Late last month, a Sears sales ad leaked to the Internet and brought word of two new Nintendo DS packages in the works. One bundle paired a “metallic rose” system with the “Best Friends” edition of Nintendogs, whereas the other featured a gold DS packed in with The Legend of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass. In the ad, the rose-tinted system was emblazoned with a paw print, and the golden DS carried a logo of the iconic Zelda triforce.
Nintendo finally made the two offerings official today when it confirmed that the bundles will go on sale starting November 23 in the US. That’s the day after Thanksgiving, the unofficial start of the holiday-shopping season, commonly referred to as “Black Friday” for the throngs of bargain-crazy consumers that assault stores in search of deals.
Although the new DS bundles aren’t as impressive a steal as a $229 laptop, they will go for $149.99, offering gamers a $15 price break over the cost of buying the game and the DS Lite separately.
Currently scheduled for release early next month, Left Brain Right Brain is a minigame collection that, according to Majesco Games, will train both the left and the right hemispheres of your brain, as well as help you become ambidextrous. We recently had an opportunity to spend a couple of hours with a near-finished version of Left Brain Right Brain, which was more than enough time for us to check out all 15 of its minigames and–if the in-game scoring system is to be believed–to become completely proficient in the use of our left hand.
Like the Brain Age games before it, Left Brain Right Brain is played with the DS on its side so that the two screens are viewed like pages in a book. The difference this time around is that after telling the game which is your preferred hand, you’ll be encouraged to spend the vast majority of your time playing with the other one. All of the minigames work in much the same way; you’re asked to set a high score with your strong hand and then you spend the rest of your time attempting to match or better it with your weak hand.
Most of the minigames are played against the clock.
A number of Left Brain Right Brain’s minigames are tests of reflexes and hand-eye coordination that simply task you with tapping objects with the stylus as they flash up on the screen. Said objects might be monsters, balloons, squares, or musical notes, but the gameplay is largely the same. Variety comes courtesy of a handful of challenges that require you to negotiate simple mazes, trace shapes, connect dots, draw letters, open safes, and that kind of thing. Almost all of the minigames have a very sterile visual style that’s reminiscent of previous Brain Age games. In fact, the only exceptions are the whack-a-mole-style monster-bashing game and another in which you save Earth from a meteor shower. In the latter minigame, you tap said planetoids and push them back toward the top of the screen.
We’re no experts, but the method used to determine your ambidexterity rating in Left Brain Right Brain appears to be crude at best. The game simply looks at the scores you achieve with your strong hand and weak hand. It then compares them to come up with a percentage that indicates how good you are with your weaker hand. Any score over 80 percent makes you a “master,” though based on our experiences to date, even those of you who consider yourselves to be anything but ambidextrous will have little trouble attaining that status. Expect a full review of Left Brain Right Brain in the not-too-distant future.
Like its counterparts on the Wii, PC, PS2, and Xbox 360, the Nintendo DS version of Bee Movie Game lets players explore the 3D world from the movie and tackle numerous missions as the film’s hero, Barry B. Benson. However, unlike its console-based siblings, this portable rendition of Bee Movie is short, repetitive, and lacking in variety. At first, you might enjoy playing the minigames, fetching items, and flying back and forth. Soon, though, the relative lack of substance and flair will cause you to lose interest.
The 3D graphics are the game’s sole bright spot. Barry, the other bees, and the dangerous creatures you’ll encounter out in the wild are cute and detailed. All the different locations, including the hive, the park, and the warehouse, are vividly brought to life thanks to the clean textures and a high polygon count. The top-down viewpoint isn’t any different than that of the typical adventure romp, but since you can freely explore each environment and adjust your flight level to discover shortcuts, you really feel as though you’re getting the unique sense of what it must be like to interact with the world as a fluttery insect.
