Call of Duty: Black Ops - first impressions

The major difference between this game and the new Medal of Honor is the narrative presentation. Medal of Honor is fairly straightforward, gritty even, allowing you to play different aspects of one single mission within a much larger war. Also, with Medal of Honor, while there is an ultimate mission goal, it is clear your allegiance as a character is to your fellow soldiers rather than to being a "save the world" hero. You feel closer to the action.

COD: Black Ops has different ambitions, as one might expect from this series. As you can tell from the title of the game, you play as an operative on secret, behind-the-scenes missions. The setting for this game is the Cold War - the game begins in 1961 and I believe you play through several real-world conflicts, starting with the Bay of Pigs. I'm only a couple of missions in, so I don't know how far through history this game goes.

I like the type of game that fills in the holes of history. Games that allow you to play through a story that is framed by actual historical events. This is that type of game. So far, the story is pretty fantastical, but still fun. I have only played the single player campaign, and so far, I like it.

The graphics are sharp, controls are responsive, and the sound is good. I noticed a few times where the action paused for a second while the game was loading, but hopefully that will be minimized or eliminated by installing the game on the hard drive. This game feels highly polished, and I'm looking forward to finishing it and playing the multiplayer and co-op zombie modes.

Medal of Honor - full review

My initial impressions are here. The main issue I had early on in playing the Medal of Honor [wiki entry - plot spoilers there] campaign was distracting audio dropouts during heavy onscreen activity, specifically when my character was firing the PKM machine gun. I'm happy to report I had no further incidents of such dropouts during the remainder of the campaign.

The only other sort of glitch I noticed is that I was able to run up onto a spawn point for the enemies in one of the later levels. I think it was in the "Rescue the Rescuers" level where you are advancing up a rocky mountain. I don't know if I moved forward too fast or just went an unexpected direction, but me and my squad were all sitting around this spawn point just killing enemies as they appeared. It took me a few seconds to realize what was happening and how these guys seemed to be getting the jump on us so quickly.

The overall narrative of the campaign is quite good, and pretty different from most games of this genre. The focus is on the soldiers and their loyalty to each other, not some overarching mega-mission to save the world. You play a number of different types of special operations soldiers, including Army Rangers, Delta Force and Tier 1 operatives, each at different points and from different points of view of the same overall sequence of events.

My favorite game mechanic is the slide - as you run to cover, if you crouch while you're running you will go into a slide and stop against the cover and end up in a crouched position, ready to go. It's really too bad this mechanic did not carry over to the multiplayer aspect of the game. The slide is a great addition that I haven't seen before, and the mechanic is executed flawlessly, much like Rainbow Six: Vegas 2's implementation of anchoring behind cover and rotating out or above to shoot (see here at about the 33 second mark).

The campaign is quite short, maybe four to six hours, depending on your skill and aggressiveness. I wish it had been longer, but what is there is good. There is a good variety of vehicle and weapon usage. The gameplay is fairly structured, however, and while you are definitely not playing "on rails," the game takes you where you need to go, providing the appropriate weapon for the situation. Also, as I have seen others mention, there are areas in the game with "invisible walls" where you can see an area your character could obviously go to, but the game simply won't let you. This sort of funnels you through some parts of the game, and while it is a small complaint and something I only noticed once or twice, it would be just that more immersive if your character could explore any area that appears accessible.

Multiplayer
The multiplayer felt good, other than the fact that the controls did not directly carry over from the single player campaign. For one, the slide mechanic is missing, and the other thing is that your controller settings have to be set separately. For many games I don't use the default controller configuration and I had to set that configuration up in the multiplayer separately even though I had already done so for the single player campaign. Also, the configurations are named differently between the single and multiplayer, so it's not immediately apparent which in the multiplayer will be the same as what you use in single player. This is fairly small, easily remedied and hopefully a one-time thing, but I spent 10-15 seconds in my first live multiplayer map sitting vulnerable while I configured my controller.

There do not appear to be a lot of options to select the type of game you want to play in multiplayer. Admittedly, I have not played a ton of games, so maybe I just haven't found all of the options, but it looks like you select a "type" of game (combat mission, team assault, objective raid, sector control or hardcore) and go. That's fine with me, but I imagine for the multiplayer junkies out there who like specific settings, it may not be enough.

