. Also, I thought it was amazing that when McCain gave his concession speech, there were skinheads in the crowd, but not one black face whatsoever. He might as well have been speaking to a Klan rally. These people were in tears. They were praying. Were they all rich, worried that Obama would redistribute their wealth? Maybe some of them were, but surely not all. John McCain himself was gracious and honorable, pledging his support to his new President.

Race aside - and, as I've said, the racial issue has always been on the back burner, if that - the issues really buried McCain. First, John McCain sponsored a war nobody really agreed with who wasn't making money on it. Cheney and Haliburton, for example. While I did agree with McCain that we ought to finish what we started, I believe Obama had the right of it, saying, OK we did what we set out to do. We ensured there were no WMDs in Iraq. Dubya got his revenge on Saddam Hussein. So... why are we still over there? Let's instead let the Iraqi people stand on their own, as is their sovereign right, and redouble our efforts to find Bin Laden. I agree with that more than McCain's idea to accept that Bin Laden was never very healthy and is probably dead and focus on Iraq, and possibly Iran.

More so than the war, it was the issues at home which really pushed Obama into the oval office. McCain's slogan was "Country First", but the country he meant wasn't ours, it was Iraq. Iraq first? Well, that doesn't look as good as a slogan. Also, the America that McCain saw was never the America that 80% or more of us Americans actually live in. I really tried to give McCain the benefit of the doubt when it came to the economy. I read news articles and blogs from McCain supporters, trying to find what McCain planned to do for the working class. Never once does he mention it. Furthermore, in an attack ad on Obama, McCain suggests that Obama will pay for his initiatives how? "By raising YOUR taxes", the ad says. Who's going to pay for this? the ad asks. YOU, it answers. Obama turns around and says that he's not going to raise taxes for anyone making $250,000 a year or less. It also comes out later that anyone making under $3 million a year will actually pay less tax under Obama than McCain. So who lives in John McCain's America? I don't. I'm lucky to make $20,000 a year. My wife and I together make under $40,000. To McCain, we're not Americans, we're just something he doesn't want to acknowledge. Well, she didn't vote, but I went out and voted for Obama. Rather, I voted for America, because it's like Obama said in his victory speech. Man or woman, black, white, Hispanic, Asian or Native American, gay or straight, rich or poor, we're all American. That's the America I voted for. Not McCain's America where you have to be rich, white, straight, and probably old as well to be important.

I've been a Trekkie ever since I can remember, and Gene Roddenberry was one of entertainment's first civil rights advocates. His original show, "Star Trek" from the 1960s, featured not only two Russians on the bridge (though one was an alien - I mean Mr. Spock of course) but a black woman as well. This didn't go over well at the time, but over the years, it's been accepted. "The Next Generation" brought even more diversity. "Deep Space Nine" brought us a black captain (in fact, Barack Obama kind of reminds me of Ben Sisko), and "Voyager" put a woman in the captain's chair. I would like to think that Obama won the 2008 election in the fictional Star Trek timeline as well, and that along with Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King, Jr. before him, Obama's presidency led the world to the kind of diversity we see on the shows today (well, reruns now).

And now we take our first step towards the 24th century with our first major decisive victory for civil rights, diversity, and equality here in the 21st century. I hope it's not the biggest I see in my life, and that more change is to come.

The coolest picture on the Internet

A couple weeks ago, I was being a horn dog and Googling under images with SafeSearch set to Off. There's a picture you can find (on your own) with a girl posing with a Guitar Hero guitar - and nothing else - and another one with a girl posing with a Super NES (with Zelda 3 in it for extra points) and the two controllers (again, and nothing else). I was searching for "xbox girl" looking for girls posing with Xbox or Xbox 360 gear. There's actually a market for this - gamers are usually guys (though girl gamers are becoming less uncommon these days, and not just on the Wii and DS) and they're usually nerds, so if a girl poses with some geek stuff, it's a turn-on. I dig it.

So anyway, I'm searching for "xbox girl" up there and found this:



Now is that not the coolest thing you've ever seen? First of all, they've got a chromed-out 360 and matching wireless controller (I've never seen that before) but they're using the 360 as a bed for the baby. Not the best for either of them but it still looks good.

Why I don't trust the weatherman

Since moving to NC, I've kinda turned into a weather nut, especially in the last year or so. I started with weather.com (The Weather Channel) and then moved onto Weather Underground (the weather site parodying the extremist group, not the extremist group, lol) as well as Google Earth from time to time (OK, its live weather is really lame). But still, while WU is slightly more accurate than TWC (it's got more localized coverage), it can still be dead wrong as much.

