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.

An Apple a day keeps Microsoft away…

Hey hey hey! Just doing a mini-post from work, a habit which I could possibly develop if workload is low, but anyways, here was me saying I would blog more, and oh crap! we’re already a month down of 2008. My friend Adam has decided to go on a solo
holiday to Amsterdam, and he’s documenting his travel adventures here, so go check that out, it’s got lots of lovely pictures (which can be enlargened oh yes!) and it’s well written, but I’ve got a slight bias there.

Anyways, Adam was going through selling a lot of his stuff, and naturally being one of his good friends, I got first dibs on some of the stuff. I got a few games, Halo 3 legendary edition (yes, the one with the helmet! :D) and the ultimate amongst the list is the Mac Mini. Slightly embarassingly I have not properly set it up, but what began with mere curiousity to the Apple approach, is slowing becoming fanboy status of the sliding scale. I’m not there yet, but I would only keep Windows for games and really the only games I stick on my PC have been WoW and the football manager series, and it is possible to get Mac versions for those, and if that’s not enough, thanks to the Macs being Intel-based, it’s much much easier to get Windows apps or indeed Windows to run natively without any hacky emulators and the like.

I am slowly going to make the transistion. Although not really an Apple product as such, but around the same time, I’ve been checking out some podcasts. It kinda started out with ExtraLife Radio (please check out this guy he is super talented, so much so a part of me resents him) and having that play whilst I’ve been working through the tiresome later stages of the career in Forza 2. Oh yes, please check out the rest of the site, the web comic he makes is absolutely pr0, I stumbled on it thanks to the heavy WoW content much earlier on, but basically it’s a geeky comic, so win!
This led me to check out iTunes, again with the Mac influence (I’ve tried it before and found it rather clunky compared to Winamp). Anyways, I will eventually get an iPod classic (I know, too many Apple products), so it’s good for me to get familiar, make sure all my music is added etc. Anyways, I have to say that using the iTunes store to find podcasts is awesome, so I’ve added all my old subscriptions and a couple new ones, like the Jonathan Ross one which I still need to check out.

I also took this opportunity to check out the diggnation podcast which is really really good. I’ve got the HD one so I can enjoy it in all it’s lovelyness through the 360. Anyways, it’s basically two guys (which actually work for digg I later discovered) that have a chat on a couch over some popualr digg stories drinking beer. It doesn’t sound much as a concept, but it’s pretty godamn entertaining, and the two boucne off each other really well. It’s so good in fact, I’ve downloaded some of the back catalogue as I really don’t mind the chat about old stories such as the Halo 3 4 player online coop announcement etc etc. Yeah so check it out, I did it and think it’s awesome.

All this podcasting stuff got me thinking that maybe I could knock one together, just have it be a light-hearted topical chat/rant show. From my limited past experience it is best to have 2 contributors, just 1 and it’s just a monologue, not that great, any more, and there’s just words everywhere. So, I’m appealing to the intermawebs to see if someone would like to be a co-presenter of some kind. Scott Johnson of Extralife seems to simply record his skype conversations, so it wouldn’t be too hard to get up and running, and plus it would mean that I would be posting to here more often, so it’s all good. Comment me up and that would be cool.

Anyways, posting in my lunch hour when I really should be lunching.
Take it easy

Happy new blog spot 2008!

Yes, it’s been a long time coming, but here’s a fresh new post on me blog! Crowds rejoice!
It is a little bizarre that the gap has been such a huge ‘un as it’s not like there hasn’t been things to post about.
Probably the biggest change, which I alluded to in some posts ago was the fact that I have a job! horray! I’ve finally gone and joined the rat race, and have been slowing waking up to the realisation that I should no longer see myself as a student anymore.
Obviously this is more of a “hey Internets! I’m not dead yet!” type message (of course, I hear you all cry), so content is actually a bit on the sparse side. I’m not sure if I can be bothered to catch up on some of the major events of the last 3 months or so, that’s not to say there haven’t been that many.
Along with the jobness, I’ve managed to get my own place and all the fun that has been getting that all sorted, and settling in. Also of course, there have been some pretty huge releases which I have purchased in the fields of music and games, possibly the most immediately significant of those being the latest Coheed album and Halo 3, but more of those later.