Comparisons to Battlefield Bad Company 2's multiplayer are inevitable as the same developer did the multiplayer for this game. The feel is similar, but the settings and goals in the various gametypes are different enough that I was not constantly being reminded of BFBC2. This multiplayer stands on its own. Now I just need to get some of my friends online to play with me.

Overall
I definitely give this one a "thumbs-up." The only hesitation I have in a full "buy" recommendation is that you should probably make sure your friends online are also going to buy this one since the single player campaign is so short. The campaign looks to have decent replayability with multiple levels of difficulty and a "Tier 1" mode (available after completing the game once) which involves beating each stage under a "par" time, but once that's done you'll be playing with random people online if your friends don't have the game.

Medal of Honor - first impressions

I picked up Medal of Honor for the Xbox 360 today and played through the first few levels on the single-player campaign. I have not played multiplayer yet. The game is good, but I have to say I'm a bit disappointed. My biggest gripe is that there are some serious audio glitches when there is a lot of action on the screen. The sound just drops out for fractions of a second, which is very noticeable and distracting. The drops have been most noticeable so far when using the PKM machine gun. I'm using headphones, so the effect is probably amplified for me, but it still shouldn't happen. My in-game audio "Speaker Type" is set to "Headphones."

In addition, movement of the enemy vehicles and soldiers can be a bit stiff, sometimes making angular turns instead of smooth movements. You also seem to be able to "play ahead" of the audio. By that I mean you can kill an enemy or move to a position before the game's script gets there and the audio prompt (e.g., "tango at 12 o'clock") will still play. That's small, but it's something I noticed.

On the good side, the graphics are pretty good, and I like the way you can shoot through holes in buildings or other cover to take out enemies. Your squadmates are particularly good at clearing enemies on their own too, which helps. So far, I like the feel of the game, the focus on working as a squad. I'll give the multiplayer a try this weekend. If DICE did that as well as it did Battlefield Bad Company 2, there should be no issues.

UPDATE: added in-game audio settings

Reference guide for Halo 3 ODST Audiophile achievement

I'm not often a "completionist" when it comes to earning every achievement in a game, but sometimes a game is interesting enough, and the achievement tasks are realistic enough that it can be fun in itself to see if I can do it. To this point, I have earned all of the achievements in Halo 3 ODST except for the ones associated with the Firefight co-op mode. This "Audiophile" achievement was not difficult, but it was time-consuming, so I thought I'd post the references I used and the experience I had earning this one to hopefully save someone time if they want to do this.

To earn this achievement, one has to find all 29 of the Audio Log locations throughout the "Mombasa Streets" portion of the campaign and the final Audio Log within the Data Hive mission. You will only be able to find the Data Hive location after you have found the previous 29 locations. You can do this on any difficulty, so you might as well do it on "Easy" so you can quickly take care of any resistance you meet on the streets as you travel. There are a number of maps of the Mobmasa Streets available online, some with linked video clips showing each Audio Log, and there are also complete video walkthroughs showing the locations of all of the Audio Logs, but there is not one place that puts everything together, including what to do if you have difficulty actually "retrieving" the Audio Logs.

First, you will need a good map. I like this one because it shows the names of some of the "flashback" missions of the campaign (i.e., Kikowani Station) that make it easier to know where you are on the map. I will caution you that the video on that page showing the location of the 30th Audio Log in the "Data Hive" level contains a "spoiler" with regard to the story that is told by watching and listening to all of the Audio Logs. If you feel you must watch the video before doing it in the game, I would recommend you stop the video once you see where the 30th Audio Log is. However, you really don't need to watch the video at all as once you reach the Marine who accompanies you to Level 9 in Data Hive, you won't need any further guidance.

I found this video walkthrough to be extremely helpful. It quickly runs through every location and even traces the route you will need to walk on the overhead map to reach the next location. If all of the Audio Logs are "retrievable" (see "Other Considerations" below) it should take you about half an hour to confirm that you have them all using this walkthrough.

