Leveling Down

I received my free copy of Guitar Hero Van Halen in the mail this past weekend, so I decided to give it a try. The first thing that I sadly discovered was that the game shipped in a little cardboard sleeve, with no instruction manual or anything. It also wasn’t so nice to see “FOR PROMOTION ONLY NOT FOR RESALE” slapped across the sleeve and disc – but hey, the game works and I guess that’s what really matters. Apparently this game isn’t going to sit in a box in my 360 collection on the shelf.

Anyway, let me first say that I don’t even know any Van Halen songs at all. With my teenage years in the ’90s, I was raised on alternative rock like Nirvana, Stone Temple Pilots, and Green Day so I was either not even born yet or still an infant when Van Halen was putting out hits. What actually drew me in to wanting to play this game was not even Van Halen, but the guest artist songs on Guitar Hero: Van Halen.

And you know what’s surprising? Guitar Hero Van Halen has a tracklist consisting of more songs I’ve enjoyed than any other music game released so far except perhaps Guitar Hero 2. While everyone’s musical tastes are different, I’m pleased that I can play stuff like Fountains of Wayne’s “Stacy’s Mom”, Third Eye Blind’s “Semi-Charmed Life”, and Blink-182’s “First Date”. And then there’s other bands I recognize as well, such as Foo Fighters, Weezer, Jimmy Eat World, and The Offspring. Of course, when Band Hero and Lego Rock Band come out, those will probably have tracklists I find even more enjoyable than Guitar Hero Van Halen since they will be more pop oriented. But in any case, my point is, unlike Guitar Hero 5’s terrible setlist (for me at least), I actually want to play through Guitar Hero Van Halen to hear all the songs. I’ve even found some Van Halen songs I enjoyed, so that was a bonus.

Surprisingly, Guitar Hero Van Halen does sport a dated interface and doesn’t have the “advances” that Guitar Hero World Tour and Guitar Hero 5 have implemented. In fact, it feels like I’m back to playing Guitar Hero 2 again, and to be honest, I’m actually happy with that. The game is simple to play – I go through career mode and choose whatever difficulty I want to play, earn money from each song, and just progress along. It’s the formula I enjoyed in the earlier Guitar Hero iterations, until Neversoft went all crazy and started making it more and more complicated. I still believe that Guitar Hero should just focus on guitar, and leave it at that. While Guitar Hero Van Halen does allow for drums and mic, the game still feels more guitar oriented, which is what more serious Guitar Hero fans desire. I’m not sure if I can be considered a serious Guitar Hero fan or not since I only play on Hard difficulty, but I’m certainly pleased with the way the game turned out.

It’s strange but while Guitar Hero 5 sports several improvements to the series, I’m enjoying Guitar Hero Van Halen a lot more. So far I find not only Guitar Hero Van Halen’s setlist more enjoyable to play than Guitar Hero 5, but the charting seems to be better thought out too. I wonder if the development teams behind Guitar Hero 5 and Guitar Hero Van Halen were different – I wouldn’t be surprised if they were. It just goes to show you – even if a music game is easier to pickup and play and has more features, the music is ultimately what keeps you playing. If you didn’t already get this game free with your Guitar Hero 5 purchase, I’d recommend waiting it out anyway before it goes on sale. With the plethora of music games out now and continuing to be released, there’s no reason to buy one of these games on day 1 at $60 when they drop to less than half price within a year.

Will this three pieced singer be gracing my TV screen next month?

Every bone in my alternative, grunge-loving, rock and roll body (aka my childhood) finds the upcoming casual-friendly Lego Rock Band and Band Hero games kind of gross. Taylor Swift? Janet Jackson? BRYAN ADAMS? These are the artists being rolled out for Lego Rock Band (Harmonix) and Band Hero (Activision) in the two companies’ latest attempt to cash in on the music game craze. Yet, the older, more mature, and lamer side of me is intrigued by both these games.

Harmonix’s game I’m sure will be made with the high standards all the Rock Band games have had (although I’m not sure how Lego David Bowie and Lego Iggy Pop are going to look different), and there are a lot of catchy tunes on there, including the aforementioned Bryan Adams “Summer of 69′”, Tom Petty’s “Free Fallin”, and the one song I would like to play: Europe’s “The Final Countdown”. Band Hero counters with The Mighty Mighty Bosstones’ “The Impression that I Get”, Carl Douglas’ “Kung Fu Fighting”, and the CTY classic “American Pie”, by Don McLean.