…And to wrap up the post, it might be worth jotting down some new year blogging resolutions which I will attempt to keep. I think the first one would be of course to blog more, and leading on from that, I’ve never been much of an online blogger, I usually have to force myself to blog and then upload it later which usually leads to mammoth posts which trail on for too long, kinda like how this one is turning out. So yeah, more online blogging, prefer the better, short but sweet, a quick judgement on some news article I’ve read, we’ll see how it goes…

Till then, take it easy and watch this space, there is a lot more to come…

Rhythms of the World, come forth! (backdated 23/07/07)

Hey, overdue post here, last weekend I was invited by my good friend Will to the Rhythms of the World festival in his own backyard, Hitchin.  Now due to the way the trains work, if I was to solo the trip, it would mean travelling into the centre of London, going via the Underground to another hub in London, and then back out and northwards to Hitchin.  Will offered to pick me up (and drop me off) at Milton Keynes Central, one of the main stops towards London.  This was very advantageous as it cut the journey effectively in half so I was all in favour.  The festival fell on the weekend of the 14th July, so the (revised) plan was to head down on Saturday morn and return back on the Monday, just before Will went off to work.

Trains were fine, and after a bit of traffic getting out of Milton Keynes, Will getting slightly annoyed at the sheer volume of the number of roundabouts, we were on our way to the festival and the alcoholic oblivion beyond :D.  Will stressed getting the earlier train to allow for more drinking, and well we arrived in Hitchin with about half an hour before the festival officially started LOL.  We went via his sister’s flat, currently unoccupied, to fill up cooler bags with beverages and then we were on our way.

First stop was off to see a band on one of the main stages that was promised to be in the same mould as Enter Shakiri.  Unfortunately that was not so, the band that actually turned up produced nothing greater than watered-down 3 minute emo songs.  A promised highlight (thanks Will) was their completely unexperimental cover of the dance hit “Castles in the Sky”, which when the rest of the band kicked in created nothing more than shapeless noise – nice one guys, you were so good, I can’t even remember the name of your band.

Next stop was the other main stage for the Chris Phillips Band which many held in high regard, the band forming after the split of former local band Ardent Kicks, and Tom, one of Will’s mates, was brother to the Chris from which the band drew their name.  By this time a bit of a crowd was forming, and front man Chris milked it for all it was worth, and the set was genuinely enjoyable – their stuff being quite folksy thanks to Chris’ acoustic, but also some electronic and synth elements included to deepen the sound.  One for the future here hopes, the guys were extremely good, very tight - Dan the drummer is held in exceptionally high regard for his skills although the set didn’t allow the freedom for him to show off, plus speaking with Chris later that night was pretty cool, a stand up guy – I wish you guys the best.  As I mentioned to Chris in the little chat I had with him, the band coped very well the technical difficulties that struck Dan’s kit a couple of times throughout the set.  Rather than feigning excuses and mass shrugging, it was inspiring to see Chris take the initiative, and get the crowd involved.  That involved the classic sing-along and clapping with the instruments dropped out.  Another bit of fun was the Mexican wave that was sent back through the crowd which actually made it back to the front a couple of times, which was quite smart.

With the early highlight of the day already over, it seemed appropriate to take a breath (and get more beer) so we headed over to the acoustic stage to chill out (if memory serves me correctly, it gets a bit hazy from here on in, thanks to the copious amounts of alcohol that we were drinking).  The absolute name escapes me but next highlight was an Orchestra that did classical covers of modern songs – it couldn’t fail to be entertaining so we all set about being there.  Some food later and we headed back to the first main stage in what was already an impressive crowd but the sound seemed screwed up.  There didn’t seem to be any amplification going on, so it was very hard to hear them over the general hubbub of the crowd.  It was a shame as they promised to be very good, so we took our leave -  I can’t remember if we went back to the acoustic stage or perhaps even the George for the first time.