We've had some crappy weather the last week or so, but WU promised partly cloudy today with a week-long 10% chance of rain, dropping off at 0% by Saturday. So I was partly surprised when I woke up and we had some pretty heavy wind, and not long after, heavy rain. And the funny thing is, WU still says, and I quote:

Through 8 PM...a strong cold front will continue moving through eastern North Carolina. Scattered showers will move northeast along the front with amounts averaging only a few hundredths of an inch.

Scattered showers, my ass. It's pouring out there. I was thinking of going over to my brother-in-law's place, maybe playing some Rock Band, but now - no way. I'll just stay dry. And only a few hundredths of an inch? Where do they get these people?

There is one nice feature about the WU site. You can access the very same weather data your weatherman on the news has. Pretty much, anyway. I think WU's is easier to read. First, go to wunderground.com, plug in your zip code or city and state, whichever's easier. Now, WU won't always get your exact location if you're real rural - it'll get their closest associate. For example, we live in Chocowinity, NC and plugging in 27817 brings up Washington, NC. So it's not too far off, but it's still 6-7 miles at least. Anyway, you got your local page up... Over on the left, you click on Wundermap. This gives you a pretty Google Maps-based map. Below it, for best results, 1) uncheck "Weather Stations". 2) Move the second slider down all the way to the right. At the leftmost position its caption will read "Animate (Num Frames" but at the rightmost, it'll read "Stop (Num Frames)" but I think they're backwards (bad coding?). 3) Find your zoom level on the left side of the map and click on the ladder rung two down (zoom out two steps). Now you can grab this map and move it around. You can zoom in or out as you like.

My playlist

You've probably seen the playlist.com playlists that have been taking over MySpace for the last few months. Instead of just one profile song, you can have up to 200 songs at once. Here it is:

Now, you probably noticed it's not playing anything. You have to do that on your own. I didn't want my blog playing music automatically. No worries if you don't recognize half the stuff up there. I'll explain each song (though more may be added at any time):

"Wishmaster" by Nightwish - Awesome symphonic/opera metal band, perhaps their best song.


"Still Alive" by GLaDOS - This plays when you beat the PC/Xbox game Portal. It's great, and it's sung by the computer you fight.


"Key of the Twilight" by Yuki Kajiura - Japan's answer to Enya. New Age music which is simultaneously optmistic and pessimistic, kind of a yin-yang thing I guess, but her music is really good. And here you can hear it for free.


"Far Away" by Nickelback. First song by a popular artist or band. This is "our song" (Jen and I).


"Through the Fire and Flames" by Dragonforce. Ah, the "last level" of Guitar Hero 3. This song is brutal, but it's also very beautiful.


"The Pursuit" by Evans Blue. The most underrated band of the deacade. This song closes their second album, and while it's all good, the ending is one of the most perfect endings to a song I've ever heard.


"Runaway Train" by Soul Asylum. Since this came out in 1995 or 1996 it's been my favorite grunge or perhaps just plain 90s rock song. Can't say I identify with it per se, but I enjoy the hell out of it.


"Salva Nos" by Yuki Kajiura. Ms. Kajiura has remade this song four times for a total of five versions. I wanted the fifth version but could only get the first version. Oh well, it still rocks.


"All Summer Long" by Kid Rock. The hottest song of the summer! Kid Rock samples Warren Zevon's "Werewolves in London" and Lynyrd Skynyrd's "Sweet Home Alabama" in this rock ballad about summers past.


"Crazy B-----" by Buckcherry. I love this song. It's a little more profane than I'd normally prefer... I mean... "You're crazy b---- but you f--- so good I'm on top of it"... you just gotta hear it. It's not censored on the song, I just chose to self-censor here.


"See Who I Am" by Within Temptation. Another good symphonic/metal band's best song (in my humble opinion). They're no Nightwish, but they kick the crap out of Evanescence any day of the week.


"Wild Child" by Enya. Only because they didn't have "Flora's Secret". I make no apologies for being a fan of Enya... she just makes some of the most beautiful music I've ever heard. I've always thought she should sing for a metal band, like on the side.
But that's pretty much what Nightwish is, so I CAN have my cake and eat it too!

"Wander" by Kamelot. This symphonic metal band sounds like they're European, but they hail from Florida, USA.