These games and their tracklists present me with two dilemmas:

1) I would feel like a corporate sellout playing these songs. At the same time, pop songs are so catchy and they seem like they would be genuinely fun to play, especially with friends or my wife.

2) I really shouldn’t be spending any more money on music games. There are tracks on both discs that I would love to try out, but I can’t shell out $120 on more music games, especially when I’m still planning on picking up Guitar Hero 5 eventually! This is getting out of hand.

In the end, I’m not sure what I’m going to do. I don’t even need reviews, I’m pretty sure both games will be much of the same. If I had tweenage kids it probably would be a no-brainer, and I think a lot of families will have fun with these games, but as a solo act…I might have to pass………or not. Bah!

For Guitar Hero fans, it seems like practically everyone agrees that Guitar Hero 5 has saved the series from its downward course. Reviewers and gamers seem to love how accessible it is - making it the best music game to play at parties since it allows anyone to join or drop out at any time, all songs are unlocked from the start, very little hurdles to actually starting a game (you can join in and play the random song playing right from the title screen), and no more fighting over instruments since all four players can play the same instrument if they want.

Unfortunately, I don’t exactly have guests over as frequently as I once did so Guitar Hero 5 is basically a solo affair for me. Thus, many of these new features that have been touted for why the game is so good just don’t apply in my case so what I have to look forward to most is a new setlist and Avatar support. I like the Avatar support, as it’s amusing to see my Avatar playing, but it makes me wish I could dress him up differently based on clothing I can acquire in-game. And that brings me to a minor negative I have with the game: no more in-game currency – a staple that has been in the Guitar Hero games for as long as I can remember. (Actually, another negative is that I don’t like that Kurt Cobain is an unlockable character, but people will feel differently about that so I’ll just leave it.)

I’m honestly more of a regular Guitar Hero player – not casual where I only play it at parties, but not a hardcore player where I’m full comboing or even playing on Expert. I buy these music games because I’m interested in hearing songs I would have never been exposed to otherwise, and merely content playing through them on Hard difficulty. In a way, these games for me are more about the music than the actual gameplay, which is no longer doing it for me as it used to. I’m a little tired of the plastic guitar now, but my hope is that I come upon some new awesome song like DragonForce’s “Through the Fire and Flames” in Guitar Hero 3.

I guess at the end of the day, Guitar Hero 5 is really more of the same, and I’m no longer enthusiastically playing the games as I was maybe the first or second one. But at this point in the franchise’s history, you’re either burnt out on music games or not. If you’re still going strong, Guitar Hero 5 delivers. It’s hard to really fault it with anything serious except for the fact that the genre is definitely getting old and the limitations on the game’s song importing. When the inevitable Guitar Hero 6 comes out next year, will I buy it? I say no now, but who knows what kind of incentive Activision will throw out to get me to buy it? Music is so ingrained in our world, and maybe Guitar Hero really does have staying power.

I’ll leave it to cmfl3x to weigh in with his hardcore analysis on music games, as he’s a lot more musically talented and can appreciate these types of games more. I’m sure he’ll share with us his thoughts on The Beatles Rock Band game in the near future. Me, I’m just content playing music games with more pop bands that I can recognize (maybe I should pre-order Band Hero since it has Taylor Swift haha).

Being recently married and a person who is obsessed with music games, I made a conscious decision this year to only buy one of the two major music games (Guitar Hero 5 and Beatles: Rock Band) at full retail price. I even backed off on that when Best Buy announced their BOGO half off promotion last week. I decided to preorder Beatles: Rock Band since I love the Beatles and trust Harmonix over Neversoft, but now that reviews are coming out for GH5 I’m beginning to regret my choice.

All the reviews that are coming out for Guitar Hero 5 make me wish I had the game RIGHT NOW. It seems like the game is now much more user friendly, you can start playing songs from the main menu, drop in/drop out, change difficulty on the fly, and play with any combination of instruments that you want. Anyway, it sounds like a lot of innovation, and I’m a bit sad to be missing out on it. What’s really great is all the songs are unlocked out of the box: no codes or anything.