While they’re impressive for their technical qualities, the graphics don’t deliver a whole lot of excitement. Of course, the massive flowers, benches, garbage cans, and other objects you’ll encounter outside the hive are larger than life. However, they just sit there, and you can’t do anything to them except hide under them or whack them to knock pollen drops out of them. Frogs, dogs, birds, and other nasty animals patrol small zones in each area, but their movements are matter-of-fact and their attack animations are so short that you often won’t notice that you’ve actually been attacked until Barry gets knocked back. In general, the presentation is cheap. There’s not much to the audio, apart from some dramatic music and a few brief snippets of Jerry Seinfeld saying “ouch,” and the story scenes that are displayed at the end of each mission consist simply of still images from the movie and plain text dialogue.
As for the hands-on aspects, they’re obviously geared toward the less developed gaming skills of young children. You can freely explore the environment, but missions and upgrades are doled out in linear, regimented fashion. A green dot appears on your radar, you go there, another bee gives you your orders, and you head to the next green dot to collect an item or rescue somebody. Barry has a limited range of abilities. He can fly, dash into things, carry objects, and hide under surfaces to avoid the rain or larger creatures. Once or twice per mission, you’ll face off against a human in a battle that involves dragging and drawing on the touch screen. If you accumulate enough points in those battles, Barry will dodge all of his opponent’s attacks and cause the meanie to fall down dizzy. Those battles are fun. It’s just too bad there are so few of them.
Occasionally, you’ll notice insects standing around that aren’t part of the mission narrative. If you talk to them, they’ll ask you to fetch something or deliver items to other insects in exchange for a major pollen payout. Using that pollen, you can visit the Pollen Jocks at the hive and pay them to take a crack at one of their minigames. These minigames are simple reflex challenges involving the touch screen. For example, in the speed training minigame, you have to drag a puck back and forth between the goals while dodging a spiked ball that’s bouncing around the screen. The different minigames are nice diversions, and they allow you to upgrade Barry’s speed, stamina, and strength ratings.
Unfortunately, there are only three minigames in all, so they don’t actually do much to extend the life of the game. Not that there’s much life to begin with. Including the hive, there are only four different environments, and it won’t take you much longer than three hours to talk to everyone and complete all the quests they offer.
You could argue that the reason the game is simple and short is because it’s geared toward young kids. While there’s some merit to that argument, it really doesn’t explain why the overall design and presentation are so underwhelming. Besides the nice 3D visuals, there’s nothing here to keep kids entertained once they get bored of buzzing back and forth and fetching junk for other insects.
Fighting on the Nintendo DS goes online courtesy of Ultimate Mortal Kombat, a two-game compilation that contains a quality port of Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3 and a version of Puzzle Kombat, the MK-themed puzzle game that Midway inserted as an extra in Mortal Kombat: Deception. By itself, as a single-player game, it’s a bit of a dud. But if you’re a fighting aficionado with a DS and wireless access to the Internet, this is a pretty cool package.
This is the best portable Mortal Kombat game to date.
Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3 was the last 2D game in the MK series and, by far, the fastest of the bunch. It added a run button that the previous games didn’t have, amped up the combo system, and added a lot of interesting new characters, all while maintaining the game’s digital, photographic look. The finishing moves got more ridiculous, too, with animalities–where your fighter turns into some kind of animal and does something to your opponent–joining the regular fatalities, babalities, and friendships. But even the regular fatalities became crazier. For example, Liu Kang can make an MK2 arcade machine drop out of the sky to crush his victim. It wasn’t as serious as the Mortal Kombat games that came before it, and it’s certainly not as serious as the darker set of MK games that appeared on the previous generation of consoles. It’s goofy, but it’s also one of the better 2D fighters from its era. It controls just fine on the DS, and it’s still a lot of fun.
There’s a catch, though. The Mortal Kombat series has been saddled with some of the worst computer-controlled fighters in the history of the genre. Although the first three fights are easy, afterward the artificial intelligence shifts into “win” gear, where it just reacts to every single little thing you do. It’s not a fair fight, and it’s not a fun fight. The only realistic way to win is to exploit its reactive nature and trick it, which isn’t too hard. On the other hand, it also isn’t any fun. If you want to enjoy Ultimate Mortal Kombat, be prepared to play it against someone else.