"L.A. Woman" by The Doors - one of my favorite songs from the stoner poet Jim Morrison and his legendary band. Did you know the mid-song chant "Mr.
Mojo Risin'" is an anagram for "Jim Morrison"?

"Fortunate Son" by Creedence Clearwater Revival. Sure, I could have picked a better song, but this is the one we have on Rock Band, so it catches cool points.


"Jack and Diane" by John Mellencamp. Most people prefer Springsteen to Mellencamp but I was raised on the Cougar. Yeah, I know he doesn't like to be called that, but whatever.


"Small Town" by John Mellencamp. It was so hard picking just one, so I picked two.


"I Dare You" by Shinedown. Back to modern music. I fell in love with this song when I heard it at the end of WrestleMania 22 and I've loved it ever since.


"Stand" by Rascal Flatts is the best song on the country crossover band's album, and it's a shame it's been mostly passed over by radio, because it's absolutely beautiful.


"D'yer Mak'er" by Led Zeppelin. Did you know the apostrophes indicate pronounciation and it's supposed to be said the same as "Jamaica"? That's why it has that reggae song. Apparently it's part of a joke where the punch line is "Did you make her" but said to sound like "Jamaica" so it has a double meaning. I always just called it "Dyer Maker"...

"One Winged Angel" by... ah hell I don't have his name handy. The composer of the Final Fantasy games. This song is awesome, and it's the metal remix made for the straight-to-video Final Fantasy movie Advent Children. While the movie sucks, this song is great, and the movie does look good in HD.

//edit: Some songs have been added since I wrote this. Here's what's up with them.

"Addicted" by Saving Abel. We saw these guys at X-Fest 9.5 last month (October 2008). Good catchy song.

"I Tried" by Akon and Bone Thugs-N-Harmony. The Bone Thugs made one of the best rap songs of the 1990s, regardless of what you think of rap. "Tha Crossroads" spoke to everybody about the frailty of life. They return with modern hip-hop/R&B legend Akon for another great song. Maybe not as timeless as "Tha Crossroads" but still a great song.

"Mad World" by Gary Jules. This slowed-down cover of the 1980s Tears for Fears song was used in the film "Donnie Darko". It's creepy but it fits.

"Faith of the Heart" by Russell Watson. This Rod Stewart cover is used as the theme for the newest Star Trek show, Enterprise (later Star Trek Enterprise). Well, the first verse and chorus are. It's the first Trek theme with lyrics, as the first two featured the famous "Final Frontier" speech and the next two just had instrumental music. Hell, sometimes I can't tell it's not Rod Stewart. In Season 3 (when they changed the name of the show) they added a techno beat to the song - this is the original. You can thank me later for not exposing you to that newer version.

Dark Reality's Backloggery

While browsing the GBATemp.net forums (where I go for DS modding news and information) I saw a curious image in a user's signature. It's like one of those trackers which shows the music you're listening to, only with games. I clicked on it, and it took me to the root site. This site is called Backloggery, and it lets you track games you're playing and your progress through them, either for bragging rights, or to show people what you're playing, or maybe so you don't forget about games you have played but haven't beaten.

So I said OK, I'll make an account, and get started. It's currently tracking 23 games I'm currently playing or have played in the last year (no sense in going back to my NES/Super NES days but I won't rule that out down the road), so it's kind of cool. At a glance you can see what I'm up to, what kinds of games I like, stuff like that. Xbox 360, Xbox Live Arcade, Nintendo DS, PC, Game Boy Advance, and PlayStation - I didn't know my gaming was so varied. Though to be fair I play GBA games on my DS and I haven't played the PlayStation in years, but felt the need to add Final Fantasy VII because of its sheer awesomeness.

Backloggery also gives the user code to post a sort of visual log, though the code is only friendly to message boards. However, I am a nerd, and I can adapt it for this blog. Here ya go:



There we are. If you click that, you'll go to my profile and you can look up all the games I'm playing. I don't know how it determines what games are listed, maybe they change up. U in red means the game is uncompleted, I still have work to do. B in silver means I've beaten the game, but only the minimal approach. C in gold means I've completed the game, done everything there is to do. If you see the fourth icon, an M in a blue Superman-shaped icon, that means I've mastered it. I only put that on one game though. And of course the letters refer to the system. XBLA means Xbox Live Arcade, NDS is Nintendo DS. PS is PlayStation (the very first one). PC is... well, it's PC. Computer games.

So, if you're a gamer and you think you'd like to track your gaming progress online, similar to what I've done here, just click the image and make your own account. You can add me as a friend there, too.