General Approach
Once you pick a map it is best to follow its Audio Log locations in sequence so you don't get lost. I had the map open on my laptop next to me while I played, but you can also print out the map and mark off each location as you find it. One initial thing to realize is that the Audio Logs do not need to be found in a specific order (but, see "Connection With Flashback Missions" below), though as you find them and listen to them, they will be sequential. This confused me at first since I needed to start looking for the 18th Audio Log after I went back to find all of the logs (I had found 17 while completing the campaign), and different maps labeled different locations as "18th."

Just remember that whatever audio log you find is the next one in terms of telling the story, so the numbering on the various maps showing all of the locations is really of no value except as reference within that map itself. Start with #1 on whatever map you choose, and go through to #29. Another thing to remember is that there is no connection between the "solo" and "co-op" campaigns as far as the Audio Logs go. If you find an Audio Log while going through the campaign on co-op, you will need to find the same one again if going through solo, and vice-versa. It's probably easiest to just do this solo, so you don't have to coordinate more than one person to all of these locations.

Other Considerations
The biggest problem I had going through the streets to find these Audio Logs is that not all of them appeared "retrievable" when I found the correct location. You will know an Audio Log is retrievable by two clues:

1. Virgil, the city's computer, will use the environment to clue you in that you are close. Police car lights will flash, crosswalks will operate, phones will ring, etc.; and
2. The location of the Audio Log itself will be outlined in bright yellow if you are using your VISR mode. The Audio Logs are found in such items as pay phones, health pack stations, recruiting stations (in-game advertisements to join the UNSC--you'll know them when you see them) and a few others.
   

If you are not seeing either of these clues when approaching an Audio Log location you know you have not yet retrieved, you will probably need to go back and complete some flashback missions.

Connection With Flashback Missions
It seems that the availability of the Audio Logs to be "retrieved" depends on the completion of a certain number of the "flashback" missions. I believe the reason that not all of the Audio Logs were "retrievable" for me is that I had gone back through to certain of the flashback missions within the campaign in order to earn particular achievements. When you do this, your previous campaign progress is lost. As such, the game believes you have not completed any of the flashback missions after you begin skipping around.

With this in mind, if you have just beaten the campaign you should have no problem immediately going back to "Continue Solo Campaign" (though if your last save was within the Data Hive level this might not work) from the main menu and wandering Mombasa Streets to find the audio logs. If, however, you have skipped around after completing the campaign you will need to re-play the first three flashback missions in order to make all of the Audio Logs "retrievable."

I don't know the magic of the first three missions, but I found a post on the bungie.net forums that confirms my experience. Apparently five or six Audio Logs are retrievable after having completed the first flashback mission. Then after completing the second flashback mission, another 20 or so are retrievable. Completing the third flashback mission makes the last five Audio Logs available (the last five on the Mombasa Streets level), and then the last Audio Log is located within the final Data Hive mission. This apparent requirement of completing flashback missions is another reason to work toward this achievement on "Easy" difficulty.

Audio Log Story
The story that is told through watching all 30 of the Audio Logs adds a cool element to the campaign. You learn about some of the events prior to your arrival in New Mombasa, what and who Virgil is, and meet some interesting characters who provide a backstory to the campaign. The "spoiler" mentioned above relates to how the Audio Log story is tied to the main campaign story that you are playing. It is not something critical, but if you approach it without knowing how the two tie together, it is more satisfying. Once you have found the last Audio Log in Data Hive, listen to and watch it, then remember to look around and explore the room. Also notice the "condition" of the room and the area outside the room. Remember the events of the last several Audio Logs and you will see the connection.

Xbox 360 is back

Just a quick note that my Xbox has been returned, exactly two weeks after I sent it off. I briefly updated my previous post on the red-ring warranty service.

Xbox 360 RRoD #1

Xbox 360 RRoD
Originally uploaded by arukasa

[UPDATE - Xbox returned! See below]

I am now a member of the club, I guess.

My Xbox 360 finally gave in yesterday. It had been freezing more and more frequently with distortion and pixellation on the screen, and finally after taking the hard drive off and turning the unit on, I saw the three quadrants lit up and blinking indicating ... death.