You can play multiplayer against another person using only one copy of the game, but you’ll be limited to a couple of characters, so this isn’t really viable for long-term excitement. Locally, you’ll need two copies of the game to play it right, or you can connect to the Internet and seek out competition online. The online mode works surprisingly well, and in most cases, our matches against other humans were free from noticeable latency. However, the occasional match was sluggish and choppy, so as with most things involving an Internet connection, your mileage may vary. The game keeps track of your rating, which is a score based on your wins and losses. You can match up against friends using the standard friend-code system, or jump in against random players. All of this stuff also applies to Puzzle Kombat.
Puzzle Kombat is a blocks-and-crash-gems style of puzzle game. It’s effectively a rip-off of Super Puzzle Fighter II Turbo, but with Mortal Kombat combatants instead of Street Fighter characters. Each character can pull out a different special move by filling up a meter. These moves include the ability to jumble up your opponent’s pit, to remove blocks from your own, and so on. It’s a functional but unexciting puzzle game that made for a cute bonus back in Mortal Kombat: Deception, where it was one part of a game with many modes. Here, where it gets equal billing with UMK3, it comes across as a little stale.
Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3 is one of the best fighting games of the 2D era, and it still plays well on the DS.
Graphically, the games look just fine. UMK3 looks like the arcade version but smaller. As a result, the characters are somewhat less detailed than they were in the arcades. For example, you won’t really be able to see the look on Stryker’s face as he straps dynamite to his foe and then plugs his ears for the blast. Also, there are a handful of pauses and black frames that pop up when you perform fatalities, change background stages by uppercutting your enemy through the ceiling, or do anything else that forces the game to quickly load some new graphics from the cart. The game uses the inactive screen to show you your fighter’s special moves, which is useful if you don’t already have them memorized. The music is sharp, and the sound effects are good as well.
If you’re a DS-owning Mortal Kombat fan, this is a great offering that’s certainly worth owning, but only if you’re properly equipped to take your DS online. You probably won’t want to play alone for more than 15 minutes, so be sure to take that into account before you buy.
The original Neutopia was infamous for “borrowing” quite a few concepts from Nintendo’s The Legend of Zelda. Despite this, or perhaps because of it, the end result was actually a good offering for TurboGrafx-16 owners who were looking for a legend to call their own. Neutopia II is now available for download from the Wii Virtual Console, and continues what its predecessor started–almost to the letter. It’s more intense and packs in more for you to do, but you’ll likely suffer bouts of d
According to fictional archaeologists, ancient Egypt was overrun by tiny walking pyramids and swarms of killer gnats. They all suffered under a sky the color of banana-flavored baby food, living in terror of a howling wolf dressed up to look like a sarcophagus. These archaeologists then created a platformer called Anubis II in this vision, putting you in the sandals of the wolf and tasking you with defeating an evil… something. Somewhere. What could possibly go wrong?
As it turns out, as much as you can imagine and more. As the titular savior of Egypt, you must navigate through some ramps and platforms, and then more ramps and more platforms, combined with some ramps and platforms. Most of them are yellow. Others are gray or brown. Using the Nunchuk’s analog stick, you scuttle around like a toddler in a 50-yard dash, and jump onto those ramps and platforms using one of two equally abhorrent methods. You can fling the Nunchuk upward, which is unresponsive and, frankly, a stupid idea; alternately, you can use the Z button, which at least works. However, having to both move and jump using the Nunchuk is simply terrible and contributes to plenty of hand cramps.
Pictures are worth a thousand words. And this picture says ‘this game sucks.’
Furthermore, the regular mechanic of running around is broken. Your wolf has about three animations when running, and he responds poorly to analog-stick movements. He tends to keep moving even after you’ve stopped pressing the stick, so be prepared to fall off of platforms often and through no fault of your own. There are only two speeds: completely still and five-year-old-on-caffeine. Likewise, there’s no subtlety to your direction, given that you don’t have a full 360 degrees of turning motion. Rather, you seem to be limited to 16 different turning increments, which makes the clear-cut act of simply moving around an enormous struggle. It’s like playing Berserk on the Atari 2600, only you have a few more pre-set facing angles.
