At a glance: Rockband

Rockband coming this May!

It’s not time for all XBOX owners to gloat. One of the year’s biggest games is coming to us first (May 23^rd to be precise and Autumn for WII and PS3). But stop, will this game be able to warrant its hefty price tag?

For those of you who are unfamiliar with the price tag of rockband it will cost £180 for those of you who want to purchase the game and all instruments and for the mathematicians, yes it does cost more than a brand new XBOX. Included in the package there is a drum kit, guitar controller and microphone amounting to £130 and an extra £50 is required for the game. That’s right the game isn’t included, you have to buy it separately. Harmonix seem to be quick on the “this games a success lets charge a hell of a lot of money”. They blame it on high import costs but then there is a simple solution make the game in Europe and with EA’s investment it is of course possible.

Guitar Hero users are in luck. If you own an XBOX live mix and a regular Guitar Hero controller then all you need is to grab a copy of the game and the drums which will cost you around £100-£120. Non-Guitar Hero users should be able to buy Everything (game included) for around £140 according to retailers.

Getting your moneys worth? Harmonix say the above should cost you £130 with NO game

The track list varies, in fact many cross over from Guitar Hero 3 (Surprise, Surprise) so the main selling point for Rock Band is DLC but with the lack of this within Europe anyway will Harmonix focus DLC in America? Probably, but it will be interesting to see the DLC available for European gamers.

European gamers can look forward to some exclusive tracks including Muse as we get a special edition of Rockband which is another reason for the hefty price tag according to Harmonix. But am I the only one who would sacrifice this for the American price tag of around £90 for everything including the game?

£90 more for Blur, Muse, Oasis and Tokyo Hotel in the UK

In all fairness Rockband never does anything totally new. The microphone is a clone of Singstar, the guitar controller of Guitar Hero and the drum controller is just a different shaped Guitar Controller. It’s the fact that you can put all these together that makes the game different and so popular. If you enjoyed Guitar Hero and are willing to pay for Rockband you won’t be disappointed, Rockband has received rave reviews in America and looks set to do the same here too. The game doesn’t warrant its price tag but if you do have the money the game will be addictive and highly re-playable.

In a sense you're getting 4 games: Vocals, Drums, Guitar and Bass.

If you’ve played Guitar Hero you know what to expect. Rockband is quite simply an extended version of Guitar Hero but will it captivate a European audience or has its price already hindered the marketing? With Activision said to be working on a drum controller and microphone also, we can only hope this is a good thing and will drive prices down. It may also kill any future waiting in this genre. If anything, competition should make for a better game but it will inevitably kill a once original genre as the gamer gets ready for their yearly dosage of rocking out.

Watch this space for a review this May!

--Sean Linley, 360Stage Editor--

At a glance: Rockstar's Social Club

The Rockstar Social Club went live yesterday, for those who don't know what it is it's basically a leaderboard similar to guitarhero.com which tracks many stats. This will include leaderboards, favourite songs, a friends list I'm guessing and some other cool stuff which will enchance the future Rockstar Games experience, most noticebly Grand Theft Auto IV, which by the way I cannot wait for.

You may notice that you get an ID which starts at 10000. Since I wasn't one of the sad people who sat there pressing F5 all day I didn't get into the top 1000.

My member ID is #11446 incase that is any revelance which no doubt it will be, perhaps a number you can dial in Grand Theft Auto IV or something... well anyway I'm going to get back to playing Dynasty Warriors 6, check back soon for other crap later on.

--Josh Pollard, 360Stage Editor--

This is just a quick one, but the achievements for Sega’s Universe at War: Earth Assault (which I’m playing for the review – coming soon) has really lame achievements. Take a look at them http://www.achieve360points.com/game/universeatwar/ and see the craziness that is present! You’d think by now that developers would know how to add achievements into their games correctly, but no! Sega just have to be different. Hmmm.

This raises a question: what’s the worst set of achievements you’ve ever seen? Discuss!

--Tom Rhodes, 360Stage Editor--

Review: Condemned 2

Looks like: The civil war but with homeless people and vacuum heads

Feels like: A piece of meat

Sounds like: CSI with Manhunt minus middle class people divided by clowns

Smells like: Alcohol and barn yard animals

Tastes like: Piss and aspirin

Condemned 2 is the sequel to Criminal Origins, let me guess, you’re thinking “I knew that”, yes, yes go back to your pit and allow me to continue, so it’s made by Monolith the same people who made F.E.A.R, some extremely grey overrated first person shooter I couldn’t give a fuck about. I didn’t complete that game either... anyway I don’t want to go into a semi review of F.E.A.R now do I? You’re reading this for a verdict on the new Condemned game.