Unfortunately last night Xbox.com's support page was virtually inaccessible it was so slow, so I have been doubly frustrated at not even being able to print out a shipping label to send my box back. It is still loading like molasses tonight...

Well, it lasted one year, nine months (I bought it just prior to the Halo 3 launch). That's pretty sad considering my original Xbox, PS2 and GameCube still work fine. At least it's still under the 3 year RRoD warranty.

Don't get me wrong, I love my 360 and think it offers the best online console gaming experience currently. I'll have it repaired and play again, it's just frustrating.

FYI, my box was manufactured 7/19/2007, has a Zephyr mobo and chipset (with supposedly improved heatsink) and HDMI port.

UPDATE: My Xbox arrived on July 6, 2009, exactly two weeks from the day I shipped it off. Not a bad turnaround time. This new box is a replacement and not a repair of my old box. It shows a "service date" of June 28, 2009. From some searches online, this appears to mean it is a repaired/refurbished machine, just not my original box. I set it up and everything seems to be working ok, so it looks like I'm back in business.

Rock Band 2 triple cymbal expansion kit

This might be the greatest gaming accessory ever invented. I liked playing the drums on the Rock Band games before, but this takes it to the next level. It's still not exactly like actually playing drums (which I cannot, by the way), but the position and different levels of these cymbals contributes greatly to the illusion.




This adds a high-hat, ride and crash cymbal to the kit which not only make it more fun to play, it's actually easier and more intuitive. They are connected in such a way that each cymbal corresponds to one of the drum pads, so you effectively have two ways to successfully hit a beat during play. In addition, hitting the cymbal will produce the corresponding sound of a cymbal as opposed to the sound of a tom, so you also have a bit more control and can choose the sound produced for a particular beat. I understand there is a double cymbal expansion kit also, but you don't want that one -- you need the triple, trust me.

The build quality is solid, and I have not noticed any dropped "hits" during gameplay. I played my first virtual gig a few nights ago as the drummer and held my own on medium difficulty, so I am quite pleased.

Rock Band 2 Endless Setlist completed

My other achievement over the Martin Luther King, Jr. holiday weekend, in a literal and Xbox 360 sense, was completing the Rock Band 2 "Endless Setlist." This is fairly insane, as it involves playing all 84 songs contained in the game in one gigantic set with no breaks. It took my friend Shawn and I over six hours to complete. Admittedly, we completed it on "medium" difficulty (and five-starred every song, thankyouverymuch), but given the difficulty of many of the later songs in the setlist and the exhaustion point approached at the 6 hour mark, we could not have done it any other way.

We earned two achievements for completing this task:

1) The Bladder of Steel Award (no pausing and no fails on any song); and
2) Vinyl Artist (completion on "medium" difficulty as opposed to earning "Gold" for completing it on "hard" or "Platinum" on "expert" difficulty)

So, I present to you, proof:

Bright future for Xbox 360

The Xbox 360 leads the console hardware race with an installed base of 22 million as of September 2008 that should reach 25 million sometime this month.

In addition to leading the hardware race, the Xbox 360 leads the way in third-party game sales, meaning that, aside from Microsoft-published first-party titles, more games are sold for the Xbox 360 than third-party titles for Nintendo's Wii or Sony's Playstation 3. This is important because it shows publishers of third-party games which console will provide the greatest return on their game development dollar.

An article in today's ars technica has great graphs that show this obvious advantage over the course of this year to-date. The number of third-party games in the top 10 for sales numbers each month over the past 10 months for the Xbox 360 exceeds the number of games in the top 10 for the Wii by over 6 times and the PS3 by over 2 times.

With the recent price cuts for the Xbox 360 bringing the base model to the magic $199 price point, the sales trends are sure to continue, with more non-gaming consumers willing to buy.

The release of Microsoft's "New Xbox Experience" this week on November 19 should help to broaden the appeal of the Xbox 360 beyond regular gamers. This update to the dashboard interface will have happy avatars, more community features and games, and the integration of Netflix downloaded movies, bringing the Xbox 360 much closer to the general-purpose set-top box that will appeal to media content companies as well as more general media consumers, not just gamers.