While there is apparently some sort of story at play, at least according to the manual and the box, the game doesn’t clue you in as to what your true purpose is. As a result, your only goal is to collect various floating pyramids that let you unlock the next level, where your mission is to unlock the next level, which then tasks you with… unlocking the next level. Sadly, you have to jump to get to these pyramids. Jumping happens with the same amount of ease with which you run, which is to say that it’s jerky and unresponsive. You’ve got the same range-of-turning issues here, coupled with a broken camera. The camera doesn’t really do much on its own, but your own control is limited to resetting it directly behind you (and doing so doesn’t even result in a transition animation–it just jerks there in a single frame). It’s absolute insanity.
There’s some combat, too. You can either waggle the remote to watch your wand clip through scarabs, or clip through pyramids with feet, or clip through… some other kind of bug. Half the time, waggling the remote does absolutely nothing, and when you do manage a swing, you can never tell if you are making contact because there is no enemy collision detection. When you defeat an enemy, a heart floats away, and if you manage to jump to it, you will replenish some health. But you need to deal with the terrible movement controls to get to it, so good luck with that. You can also hit B on the Wii Remote to enter a free-targeting mode and fire blue balls of fire at stuff, but this works atrociously. The targeting crosshair is all jumpy, and the camera goes absolutely nuts, often getting stuck in some awful position and forcing you exit targeting mode to reset the camera.
On top of all of this, Anubis II is an ugly, ugly game. Environments are all colored in some shade of yellow or another, which makes this the only game in which unsightly gray textures are a visual respite. Your foes have about two animations each and appear to have been drawn by a chimpanzee with an eight-pack of generic-brand crayons. There is a single music track, a midi jamboree tune that doesn’t even remotely fit the Egyptian theme and will have you clawing at your ears five minutes after you start. The few sound effects are terrible, such as the onerous thud Anubis makes when he lands, which sounds like someone hitting a cast-iron pot with a drumstick.
There’s more, of course. Between levels, there are some impossibly dumb minigames that give you no chance to figure out what you’re supposed to do before they’re over. There are times when you’re supposed to wave your wand, but the game can’t distinguish between a wand wave and an attack, which forces you to sit there for five minutes until you do the mysterious magical motion that gets it right. Ultimately, what you need to know is this: Anubis II is one of the worst games ever created and fundamentally broken. If you play it, you can never get back the three hours you wasted on this unique brand of torture.
When Nintendo first released details on the Wii Zapper, people were skeptical as to how the Big N would convince the public to spend their hard-earned cash on what is essentially a plastic shell designed to hold the Wii Remote and Nunchuk. That answer came when it was announced that the Zapper would come bundled with Link’s Crossbow Training, a simple yet fun shooting game with a Legend of Zelda theme.
Men’s Health Tip: If you don’t want to get hit there, don’t put a target over it.
It can be played without it, but Link’s Crossbow Training is designed for use with the Wii Zapper. The Zapper itself is just a sturdy piece of white plastic molded to loosely resemble a futuristic gun with two grips. The remote lays flat across the top of the Zapper, and the Nunchuk locks vertically into place on the back. There’s even a removable compartment that lets you wind up the Nunchuk’s cord so you only have enough wire exposed to connect the Nunchuk to the remote. The trigger is on the front handle. Because it’s so far up on the gun it doesn’t feel natural, but you get used to it after a short while.