I guess I’ll have to wait another week for Beatles and hope it is just as good. What I prefer about Guitar Hero is the level of difficulty, which I doubt will be present in the Beatles, so I’ll just have to hope the song list and quality makes up for the difference. I guess this only a temporary lament, since I’ll probably pick up GH5 when there’s a price drop, but I’m big on instant gratification so I’ll have to learn to wait. BAH!

Just when I thought I was done buying music games altogether (especially anything in the Guitar Hero franchise), Amazon and Activision have to both offer concurrent deals that are making me reconsider my stance.

Guitar Hero 5 for $60 is far too expensive considering how many music games I already own. But now Amazon is giving away a $10 gift card with pre-orders of the game, and ECA membership (10% off on all video game purchases at Amazon) make this net out to $44. This is also not to mention Amazon giving a free $5 credit for MP3 downloads off their site as well with this pre-order.

In addition to the Amazon deals, Activision is giving away Guitar Hero Van Halen free with the purchase of Guitar Hero 5. While I don’t really care much for Van Halen, the soundtrack has plenty of contemporary guest bands that I’m digging such as Foo Fighters, Weezer, Blink-182, Jimmy Eat World, The Offspring, Third Eye Blind, and Fountains of Wayne.

So in the end, if you buy this Guitar Hero 5 off Amazon, you’re basically paying under $50 (or $40, in some cases) for Guitar Hero 5 and Guitar Hero Van Halen. Part of me suspects that Activision is running this promotion because they suspect Guitar Hero Van Halen won’t sell well, and I guess that makes sense considering the music game genre is oversaturated by this point. Ugh maybe I have to pre-order this after all. With all these $10 gift cards, Amazon is quickly becoming the main vendor that I’m pre-ordering all my games from this Fall season!

The other day my wife and I had about 20 minutes to kill before we had to go out and she asked if I wanted to play a few songs in Rock Band to kill the time. For some reason, I hesitated to take her up on her offer, which is crazy because a) how often is she going to SUGGEST we play video games together, and b) I’m supposed to be a huge music game fan. That got me thinking, have music games possibly reached their saturation point?

Adding fuel to my speculative fire is the news that came out while I was away, namely, that Guitar Hero and Rock Band sales are both down (34 and 67 percent, respectively). Even though Rock Band didn’t have a new game this year, perhaps in this down economy people aren’t as willing to shell out the money for all these plastic instruments.

Personally, I’m not as excited anymore about Rock Band Beatles and Guitar Hero 5, which seems strange to me considering the amount of time I’ve put into Guitar Hero 2, World Tour, and Rock Band 1 & 2. I wonder if I’m going to put as much time into those games as I have in previous iterations. Or maybe DJ Hero is going to be the next big thing, it certainly looks interesting. Regardless, it’ll be interesting to see what happens to music games in the next year or so.

Am I alone in this, or do others feel the same way?

I think my hardcore “gamingness” peaked years ago, with all that competitive PC gaming like Quake, Starcraft, etc. Ever since then I’ve been slowly moving on a downward trend, shying away from most multiplayer games and simply being content playing single player games where I don’t have to get all competitive. Well recently, it looks like the trend has taken a further drop.

Ever since I relocated and have such little time to play nowadays, I’ve come to the realization that I am no longer a fan of Achievements. I just don’t have the kind of time to hunt down every little thing these days, and if I had the option to, I would probably now turn off all Achievements for my 360 games. Then I could simply play the games for the sake of playing. But, I guess for now I’ll do my best to just play without caring about Achievements any longer.

I bought Bionic Commando: Rearmed a little while back when it was on sale for $5, and have spent maybe an hour or two playing it. But I can’t even get past the first level! Granted, I picked Hard difficulty and I’m still getting reacquainted with the fact that I can’t jump and have to use the grappling arm for everything, but man, it’s tough. It made me think two things: “Wow, I really beat this game when I was a kid?” and “I guess I’m getting a little too old for this since I can’t even beat the first level.”

Instead, I spend my evenings now playing Guitar Hero World Tour, EA Sports Active, and Punch Out!! What the heck has happened to me?! Who would have thought that I’d be spending more time playing the Wii than the 360. Dark times indeed…

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jkYuK3AKrxc]
The sequence in the Transformers movie that changed our generation forever…

Guitar Hero: World Tour – Had to start playing it last night since Stan Bush’s “The Touch” just hit the marketplace as a free downloadable song. It’s actually a pretty good song to play with the guitar. Of course playing it with plastic instruments is not quite the same as tearing through Decepticons as Optimus Prime, but it does give me some good memories of the Transformers movie. Now if only we could also get “Dare” from the Transformers movie and Karate Kid’s “You’re the Best Around” – I’d be all set with the ’80s.