PS - While I'm up here and on the subject of signature images, I'd also like to share another image I got from someone's sig on GBATemp.net that led me to make my own. It's like a bookcase of bragging rights, of brands and techs one is affiliated with (typically through ownership). I did not like the graphic that the site put out, so I took a screenshot and made various changes (e.g. N DS to NDS Lite and Windows to Win XP, AMD to AMD64, things like that). Here's that:



It's kinda lame... It represents some of my interests but leaves out related things I'd rather have. For example it has Subway but not Taco Bell, 7-Up but not Mountan Dew, no love for Deus Ex, Nero but not ImgBurn... but whatever. It's still cool and makes you tilt your head and read it all and pass judgment on me based on each item (if you're a geek).

Nintendo can keep the new DSi. Here's why.

If you haven't heard, Nintendo today announced the third DS model, DSi. Successor to the Lite and Phat (what we tend to call the first, bulky DS), this model most notably adds a camera. Sounds pretty good, right? Well, I don't quite think so.

Last week, a Japanese speculatory article was published in a magazine not typically associated with a lot of credibility. The article stated that Nintendo would announce a new DS, with two touch screens instead of one, a camera, and the ability to play music. The Internet went crazy over the news, at least in the portable gaming circles.

Portable gaming is pretty serious business. I own a Nintendo DS Lite, and my wife owns an Xbox 360. And I wouldn't trade her any day of the week. While the 360 is nice, there's something to be said about being able to carry your games with you. And then you mod it... Modding an Xbox 360 looks to be a lot of work, and then all you can do is play copied games. Tsk tsk. A fully modded DS can play DS games as well as games for Game Boy, Game Boy Color, Game Boy Advance, and NES. It can play some Super NES games, and it can play Sega Genesis games without sound. I hear it can play Sega Master System and Game Gear games flawlessly, but I haven't tried that. Also it can play multimedia (which a stock 360 can do anyway) and run homebrew applications. So there are a lot more options. And on the other side of the fence, the PSP is interesting in its own right. It's better for movies, and its games look better, if you prefer graphics to gameplay. It also, apparently includes a browser. You can get a few browsers on the DS (one is official, others aren't) but none of them are fully functional. A PSP can be modded, too, and apparently it can do even more, being a more powerful machine. But a PSP can only be modded into a better gaming/entertainment system, where a DS can be modded to basically be a handheld computer.

And now a portable gaming system is going to get a camera. It wouldn't be the first time; the Game Boy systems have had cameras, and even a printer! Neither were very popular, Nintendo would do well to remember.

So let's take a look at the DSi. The DSi is basically the same form factor as a DS. The hinges appear to be a little bulkier. The DS logo is completely gone from the outer shell of the DSi. The screens are slightly bigger. The DSi does not support Game Boy Advance cartridges natively, which means it also does not support the official browser, or the new Guitar Hero games. It also doesn't support GBA to DS linkage, a rarely used feature supported in some Pokemon and Castlevania games. As I said, it has a camera. It actually has two cameras. One is on the outer shell (reportedly 3 megapixels) in the lower-right corner, and the other is on the inner spine (reportedly 0.3 megapixels), where the mic is on the DS Lite. The speakers are changed; they look smaller but are said to be better. The power button is no longer a slider switch on the right side above the stylus slot; instead it's a button you push on the left side, under the D-pad. The power indicator light on the right shoulder is gone; on the DSi, three indicator lights will indicate Wi-Fi connectivity, charging status, and battery status, respectively. Most interestingly, however, the DSi will feature a Secure Digital (SD) card reader on the right side, where the power switch is on the Lite. This will store photos taken by the cameras, and can be loaded with music, which can be played through an updated home screen.

All in all, the DSi seems like a nice update to the 2-year-old DS Lite. But pitted against my fully modded DS Lite, it doesn't look as sweet. Here's why:

1. It's got a camera. Nice, but does it have a flash? I have a 2MP camera on my phone, and it doesn't have a flash either. The pictures are great in good lighting but terrible if I don't have good lighting. I expect no better out of the DSi. And a 0.3MP camera is worthless. No two ways about that. I have a fairly nice Canon Powershot from 2005 (4.2MP) which serves me quite well. My digital camcorder can take stills at 5MP, but I never use it because it's not very good, ironically. So I have three cameras, two of which I use. I don't see myself taking pictures with a DSi.