The Zapper can be used with newer games like Resident Evil: Umbrella Chronicles and Medal of Honor Heroes 2, but Nintendo is sweetening the deal with Link to move the peripheral off of store shelves. In the game you play as Link, and you’re presented with a total of 27 shooting stages spread over nine levels. Each level contains three stages, and you must earn at least a bronze medal on a stage before you’re able to move on to the next one. There are three different types of stages. In target shooting, you must try to shoot the bull’s-eye on targets that pop up out of nowhere as quickly as possible. Accuracy is more important than precision here–and really, this is true in all the stages, because as long as you hit the target at all you’ll increase your score multiplier. Defender places you under attack by different creatures, some on foot and some that attack from the sky. You use your radar to locate what direction your foes are approaching from and then point the Zapper offscreen in that direction to turn that way. Ranger is the stage that most closely resembles a traditional Zelda game. You’re given a set number of enemies to kill (or you must fight a boss), and you move around the level with the analog stick to seek them out before time expires. It’s tough to run, look around, and shoot at the same time, but with a little practice it’s manageable.
Those are the basics, but there’s a lot more going on. You can shoot scarecrows, skulls, pots, signs, and other items scattered across the levels to earn bonus points. Holding down the trigger until your reticle flashes lets you shoot an exploding arrow, which is handy when you’re facing an onslaught of skeletons or wolves. Some enemies will flash green; if you shoot them, your crossbow will be able to fire rapidly like an automatic weapon. While speed is a necessity, you’ll have to be careful what you shoot. Some targets in target shooting are painted with an X and will deduct points if hit, and you’ll also lose points if you shoot creatures you’re trying to protect. You can breeze through the game’s nine levels in an hour and a half if you’re good, but it has that “Just one more try, I know I can do better!” charm to it, so there’s a lot of incentive to revisit previously cleared stages to improve your score. There’s a multiplayer mode, but because it doesn’t support more than one player at a time, you just end up passing the Zapper around trying to best your opponents’ scores. A practice mode is also included, but it’s just another way to replay stages you’ve already finished, and you can do this in the score attack mode, so it’s essentially worthless.
It’s tough to say that the Zapper makes the game better in any way–you can play just fine without it, and you won’t really feel like you’re holding a crossbow. This has nothing to do with the Zapper itself, but because of the way the Wii senses motion; you have to aim via a reticle that appears onscreen, not like you do with traditional light gun games like Duck Hunt or Time Crisis. There’s an option to adjust the height and speed of the aiming cursor, but there’s no way to align it. As a result, our gun always seemed to be aiming about three or four inches to the left of where the gun was actually pointed.
That’ll teach fruit to mess with Link!
It’s easy to sum up Link’s Crossbow Training’s presentation: Twilight Princess. The graphics are essentially the same, and you’ll revisit many locations and fight the same enemies from Link’s earlier Wii appearance. The only issue with the audio is that the crossbow doesn’t sound much like a crossbow, but other than that small complaint, the game sounds fine and you’ll enjoy hearing the always-great Zelda music you’ve come to know and love.
As long as you don’t expect more than a short but sweet shooting game, you’ll be pleased with what Link’s Crossbow Training has to offer. It’s good enough that you might find yourself thinking of the Zapper as the bonus pack in.
Way down low in the post is where the business happens. It’s the most physical part of the basketball court, where shoulders bump, arms are slapped, elbows are registered weapons, and baskets are scored or rejected…hard. It’s no place for lightweights; only the brave and the big have any hope of getting things done here, though a little bit of finesse will take you a long way too. Way down here, an old man can meet the end of his career, while a young man can find his just beginning to blossom. It’s not just about physicality, though. A wise player down low can make a freshman look like he’s standing still. Welcome to the new post play in NCAA March Madness 08, where the business happens.
Working the ball down low will be a key part of your offensive strategy in March Madness 08.
On the court, the new post controls are the primary point of interest to longtime fans of the series, if for no other reason than the immediate effect it has on how you play the game. For what feels like the first time in series history, playing down in the low block isn’t just a legitimate strategy, it can also be fun. Once you pass the ball to your forward or center down low, you’ll have a number of options at your disposal to try to get the ball through the hoop. The first, and perhaps most obvious option, is to get around your defender. To do so, you can push either left or right with the right analog stick to try to wrap your player around the defender and charge the basket.
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We chat with ESPN’s Erin Andrews about her work in March Madness 08 and on the sidelines of real games.
