Rock Band EU details released finally!

I was just goin about my normal lunchtime internet browsing when I stumbled on an article that Rock Band is finally been given a European release date.
Good news you’re thinking, I had the opportunity, thanks to my good buddy Adam to try the US version many many months ago – probs around 6 months ago. First off, I was very miffed that the wait is so long (release date May 23rd) they (“they” being either EA or MTV, or a combination of them both) decided to shaft us even more in the PAL territories.
Usually when it comes to pricing, they don’t actually convert the currency but rather lazily they swap the $ sign for a £ sign. Whilst that’s not great, it’s something we Europeans have gritted our teeth and beared with, but the Rock Band pricing is ridiculous.
They’ve decided to, rather than sell the game + guitar, drums, mic all in one package, and instead sell just the game on it’s own and then the instruments seperately. Not only that but the instruments alone will cost £130 with the game expected to retail initially at £50. What’s worse is remembering that the US got this over 6 months ago AND for the price of approximately £90. This article on Kotaku, particularily the comments reiterate my anger at these decisions.
I always said that I would be getting it when it is finally released, but now it seems simply too much of a ripoff – I really hope that people have some sense and stay away come end of May, and force them to drop the price hard and fast.

EA and MTV, you’ve just lost my patronage.

New DLC announced!

S
o in a bid to get more content here rather than me adding more bells ‘n’ whistles to an already bloated bell and whistle page, I’m thinking about setting up regular weekly posts. For now, I’m thinking I should have a sports-oriented set of posts, obviously detailing the teams/sports I’m following and any rants or praise songs I may want to add there. Another obvious one would be to have a set about games, bit of a no-brainer. Another one could easily be a music type one, and I think that would do very nicely.
I’m thinking it might be quite pr0 to have these regular posts occuring on the same day each week, so we could have a gaming Monday. That would be quite smart, the name “gaming monday” however is not. So, any suggestions would be greatly appreciated, I’ll get to work on my own ideas, and then I will ignore any suggestions and stick with my ideas cos there are da best!
Also these special posts give me the opportunity to try out adding some images to the post titles (seriously I cannot stop tinkering!) so that might be something quite smart, we’ll see how it goes. speaking of images, I do also want to throw in soe more pics to spruce the place whether that be ones taken with the phone (yikes!) or ones pinched from the Internet, and if that is the case I will quote my source like a responsible author.

Racing Game Improvements…

Hey, I was prepared to post about my thoughts concerning forza 2 and how it compares to pgr3, but it all got a bit waffly and unfocused so I’ve binned that, but some “final” thoughts on how the genre could be improved will be listed here.

 

First off, The idea of racing your “ghost”, your previous best attempt/time is a genius one. I’m not too sure who came up with it, but it’s a great idea, probably many years old, but I think it’s time for a change perhaps.  When I am performing some kind of time trial, my ghost provides a visual representation of if I’m up or not, but when I am very close to my ghost time, i.e. just behind, the thing just becomes too big a distraction a lot of the time, and generally I either completely miss the breaking spot for the lack of being able to see it, or risk breaking later than my ghost and inevitably miss the turn-in.  Perhaps it’s just me who suffers from these complaints and I should shut up, but no, here’s how we’re gonna fix it people…

The Forza series have a rather smart system in-race whereby the racing line and the required braking is displayed on the track in a variety of colours.  Now, my suggestion is to take this idea and transpose your ghost’s performance into a visual much like this.  So, instead of racing what the game considers the optimum line and breaking, it would instead show the lines and breaking performed by your ghost.  They could even colour it the ghostly blues and greys if they so wished.  I think this would be a better system, as you could then explicitly see what lines were taken and how late you braked last time round.  You could then see clearly see where you weren’t maximising the track when turning out of the corner, or which apexes you are simply not hooking up.  Also this way, if you are especially slow, say you fall off the track, with the ghost line implemented, you won’t lose the valuable information which you would normally, cos the ghost car would be on the other side of the track.

One thing I particularly enjoy with Forza is the recording of all the times and also the in-race telemetry.  Despite how much valuable information could be extracted from someone’s driving style, a lot of it is useless in that respect.  If I’m honest the friction levels exerted on each tyre does not help me unlock where I went wrong, or where one of the top players are supremely better than me.  A lot of the time if I push on the telemetry I stay in the default screen, and watch the inputs the best in the world make.  It is actually quite shocking at times watching a replay of the best time on a time trial (where the car used is fixed) and have myself thinking, yeah the guy’s neat but nothing mind-blowing, and then watching my best replay and getting a bit embarassed on how much my car is sliding about.  That being said I use the friends leaderboard to rate my skills, and for the majority of the time trial times (where it is the most equal, same car, no upgrades, tunes etc) I am the quickest out of the couple of friends who also play the game.

So yeah, my suggestion on how improving the telemetry is really a step towards the kinda telemetry that professional racing series, not unlike F1, are exposed to.  That being, I want the lap times posted on the scoreboards split into each timing section, so I can a better understanding on where the best are making the time/I am losing the time.  Along with that and an extension to the inputs that players put in, instead of what the current inputs are as shown in the telemetry at the moment, they should be recorded over time, plotted in a graph if you will.  And why not stop there? I would also like to have the “best” inputs plotted against mine – I would like to see where they get on the throttle quicker than me, where they brake later.  I would want all the inputs, throttle, brake and steering input available in graph form to be compared against my inputs.

Although most probably won’t have the time or patience to explore this, I for one, would especially enjoy the opportunity to analyse and learn from this information, as I can’t help feel for all the effort, the current telemetry in forza is a bit lacking, in that respect.

 

 

 

Here’s just trying to sow some seeds…