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Rock Band is good. By that, I mean Rock Band is very good. I picked mine up last Tuesday night, and Galyn was kind enough to come over to help me test it out. After a couple hours of us swapping out between the guitar & drums, he was sold on his own set. He managed to locate one the next morning after several phone calls, so on Saturday we were all set with 2 guitars - everything we needed for a full band.

Six of us got together Saturday night and played the game for about 5 solid hours. We barely blinked. We were having a blast the entire time - most of us swapped to nearly every position at least once (Galyn never sang, thankfully). We even created a new 5th position - bass drum player. It seems, for most of us at least, getting our foot to cooperate with our arms while playing drums is simply too much to ask. The game is more fun than should be legally allowed.

The progression is more complex than it is in Guitar Hero. Instead of simply unlocking rung after rung of increasingly difficult songs, you’re opening different cities and venues, playing custom set lists as well as randomly chosen set lists. It sounds simple, but the effect is a greater sense of immersion. Of course, having a full band helps a lot with that as well. You really get the sense of working together. Sometimes, when a song hit that everyone really knew (such as Weezer’s “Say It Aint So”) everyone would sing along in unison.

Let me just sum it up - if you have enjoyed Guitar Hero, have friends, and are wondering if Rock Band is worth the price - the answer is absolutely. Without a doubt.

Lately, when I’m not rocking out, I’ve been stalking the streets of Jerusalem, riding the ancient world of evil men. It’s safe to say I fall on the side of “it’s really good” when it comes to the Assassin’s Creed debate. Some reviewers would lead you to believe that it’s an average game at best. I don’t have proof, but I would suggest that it is very possible that these same reviewers have some form of drug addiction. It’s just a hunch.

Assassin’s Creed recreates an enormous, detailed world that simply begs to be explored. They then filled it with tons of collectibles and side-quests to reward you for that exploration. Combine that with some truly outstanding graphics (especially in terms of character animation) and an intriguing storyline, and you’ve got a game that’s definitely living up to the hype in my book. I may have commented earlier on the collector’s edition extras not being all they were cracked up to be, and that’s certainly true - but the game itself more than delivers.

Ok, 2007 is coming to an end, and it’s time for… dun dun dun…

Galyn and Argyle’s Game Awards!

Best Free Running Simulator
Assassin’s Creed

Best Game That Requires No Skill Whatsoever
flOw

Best Game That Will MELT YOUR FACE
Rock Band

Best Combination Of All Things “Geek”
The Eye of Judgment

Best Babysitting Simulator
Bioshock

Best Use Of Pirates:
Rogue Galaxy

Best History Lesson Disguised as a Game
Eternal Sonata

Most Loved Game of Sesame Street Characters
Super Rub-a-Dub

Best Suicide Simulator
Persona 3

Best Game You Keep Buying Over & Over Again
Oblivion: GOTY Edition

Best Example Of How “Crime Doesn’t Pay”
Crackdown

Picked up Super Mario Galaxy and Assassin’s Creed this week, and thought I’d share some very early impressions. Mario is first up, I picked this up on Tuesday. Excellent deal going on at Toys R’ Us for this one this week - buy the game, get a $25 gift card for free. So I popped it in Tuesday night and played for about an hour and a half. First thoughts, the game is *fun*. The controls are natural and intuitive, the levels are bright and original, and it’s Mario.

You can’t be a Ratchet and Clank fan and not think of some of those games while playing Mario Galaxy - the small “round” planets are very reminiscent of past R&C games. But that’s not an insult - I personally have no problem with developers borrowing what works & putting their own twist on it, and that’s certainly what has happened here. Saying it’s a must-have for Wii owners is kind of a no brainer. It may just be the reason some people needed to invest in the system in the first place.

Assassin’s Creed has stirred up some minor controversy. Most sites are rating it very highly, IGN being the main voice of dissension. I honestly haven’t played enough of this to give a firm opinion, but I can say that I have been very impressed with what I’ve played so far. Again, the controls are easy to pick up and become second nature quickly. The game is gorgeous, and you can tell a lot of polish has been applied to it - from everything to the character animations & cities to the menus and HUD.

The main knock I can say against it so far involves the Limited Edition. I posted last week about my failed attempt at preordering the LE. Turns out, I would have been better off if I had not been able to get it. The LE consists of a tin case (way too big in the case of the 360 version, which I picked up), a Penny Arcade comic printed on small, cheap paper, a tiny figurine of the main character that looks like something you get from those .50 machines at the grocery store, a strategy guide/artbook “preview” (which is so small it’s tucked in the main game case along with the manual) and a bonus DVD. I haven’t watched the DVD yet, but it had better be really good - because this other stuff definitely wasn’t worth the extra $10.