Artie Lange on Conan tonight, NPR's Fresh Air today, 11/11

I neglected to mention Artie's appearance on Letterman last Friday mainly to preserve the gravitas of my posts on the week's election events, but also because Gears of War 2 released on Friday and, after picking it up on the way home from work I immediately began playing it and forgot all about posting on my blog.

Tonight Artie will be appearing on Conan, so be sure to catch or record it if you're interested.

*UPDATE* I forgot that Artie was also interviewed on NPR's Fresh Air. I caught the tail end of the interview just now. He is promoting his new book, Too Fat To Fish, and recounts some of the stories from his life. The interviewer, Terry Gross, is always thoroughly prepared for her interviews, and with Artie you can see that she is also a fan. The full interview is online here after 3p EST.

Gamers can be engaged politically

Last month, Microsoft announced a partnership with Rock the Vote, a group which works to engage young people with the political process. This partnership enables Xbox Live subscribers to have voter registration materials sent to them by making a request right from the Dashboard, and provides content from both political parties to allow gamers to become more informed about a candidate or issue. I watched Barack Obama's acceptance speech from the Democratic National Convention and have downloaded John McCain's acceptance speech from the Republican National Convention.

I spotted a story on Edge Online announcing that 100,000 Xbox Live users had participated in an unofficial presidential poll on Xbox Live where users could express their preference for a candidate by downloading the candidate's corresponding gamer picture.

From the above story:

"According to Microsoft, the sample of 100,000 voters was larger than the combined samples from individual Gallup, NBC and CNN polls."

and

"The company said that more than 55,000 voter registration forms were downloaded through Xbox Live and Xbox.com during the first two weeks of the program, and that videos from the recent Democratic and Republican conventions were downloaded nearly 25,000 times."

Those are impressive numbers.

Admittedly, not all Xbox Live subscribers are of legal age to vote, and not all who participated in this poll will go out and actually vote, but the majority of gamers are over 18 and if nothing else, this partnership will raise gamers' awareness and hopefully their level of knowledge about the political process.

If candidates and others want young people to vote and be interested in the process, becoming informed needs to be easy and can't be blocked by barriers to entry like poring through lengthy newspaper diatribes or suffering through the "talking heads" on every news network.

This is politics on demand, and gamers don't even have to let go of their controllers.

Western Civilization survived...

Well, GTA IV launched, likely sold millions, and we're still here. No mass riots or violence against law enforcement. Well, not any more than what happens anyway.

The fact that I stole two cars, got into a fight on the street, went bowling on a legitimate date with a woman, and ran numerous red lights somehow didn't have any effect in the real world. According to Next-Gen, NPR apparently gave a pretty fair treatment to GTA IV's release, not the typical overblown media reaction. I'd also like to suggest that gamers are doing their part to stimulate the U.S. economy in this economic recession. The New York Times agrees.

I picked up the game yesterday after work and played for a few hours. The freedom within the game is pretty amazing, but I have to say so far I have been underwhelmed by the experience. Part of it is just me learning to control my character, learning to drive, and not knowing how the GTA universe "works," but I also haven't really been pulled in by the story yet. So far I've just been responding to phone calls from my loser cousin and getting him out of trouble. I would certainly live a boring criminal life.

At one point, the game's tutorial text (appearing early on to orient one to the controls, etc.) suggested I could watch T.V. in my cousin's apartment and I actually wanted to do that, looking for relief from the mean streets of Liberty City. As soon as I parked and got out of his car (I'm using his car, since I'm new in town) however, my cousin called with some crisis, so I was off again.

One thing I can say for sure is that there are definite consequences for your criminal activities within the game. My character started a fight on the street, mainly because I wanted to see what would happen and how all of the buttons worked in confrontations, and a police car happened to be nearby. In less than a minute of fighting, the police were after me, so of course I ran. I ran for a few blocks and could hear the police yelling at me to stop, giving me a chance to stop running before things went bad. I thought I lost them by going down an alley, and was hiding, but quickly there were 8 to 10 officers there telling me it was all over.

I suppose I could have surrendered and been arrested (I guess. I'll have to try it again and see what happens), but instead I chose to run past them. No surprise, I was brought down by a hail of bullets. Apparently you don't really "die" in the game, your character just wakes up outside of the hospital after having been charged (yes, your in-game money is reduced) to be treated.