Next performance we couldn’t miss was the Easy Star All Stars (I think that’s what they were called, where is my programme?..), and we didn’t miss them.  This goup were responsible for remixing popular albums like Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon and Radiohead’s OK Computer in a reggae inspired fashion.  Properly liquored up the crowd were really starting to enjoy it, lots of people dancing, our substantial group as well and even I showed off some of my moves towards the end.

It was after those guys that I met one of the Irish girls (I want to say her name was Fiona oh dear :s), and in my merriness I got her to say lots of things, practically anything that came into my head, starting with all the cliches like “Top of the morning to ya laddie!”  I’m afraid I got quite smitten pretty quickly, and that is quite worrying that I can get like that after such a short space of time. It actually got me thinking about certain voices, or perhaps accents can, just on their own, be very hot.  I actually thought of Koel, particularly one of the times when I went up to Cov to see everyone and she left this incredibly long answer phone message, but it was cool to listen to her voice a couple of times hehe.  Anyways, back to the festival…

Later on in the day, we were back in the George (I’m pretty sure) for the performance of another person that Tom plus others knew (it seemed Tom knew the majority of Hitchin) and his band at the back of the beer garden.  They were fine without being particularly exciting but it was at this point that I discovered that, upon reflection, quite naturally, that they had a Ceilidh (look up spelling) on in the town hall.  I tried to persuade at least one person including this girl I’ve never met, who it turned out to be the girlfriend of the guy whose band we were watching LOL.  A little disappointed that noone would join me for a ceilidh, I decided to go check it out on my own, and hoped that I would find another odd person over who would be my partner (for those not in the know, Ceilidh’s are dances that generally operate in groups of 2 or 4).  Hanging about on the fringes didn’t seem to help much, and I didn’t feel bold enough to ask a stranger to dance, so after what was a probably short time, I headed back dejected that it didn’t work out *mimes sad expression with fingers on face*.

 

The final act we had to see on day 1 was this very large, latin-inspired percussive act which amongst its lineup had one of Will’s friends, Dave’s dad.  They were also a lot of fun and with that sealing the end of the day, we promptly headed over to the George and the other pubs closeby.  Some more drinks later, and a trip to the loo and I lost people, which was very scary, I was thinking oh crap oh crap oh crap, I actually left this one pub and then joined the queue to get back in just in case I missed some ppl despite me having a big look. Fortunately, Will randomly turned up so it was all good. We went inside the pub and played some fuseball which I lost after taking a promising early lead – shame.

 

We returned back to Will’s pretty knackered and pretty much went straight to bed.  The next day was going to be more of the same, but we chilled for a lot of the waking day playing Call of duty 2 and Forza 2 on Will’s 360.  We went down at about 8 to have the rest of the group attack us for not being more prompt and not getting into town at 12 like they all did.  The pub had a hardcore chiller set up outside cooling some beer cans which could be ours for just a £1 each -bonus! We got some of those and then got into the live drum ‘n’ bass that was on at the end of the beer garden.  Enjoying that as much as it’s physically possible we thought it was best to leave and headed over to Club 85, the “indie stage” but in fact a club – the clue’s in the title.  We were off to the see the last act of the festival, the Eagles I believe was what they were called.  Yeah, they were pretty cool, had essentially a young lineup, with this older guy doing a lot of spoken word which was pretty cool.  They also had a fair few guests come up on stage including a 2nd drummer which Will met at the bar just before, and a woman singer to do a song.  We then met back up with the group to finish off the beer supplies which were a little low on the ground.

 

The next day I only just made the train, the timing being very tight.  It is very strange that I am always tired and/or hungover when making these commutes back to Wem, why is that?  Overall a pretty good weekend, spent a lot of money, and got a bit sunburnt on my neck, but it was a lot of fun.

Here’s pencilling in the weekend for next year.

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…