Right OK... so you play as Ethan Thomas and instead of him looking a like Charlie from Iceman with no hair this time around he now looks like an emo, yes I’m aware this game came out the same day as Dark Sector in the UK but this isn’t emo awareness week is it? I friggin hope not that would be worse than... let’s not get into that either. Ethan Thomas has now hit the bottle, not literally I mean he’s an alcoholic, this must be to fit in with the target audience of this game – hence why it wasn’t released on the Wii. OK so that was a low blow there, Ethan is just more of a prick this time around, that SKX fucker has messed with his mind, after all, he cut off his finger. Oh noes did I spoil that for you? It was in the first game, you should have played that game by now. So nine fingered Ethan Thomas is dragged off the streets by the crime scene unit he works with, I forgot the name and I can’t be bothered researching it, with that annoying bitch Rosa again. Albeit a bit strange they chose a drunk, homeless person with nine fingers to do the job, it sort of fits in with the story... well it HAS to fit in with the story.

Thomas sets out on his journey, with the games clock eternally set at night time, you go around beating the shit out of crazy homeless people, some homeless people prefer to wear masks that look like pigs... yeah you know the one you saw in Manhunt. So what’s new? It’s still beating each other senseless you saw in the last one but there are few new things added and some annoying things taken out from the last one. Like for example, you know those annoying doors in the first one that would say “Meh” if you wanted to break it with a fire axe but you just happen to have a sledgehammer... well there are none of them doors present here. Something new is the ability to get new perks for Ethan, so you can holster a gun, or use a stun gun which doesn’t actually make the combat a cakewalk... unless you play on FPS mode... uh.

Condemned 2 is definitely a better looking game than the original, everything seems a lot cleaner... that’s until they put about a million filters and stuff to make it extremely dark. The textures on the weapons seem to be looking a lot better now, and the blood decalcification will now stay on for longer. The one thing that really has pissed me off with this game though is the fact there isn’t a locked frames-per-second, it’s just quite annoying to see the game running at a nice 60 frames-per-second when you are in a corner, it’s quite a relief and I found myself just going into corners just to see the nice frame rate. Then the rest of the time it’s all crippled, grinds my gears I tell you...

Since you can’t see shit in this game you’ve got to rely on sound right? Damn right you do, now I’m not trying to act all tough or anything but honestly, I wasn’t scared by this game at all, it turned out to be another sci-fi game (don’t ask) which really fucked me off. But aside from that, yeah you can hear the homeless searching through cans of rubbish or the sound of crazy people mumbling. The doll factory is messed up; there are babies which can explode... yeah you heard. No we can’t bypass that, babies... explosions... babies... explosions... babies? Explosions? What the fuck is this? It’s the insanity that is Condemned 2 that’s what it is you dick, and it’s great. Violence is aplenty so you don’t need to worry about that, sticking head into grinders to throwing head in TV’s... it’s all good. The voice acting in the game is pretty good actually, too bad the dialogue can get a little off track and tries to hard at times, in other words, it’s not Oblivion.

The story doesn’t last that long either, I went straight onto hard mode and at times yeah... it was rock but it’s nothing to rival Call of Duty 4’s sheer brute difficulty on Veteran. Wait a second... there’s multiplayer? That’s totally awesome right? Guess what I’m going say... well actually it’s not that bad, it can dip into the monotonous at times after running around as one team looking for the last standing member but that can add to the experience. There is a deathmatch and team deathmatch which doesn’t need explaining. Then there is this funky mode called Crime Scene which reminds me of personal experiences. One team has to go around finding severed heads in a box while the other team has to hide the heads... weird but funny. Then there is Bum Rush where to police officers are armed to the teeth and are very hard to kill and the other 6 people or so have to beat the shit out of them, this does make some funny moments. The multiplayer though isn’t exactly something you’ll stick with like Call of Duty 4 but its fun to have a game or two in... I feel such as bastard for saying that since everyone who worked on this game must have worked real hard on it.

Overall, Condemned 2 is not the best sequel in the world, it’s not the best game in the world, it’s not the game of the year, but it’s a hilarious game which will have you laughing from beginning to end... or if you are actually normal it’s a scary game which will have you jumping out of your chair and screaming like a little girl whilst running downstairs, only to be confronted with someone in a clown mask who has a strangely deep voice, then you will start pissing your pants only to be laughed at by the clown and find out it’s your brother playing a joke on you... good game.

-- Josh Pollard, 360Stage Editor--

Note: Blogger is having a fit at the minute and I am unable to upload the picture of my cartoon, this will be dealt with whilst I go down to the Google offices kill everyone.

Why Gamers need to grow up

Warning! Language of a frank and downright awful nature used. Tread with caution.

I’ve been playing games for a long while now. Granted, not nearly as seriously as I do now, but I can remember playing Sonic as a young child and thinking about how cool it was to pick up that controller and do stuff on the screen. More or less, that very same sense of pride and achievement is the same thing which draws me back to the screen every day; and it’s why I’m so grateful that games just keep on getting better. It’s amazing to think that the industry has come so far in only a few decades and that makes it extremely difficult to imagine where we’ll be in a few decades from now.