I'm sure I'll learn how this whole world works and soon either get into the story or just go out exploring. No multiplayer yet, but I'm sure that will change by this weekend.

Grand Theft Auto IV releases today

Quite possibly the biggest-selling and most controversial game of the year hits store shelves today.

Metacritic, the site that aggregates reviews from across the tubes, shows a 99 out of 100 rating. I've only watched someone play one of the previous games in this series, so this will be the first time I've played a GTA game. I'm looking forward to trying it out, but the big draw for me is really the multiplayer aspects of the game -- 15 different modes. Just about all of my friends on Live will have it, plus with the enormous sales expected, this will become part of the gaming community's common experience.

The Xbox 360 version will have additional exclusive (read: not available on PS3) downloadable episodic content available later this fall.

Rainbow Six Vegas 2: Beef Jerky Edition

This is the first Rainbow Six game I've played, and it's quite different from most other first-person shooters out there like the Halo and Call of Duty series. This R6 series is so tactical in its execution that a "run and gun" approach is almost universally suicidal. As the main character, you command a small group of two other soldiers whom you can direct to breach and clear a room, throw grenades, and independently engage and kill enemies, among many other things. An excellent "cover" system that allows you to fire from behind things like pillars and corners is integrated seamlessly and aids greatly to the game's tactical execution. The number of options make the learning curve a bit steep, but once you learn it the options give you an enormous amount of freedom and variability in how you approach the game.

Online co-op play is also possible with your friends in a number of modes. One friend can join you as a fourth team member in the single player campaign, you can play a "versus" mode with two teams against each other, and there is also a "terrorist hunt" mode where you and three friends work cooperatively through a map to clear it of enemies.

I picked up my copy from Circuit City, hence the "beef jerky" reference in my title. Circuit City included some swag with my purchase, namely a "gamer's energy kit," which included an energy drink, energy gum, energy spray (to spray under your tongue!) and beef jerky:and some red fuzzy dice:

The beef jerky was pretty good.

Portalpalooza

I just finished Portal this morning and loved it. I don't know what I could say that hasn't already been said to heap praise upon this game. I finished it over two days, maybe 8-10 hours, so it's pretty short, but it's also mind-bendingly creative and very fun. Portal is one of the five games included with The Orange Box, which is out on PC and Xbox 360.

The basic game mechanic centers around the use of two types of "portals," each can be an entry or an exit, which are linked ... dimensionally, I suppose. As the player you learn how to control and place these portals to move objects, move yourself, and achieve various objectives. It's a deceptively simple concept that you come to realize is surprisingly versatile.

The setting is within a "test facility" where you are supposed to be learning about this new portal device. As you progress you find, through some often hilarious automated commentary, that all is not as it seems. The in-game environment is interesting and at higher levels it is quite challenging to achieve the required objectives. There's a ton of spatial reasoning and problem-solving skill required to achieve these objectives, and I just loved it.

If you've heard the buzz about this game, I'm telling you the buzz is justified. If you haven't heard the buzz, do yourself a favor and find out what rock you've been under and then check out this game. The Orange Box is a compilation and also includes Half-Life 2, Half-Life 2: Episode One, Half-Life 2: Episode Two, and Team Fortress 2, all of which have received high praise as previous separate releases.

Praise and a few gripes for PGR4

I have expanded my videogame collection with the spoils of holiday giving and one of the games I've acquired is Project Gotham Racing 4. The only other game I've played in the PGR series is PGR2 on the original Xbox, and I loved it. It hit the sweet spot between an arcade-style racer and a driving simulator, with an excellent online component to race against your friends.

PGR4 is much the same, though I have to say it is more of a challenge than PGR2. This is due a bit to the more technical nature of the game, leaning more toward a realistic simulation, but it's mainly due to the toughness of the artificial intelligence of your bot opponents. If you don't get out in front early in a race, it's nearly impossible to catch up to first place. I'll be spending much more time honing my driving techniques this time out.