So hopefully I’ll get some playtime with these & be able to give some more detailed impressions next week. This is the month that many gamers wait for all year. We have AAA-titles releasing every week. Today Uncharted slipped out a few days early, next week will be Rock Band and Mass Effect. After that, we’re in for a dry spell. But that’s fine by me, my backlog is massive right now. I could use the break just to catch up!

Gabe (of Penny-Arcade fame) posted a nice piece a couple of days ago about some of the shadier practices of GameStop. I had some recent personal experiences and wanted to expand on that a bit. If you haven’t read it, Gabe discusses how several GS managers have contacted him to let him know that they have a policy not to sell popular games on the day they release unless you have a pre-order. In other words, they’ll have more games than they have pre-orders for sitting in the store - they just won’t sell them to you.

Now I’m sure this isn’t true for every store, but the fact that any of them are doing it is disturbing enough. Just the other day, I stopped by my local GameStop to pre-order Assassin’s Creed: LE for the PS3. After a couple of minutes, the lady working there said that it wasn’t letting her place that pre-order. She suggested that they may have stopped taking them for the LE. The manager took a look, and he confirmed this is what has happened. I believe they were being honest with me, they always have - my issue here is a corporate issue. I thanked them & left. Once I was back at the office, I pulled up Amazon - who is still taking pre-orders for the LE - and placed my order. No hassle.

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I’m not a huge fan of FPS on consoles mainly because controllers don’t quite lend themselves to the precision that a mouse does. Maybe it’s just me. At any rate, I caved and bought the Valve Orange Box (VOB) for the PC. One thing that helped to entice me is that Valve actually did something magnanimous. I already owned Half Life 2 and Episode 1, both of which which come with the VOB package. Originally that meant wasted money but this time around they’re letting me gift those two games to someone. That’s right, I can give them to anyone. So I got 3 games I wanted and two I can give away for a total of $50. Not bad. So how do the games stack up? Read the rest of this entry »

In 1993 Wizards of the Coast shared with the world a little game called Magic: The Gathering, giving geeks around the world yet another hobby to obsess over. Since then everyone seems to have tried their hand at latching onto that popularity, and now we have collectable card games based on anything from Bratz to World of Warcraft and even Penny Arcade. If you can think of a topic, they’ve probably made a CCG for it.

WotC’s latest development is Eye of Judgment, a CCG that uses Sony’s PlayStation Eye technology to display the monster or spell depicted on the cards as you play them.

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So, Galyn regaled you with stories of “too many games, not enough time” recently. But he barely scratched the surface. I’m currently working on Ratchet & Clank Future, an amazing game, in-between sessions of Eye of Judgment and Tony Hawk’s Proving Grounds. I’m not a HUGE Tony Hawk fan, but I enjoy picking one up every 2-3 years or so, and this one has been a lot of fun so far. I have Folklore and Zack & Wiki waiting patiently for me on the shelf. And that’s not to mention some other “older” games in my backlog. I picked up a Wii around the time Metroid came out, and with it I got Zelda, Super Paper Mario and Resident Evil 4 - all of which have sat untouched.

Today I placed an order for Guitar Hero 3 (which is completely free, so no guilt there really). Later this month I’m getting Mass Effect (also free…), Uncharted and Mario Galaxy. Oh, and a little something called “Rock Band”. Unless you live under a rock, you’ve heard of it - it’s the $170 evolution of Guitar Hero - where you can not only play lead & bass guitar, but can also play the drums and sing. Of course, you can’t do all of that at once - which basically makes it the ultimate party game. Recently, at Galyn’s b-day party, we broke out Karaoke Revolution and Guitar Hero. Problem was, the Karaoke people weren’t so keen on playing Guitar Hero, and vice-versa. This way, everyone will be involed at once, in a face-melting rock explosion. Party at *my* house.

I’m trying to ignore Assassin’s Creed next month, mainly because I don’t think I can add more hours to the day. If I’m successful, then the only other game for me this year will be Orange Box in December - and I think Galyn will kill me if I don’t pick this one up.

Of course, then there’s the movie backlog I’ve built up thanks to recent blu-ray sales. And yet, I’m looking forward to picking up Ratatoille next week, and the Harry Potter collection in Dec. (all on blu-ray). Once you go blu, you never go back. I have a problem picking up movies on dvd now. TV sets I don’t mind so much, but I just can’t bring myself to buy movies on dvd. When Paramount went hd-dvd only, they may have thought they were forcing people like me to jump into the hd-dvd format. What actually occured, in my case at least, is that I passed over movies such as Transformers completely when I would have picked them up day one had they been released on the format I’m supporting. I have no desire to split my movie collection between 2 competing hd formats, and since all indications show blu-ray movie sales far out pacing hd-dvd (and this can be seen by most stores having much larger blu-ray sections than hd-dvd) then that’s what I’m sticking with.

Ah well - I think we have similar conversations to this every year. The spring will come, the release lists will dry up, and all of these things will be watched/played then. And we’ll do this again next year. Ah, consumerism!