Sins of a Solar Empire – Starting to play more advanced scenarios lately. The longest game I played so far was a 4 hour FFA with 3 AI on normal difficulty. That one certainly took a while but it was pretty enjoyable. I even ended up allying with one of the AI to finish off the other AI. But as soon as it was down to just the two of us, the AI broke off all relations and I had to kill him to win. I’m probably going to try 3v3 with the AIs next, but I’m scared that’s going to be like a six hour game.

Conan – Just finished it, but now I have to go through on the hardest difficulty as well as do any of the menial Achievements if I want to get the 1000. I’m practically ready to move on to the next game, but I’ve always gotten all of the single player Achievements I could in games I own so I don’t think I should set a precendent with this one.

Bionic Commando: Rearmed – Ended up getting it due to its $5 sale price this week. I’m sort of excited to play it, but I’m also a little worried that it may be harder than I remember. After all, even with all the fond memories I have of the NES version, games back then were a lot tougher and less forgiving. I’ll probably start it up this weekend.

 [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b6-hqzneyuU]

Bionic Commando Rearmed is on sale for 400 MS Points ($5) this week for Gold members. I don’t usually buy Live Arcade games but at that price I had to get it. Shame the developer didn’t do as good a job with the actual retail game that was released this month, but at least the Live Arcade remake was awesome.

Also of note is that Target (instore only) has the following games for $37 each this week:
Street Fighter IV [360/PS3]
Tom Clancy’s H.A.W.X.[360/PS3]
Guitar Hero: Metallica [360/PS3/Wii]

The UNSC campaign in Halo Wars was quite enjoyable – but where is the Covenant one?

Halo Wars – Spent this week taking the time to crank through the campaign on Legendary and grabbed all the skulls and black boxes too. While the game is definitely more simple than I’m used to for a traditional RPG, I enjoyed it more than I expected to. The main issue I have is that there’s no Covenant campaign. I don’t know what that’s attributed to but it seems to be the trend nowadays since the new Starcraft II will also only have the Terran campaign. I’m going to be diving into the multiplayer soon, and without any experience with Covenant my predisposition is definitely more towards the UNSC. But, maybe a few scrimmage games playing as the Covenant will change that.

Resident Evil 5 – Also plowing through the game this week now that it’s become my main single player game with Halo Wars beaten. I’m on the last leg of the game now, and while it’s introducing a few new things, the game still feels poorly paced. I don’t want to go into spoilers with regards to enemy types, but again, let’s just say I was disappointed when I have to fight half a dozen of them at a time when in games past it was really only 1 or 2. The game is just all out action now rather than adventure, and while that clicks a bit for me as a hardcore gamer, it still bothers a little bit of my Resident Evil fanboism. I could talk more about it, but I’d rather not spoil anything!

Street Fighter IV – My beatdown continues. This week I played online and dropped to 800 BP before fiercely fighting my way back up to 1000 BP and calling it a day. Competition is still quite fierce – probably because everyone else is improving but me. Nowadays I seem to be seeing a lot more Blanka players, and Chun Li players too. My friend Jason is coming over this weekend, so hopefully I can talk to him about strategy and maybe learn something more to see if I can get myself at least back up to 1500 BP.

Guitar Hero World Tour – After getting the Rock Band 2 Wireless Drumset last week, I ended up ordering Guitar Hero World Tour from Newegg since they were selling it for $35.99. Thought it was cheap enough to get a few new songs to try out with my new drumkit. While I’ve spent a little bit of time with it before and came away unimpressed, part of me is starting to get a little bit bored of the Rock Band 2 Tour mode since I feel like I keep playing the same Rock Band 2 songs over and over! It’ll be nice to finally jam to something new like Michael Jackson’s ‘Beat It’, for example. The other thing that also had me deciding to purchase it is Stan Bush’s “The Touch” from the Transformers Movie is going to be free DLC for GHWT. Now if only GHWT or Rock Band had “Dare” and Karate Kid’s “You’re the Best Around” I’d be all set.