Thinking about my gaming life, I can pick out a tonne of fantastic moments which alone make the endless hours I spend in front of a screen worth my time; I’m sure that some of those moments will be the same for all of you out there reading this. Getting your very own console, completing your first game, playing against one of your friends and beating them for the first time, and of course, taking your gaming online and playing against others.

It’s that last point which I really want to focus on now, so if you’re too immature or you’re too much of an idiot to want to read something which requires just a little bit of thought then go, because to be honest, I don’t want you to be reading this.

Online gaming is an area in which a lot of us have conflicting ideas. We all know that for games such as Halo or Call of Duty, the single-player experiences are only a very small part of the overall package. I guess that you could take it even further and say that a vast majority of people now expect a good quality multiplayer section in any game of genres such as shooters, RTS’s and sports and sometimes, it’s even acceptable to make multiplayer-only games. Look at the success of Team Fortress 2 for the PC; I know a tonne of people who decided to only buy that game instead of buying it as part of a package (The Orange Box).

So where does our affixation with online gaming stem from? From where I’m standing, there’s really only one to look at it:

People love people. All people, ok, most people enjoy communicating with others. It’s written in our genetic code to talk, listen and touch (usually non-sexually, unfortunately) and we honour that code in every aspect of our lives. More than ever do we try - in any way possible - to tell our friends what we’ve been doing or why we’ve not been answering our phones all day, and unlike those shallow PC gamers (sorry guys, but it’s true) we console folk have had to wait a damn long time to get our online on. However, it really is debatable as to whether or not some of us were ready for it to arrive.

The primary reason that I play games is for fun. Fun fun fun. When I decide to go online, and I have to sit in a lobby with a group of fuckwits talking crap at one defenceless player who’s sat there unable to comment or let their voice be heard over the shouts of “Your mum” or now more commonly “Your face”, It really, really frustrates me.

Now, by no means would I call myself the most politically-correct human being, often ripping on one of my friends for having an unusually large nose and crazy hair, but when people begin to fuel hate at other players online at - in most cases - people they don’t even know – It makes me wonder about the state of the human on the other end of the headset.

Now, don’t get the wrong impression here, we at 360Stage love online gaming, but it’s just some of the people who we have to sit and listen to in our games which annoy us. After a few of years of online gaming, it’s become apparent to me that these just aren’t willing to back down. Therefore thankfully, it’s enjoyable to see progress being made in newly released games which allow players to ignore the minority who are ruining it for the rest of us. However, I think that until much more drastic measures are taken we’re going to be plagued by these nuisances every time we go online.

I’m no game designer, so I’m not sure about the limitations of the technology we’re playing with here, but I take the same stance that Bill Fulton took in his article http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/3604/fixing_online_gaming_idiocy_a_.php in that designers need to start looking at the social aspects of their games much more thoroughly. Perhaps the problems begin to occur in testing. I can imagine that it’s much more difficult to examine a player’s reaction to bastardism than to bad level design or whatever. Nevertheless, if that is the case, surely the obvious route to take would be to include more security, blocking, and kicking features into one’s game from the very beginning? Maybe I’m wrong, but please, guys, you have to do something because all of that prejudice can’t be good for you.

I think one of the major parts of the online problem is the overall stereotypical demographic of people who play online games. I know that this is a huge generalisation, but most people that you hear screaming over the headset are Western, male, teenagers or children. There’s one thing slightly worrying there. Can you pick it out? How about we go through it together. Shooters are not for children. I don’t care what it is. Whether it’s Team Fortress 2 or Battlefield, children pointing guns at people and laughing when they get a kill is Not cool. Additionally, most of these games are rated either 12+ or 18+ and it’s easily apparent that there are large group of parents who don’t regulate the games their children are playing. I don’t want to parent your children for you, but those ratings are these for a reason; because kids can’t handle the mature themes they’re having to deal with when playing shooters, and although they seem to be having a ‘bit of fun’, it’s actually turning them into psychopaths who will end up with no friends.

Therefore, as a closer I’ll leave you with this. If you’re a gamer and you enjoy that similar sense of pride and achievement to me that you receive from those special gaming moments, don’t let the idiots ruin it for you. File complaints, kick and mute them out of the room. However, don’t, I repeat; do not sink to their level. If you shout back then you’re just as bad as them and the people around you don’t deserve it either. If you’re a parent, keep your kids off of the violent games until they’re at a sensible age to deal with them, and everyone else, let’s try to make the online gaming landscape a little brighter by kicking out the dead weeds.

...

Hey, now that I’m in a less enraged mood, I’d like to hear all of your ideas for future online gaming regulation. In fact, let’s open it further; how do you see the future of online gaming evolving and do you think that gamers will evolve along with it?

--Tom Rhodes, 360Stage Editor--

p.s. Podcast coming tomorrow