2. It doesn't support Game Boy Advance games. This is a huge turn-off for me. I can't stress that enough. My three favorite gaming franchises are Castlevania, Legend of Zelda, and Metroid, in that order. So let's run the numbers. Game Boy Advance has three Castlevania games, four Zelda games (even though 2 are NES ports), and three Metroid games (1 is an NES port). The DS has two Castlevania games, one of which is inherently broke (there's a part where you have to defend a character who is casting a spell which takes 30-45 seconds to cast... against two screen-clearing bosses), though a third is on the way. It has only one Zelda game. It has two Metroid games. One sucks and the other is Metroid-themed pinball. So the DSi can play less than half of the games the DS Lite can from my three favorite franchises. Also, since the Guitar Hero games use the Game Boy Advance slot to connect the guitar grip controller, the Guitar Hero games won't load on the DSi. I have the first one, and if you start it without the guitar grip, it tells you it can't proceed. The second one comes out in the next couple months and I fully plan to get it as well. I repeat: No Guitar Hero for DSi owners. DS Lite owners will have 58 songs to play on the go (25 in the first one, a reported 28 will be in the second one) by this holiday season. Guitar Hero is nothing compared to Rock Band, which Jen owns all over on the Xbox 360, but for portable... hell, I'm glad to have Guitar Hero! Again, not on a DSi though.

3. It plays Mp3 files. Wow. This might actually be neat to see. Oh, but wait. My DS Lite already does this. Yay for modding. I can also play video. If the DSi can play video, they haven't announced it. If one of the biggest new features of the DSi is that it can play music, that doesn't say much about the rest of the system. Being as that music playback has been an underground feature for years.

4. The power button is on the face. This is a huge turn-off for me. I see myself accidentally hitting it, and that's not cool. I've never accidentally turned off my DS Lite because the power switch is out of the way, not... in the way. Well it's not RIGHT in the way, but it's close enough that it's in a stupid position.

5. I have a perfectly fine, fully operational, fully modded DS Lite. It's awesome. Some speculate that the DSi will feature technological countermeasures to prevent modding. While that will end up bypassed soon enough, if true, it means that besides the camera, Nintendo plans to make the DSi more limited than the DS Lite, in which case it would not be upgrading, but downgrading.

6. Better features were passed over. Here is where I start whining. The DS has a touch screen... how about a text writer, for taking notes on the go, keeping a journal, or maybe writing poetry or a story? How about an address book? A calendar? All of these are software solutions they can add at any time with no hardware update required. I would trade the camera for a good text writer. And how about video playback? Video playing is sketchy on a modded DS, and all of the solutions to make the required DPG files are half-broken hacks which don't work half the time. If the DS could play video in an established format dozens of programs could write to without concern of failure, that would be awesome.

So, all in all, it's interesting that Nintendo has a new handheld on the market, but until something changes down the road, I believe I still have the best handheld Nintendo has to offer.

Oh yeah - you wanna see it? The North American website has no mention of the DSi; to see it, you have to go on their Japanese site and navigate without knowing what the site is saying.

Here's the link.

The page will load, and you'll be presented with a starting image showing off the camera. The tabs I'll refer to are along the bottom.

First (home) tab. Nothing but the other tabs to click on here. Look, and move on.

Second tab is first on the left on the Home tab (Home tab is the NintendoDS logo). This just shows off the camera, probably explains what they can do. Again, look and move on.

Third tab has two symbols and a dash (-) then a bunch more symbols. Here, you can finally do something! Click the icons in the upper right corner to change the view.

Fourth tab actually says DSi at first. We'll call it "First DSi Tab". This must be the new home screen, with a lot of new options to play with. Nothing to actually do though.

Second DSi tab focuses on photo manipulation. Move your mouse around the pictures to scroll. Cool, eh?

The third DSi tab will make you wish you knew Japanese, because it talks about what you can do with music. Looks like you'll be able to interact with it somehow.

The last DSi tab shows a new web browser (guess they overcame the 16MB RAM expansion requirement?) and something I can't tell what it is.

The last tab, the one that says DS Lite, is a lot of fun. On the left you have the DSi; on the right, the DS Lite. (This may seem backwards, but it's not. The Japanese read right to left so it's fitting that the new model is on the left, not the right.) Move the mouse around. You can compare the consoles side by side using the middle, which I guess is supposed to be like a mirror. If you click the icon in the lower right, you can see the top and right-hand side (no fancy mouse movement). Also, if you click the link in the lower left, you can read the specs. Well, if you could read Japanese, you can read the specs.

Thanks for reading. You now know as much about the just-announced DSi as I do.