One of my gripes with the single-player portion of PGR4 isn't even with the gameplay, it's with the integration of your friends' stats via Xbox Live -- it hardly exists. In the "arcade" mode where you're just competing for various medals in different types of races you will see a leaderboard after completing an event that shows you where you rank among your friends, but that's it. That's the only time you will see the leaderboard and as far as I can tell, you can't bring it back up just to look and compare. Lame. That's a huge part of the competitive fun of racing games is competing against your friends' times on the same tracks.

In the "career" mode, such friend comparison simply isn't there. Maybe there are too many variables to factor in with all of the choices one can make throughout the course of one's career, but I don't see why the game couldn't at least let you see how your friends are doing.

I played my first online matches this past weekend and they were just as fun as the online races in PGR2, just much prettier graphically. I have to say, though, the interface and menu navigation for setting up the custom races is clumsy and leaves a lot to be desired. Much of the menu choices are text-based with little explanation and the menu choices are all nested inside of each other. It may be a case of sacrificing ease of use for a "clutter-free" onscreen menu appearance.

Even the online web component of PGR4, pgrnations.com, suffers from a lack of ability to compare your stats with your friends'. You can do it, but not without seriously digging down into the "Leaderboards" link, and even then, you are relegated to nondescriptive text-based choices that provide so little information they are useless, particularly out of the context of the game.

I want to see these comparisons when I'm online in the game interface so I can look at a leaderboard for a particular track before I race it, see where my friends placed, and try to beat them. The leaderboard should also be associated with a graphical representation of the proper map with a title, too, not just "Event 1 Street Race."

Another gripe is with the "garage" component of the game. It apparently lets you view vehicles and motorcycles available to you in your garage, but I didn't see all of the cars I'd been using in my garage, and of the cars and bikes you see, you seem only to be able to take pictures of them to upload to pgrnations.com. Huh? I was so bored, here's the picture I took and uploaded:
I couldn't even open the dumpster or kick it or anything. But that's not the worst part about the "garage." In one of the garages you can walk up to and play an upright arcade machine version of Geometry Wars: Waves. I did this and it was a cool variation on the regular Geometry Wars, but when you've had enough and want to go back to PGR4 (even selecting "Back to PGR4" on the menu) it spits you totally out of the entire game as if you rebooted your console. What? I wanted to go back to the garage and walk around taking pictures!

I don't mean to sound so negative about this game. It does provide a great driving experience while you're actually playing, and the online component when you are actually racing works very well. The shift toward a more technical simulation may warrant experiencing this game with a steering wheel. I've read many find this significantly enhances the feel and experience of driving in this and other driving games. Also, one creative addition to PGR4 is the ability to use motorcycles instead of cars. You still race against cars and other motorcycles and it's an interesting addition with a whole different feel and skillset to learn.

I did finally win a few Championship series races in the Amateur category tonight, so I just have to keep at it and keep practicing.

Rock Band lives up to the hype

Last weekend I got together at my buddy Chad's house with a bunch of friends and played Rock Band all evening. We had at least 8 or 9 people, so we all rotated and each had a turn at playing guitar, bass, drums and singing. Playing bass or guitar is virtually identical to the Guitar Hero series, but the addition of drums and vocals take Rock Band to another level, and when you have everyone in the same room, and those not playing at that moment are your "audience," this game really comes into its own and is the best party game out there.

The drums were challenging, but very doable on the easy setting and it was not difficult to make it through an entire song. Of course some songs are harder than others. I enjoyed the drums much more than I thought I would. There's lots of opportunities to do your own custom fills and as long as you hit a final cymbal crash and get back to the song without missing a beat (hah!) you get points for it.

Even the vocals were fun to do. The mic is "on" throughout the entire song, even before the instrument tracks begin, so you can improvise or say concert phrases like "How's everybody doin' tonight? Are you ready to get caraaayzaaay?" etc. The vocals are doable too. Apparently you can hit the notes either right on or an octave above or below, so vocal range isn't really an
issue. It's strange having to hit the note, sing the lyrics (I don't think it measures lyrical accuracy) and manage your breath so you don't run out of sound on a long phrase.

I thought the Rock Band Stratocaster guitar was cool, too. It takes a little getting used to because unlike the Guitar Hero guitars, the fret buttons extend the width of the fretboard, meaning you can't really grab tightly all the way around the neck when hitting notes because you'll press other buttons down. From the pictures I had seen I thought the fret buttons were hinged at the bottom and you would be pressing them at the "top" of the fret, but the entire fret is a button. If you prefer the Guitar Hero guitar, with the Xbox 360 version the Guitar Hero II Explorer and newer Guitar Hero III Les Paul wireless guitars will work with Rock Band.

The song selection is excellent also, with a good variety of difficulty levels for the various instruments. Also, each instrument can be played at its own difficulty level in the same song, so less experienced players can still have fun playing with experts. Chad had bought the song pack for The Police, which was awesome. Actual original tracks, not covers of "Can't Stand Losing You," "Synchronicity II," and "Roxanne." Synchronicity II was the best, especially for drums, though they are all great to play. I also played drums on Metallica's "Enter Sandman" and it was a blast.

The game becomes quite loud with four people getting into it and the "audience" (those not playing that song) yelling or laughing too, so you almost need a standalone house to play it, where noise is not an issue with neighbors. At the moment the game comes as a complete package for about $170, but if you consider you're receiving a game with three instruments (one guitar, mic, drums) it's not a bad deal. If you can easily get a group of friends together to play it's definitely a lot of fun.

Gaming: playing to win or playing to see

I like the way Gabe put that approach to gaming in his post today (second post on the page). He crystallized what Tycho brought up (first post on the same page, 3rd para.) about the range of reasons people play games.

Some people want the challenge, they just want to beat the game like any other competition. The other end of this spectrum is that some people want to progress through the game in order to see what happens next. I suppose this could be a desire to complete a story or simply, as Gabe put it, to see the next level or next cool animation.

Most of the time I'm in the latter, "playing to see" group. I like to win for sure, but revealing the game's story or seeing something particularly creative or cool is more motivating for me than just passing the next checkpoint. I have to say, though, that the Xbox 360's achievements make it really easy to add in more of that competitive spirit to gaming.

Game on!

[UPDATE: added info on motherboard & heatsink]

She's a real beaut -- manufactured July 19, 2007 with the Zephyr motherboard and an HDMI port:


I haven't been able to get a good picture through the ventilation grill to see if I have the new heatsink, but I believe all new Zephyr motherboards have it.

For the record, my very first contact was with an old Live friend, Inbound Orb, who sent me a message before I could even finish configuring my 360 profile.

See you all on the Halo 3 battlefield, co-op campaign and multiplayer.

Xbox 360 new price comparison spreadsheet, clarified

For some reason (embedded Google Doc?) when I go back in to edit my previous post I just see a blank, so here's an addendum.

One particularly astute friend of mine pointed out two things about the Core model of the Xbox 360:

1. It comes with a wired controller
2. It comes with basic composite/RCA cables which are incapable of component output

Taking this information into account, and focusing purely on a utilitarian view of being able to enjoy the Xbox 360 experience, my price comparison changes somewhat. My friend suggested some changes to my wording and I don't think I could have said it better myself, so I'll quote his email:

"to equal the Premium model you'd have to buy a Core model
($279) and a 20 GB hard drive ($99). That's $279 + $99 = $388, so you're better off buying the Premium model ($349) and saving $39." To further confuse things, the Core model comes with the standard (Composite/RCA) cable, so if you bought the Core model and wanted to output in Component, you'd actually have to shell out an additional $39 [for a component cable], basically making the Core model cost exactly the same as the Premium model, except you'd have no HDMI and a wired (instead of wireless) controller. It
therefore makes no sense to buy a Core model unless you know for sure you have no plans to upgrade. [I added "RCA" above and moved the last parenthesis from the end of the sentence to the right of "wireless."]

This observation about the controller reveals my bias to have a wireless one, but functionally for gameplay the wired and wireless controllers are identical. The ultimate conclusion is that the Premium model looks like the best deal, particularly if there is any possibility you'll want to play games or watch movies in high definition at some point in the future. The Premium model comes with Microsoft's HD/AV component cables instead of the basic composite/RCA cables included with the Core model. Even if you will only ever use a standard definition TV, however, the Premium is still the best value considering what's included in the package.

Thanks, Shawn.