The animations during low-post moves like this are nice, and obviously, the developers at EA Sports spent some time working on them. A player on offense will move his arms around a defender, trying to shove him out of the way. If you’re being guarded in an especially tough way, you might find your player ducking underneath the coverage and trying to force his way toward the basket. In addition, slippery point guards are adept at squeezing in between two pressing defenders with some slick animations. The defender, on the other hand, will do his best to grind his shoulder down low and get in the way of his progress. By the way, those defending animations play into low-post defense as well (more on that in a bit).
Even if you can’t get around your defender, you can still attempt a shot down low. Pressing the B button will make your player take a shot over the defender’s head, but taking a shot while moving the left analog stick away from the basket will result in a fadeaway shot. For big men down low, the X button will be your best friend because that’s the button used for sky hooks, which can be unstoppable when used at the right moment. Go ahead and unleash your hidden Lew Alcindor; your team will thank you for it.
When defending down low, your skill with the analog sticks will count for a lot. You can choose your position when defending the pass–playing behind or in front of the offensive player you’re guarding and even going for the steal in the air by pressing the X button or right trigger. While the risk versus reward of this tactic is pretty high, using the left analog stick when you’re being backed down in the post is both intuitive and fun. If you’re being backed up and your offensive player spins toward the basket, you simply flick the stick in the same direction he’s heading to attempt cutting him off. If you get the hang of this, you’ll be a dominant defensive power down low and force your opponent to rethink his strategy on the court.
Of course, the same applies to you. Even at the default difficulty setting, you go to the post-play well too many times and the artificial intelligence in March Madness 08 will get wise. Sooner or later, the AI will be doubling up your big men. These double-team situations (whether on defense or offense) happen often and (all too) commonly result in stripped balls if you can’t get an outlet pass off in time. Nonetheless, it’s indicative of how you play March Madness 08. At first, you’re automatically drawn to the new controls for play down low; however, sooner or later, you’ll learn that NCAA championships aren’t just built on play in the paint because the AI forces you to open up your game and try shots outside of five feet.
If the AI adapts to you down low, you can always pop the ball out for an easy three beyond the arc.
While the game down low feels different, much of March Madness 08 will be familiar to those who played last year’s game. The composure ratings of players still plays into your team’s success during games. If you build up enough composure through successful plays on the court, you can initiate impact moments, which are small interactive cutscenes where you can pump up the crowd or your teammates. Depending on the kind of guy you are, you can also thumb your nose to the opposition. In addition, the graphics, particularly the player models, show offer a fine degree of realism and variety that really adds to the game’s presentation quality. The trio of Brad Nessler, Dick Vitale, and sideline reporter Erin Andrews provide audio duties this year (for more with Erin, check out the audio interview above).
At the finale of Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six Vegas, the titular antiterrorist team foiled the launch of a missile toward the titular desert metropolis before uncovering a traitor in their midst. As a reward, players were greeted with a black screen bearing the words “To Be Continued,” which all but confirmed a sequel.
Today, Ubisoft made it official: Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six Vegas 2 is indeed in development at Ubisoft Montreal for release sometime next year. For now, the Francophonic publisher says the game is being readied for “next-gen consoles and PCs.” No specific platforms other than the PC were mentioned, but the original Rainbow Six Vegas was released for the PC, Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, and PlayStation Portable. (Proposed PlayStation 2 and Xbox versions of the game were canceled.)
Ubisoft was similarly cagey about Rainbow Six Vegas 2’s plot, saying only its “intense solo campaign…uses new tactical possibilities in various locations around Sin City.” Gameplaywise, the title will offer a range of online multiplayer modes, including adversarial and co-op, which would tie in to the single-player campaign.
Rainbow Six Vegas 2’s release will roughly coincide with the 10th anniversary of the author-inspired franchise, which has sold more than 16 million units worldwide.
Today, Ubisoft upset many PlayStation 3 owners by revealing that its exclusive for the console, Haze, has been delayed until next year. Luckily, as the day went on, owners of the resurgent platform and its handheld sibling received a bevy of good news from Sony itself.
Firstly, Sony has upgraded the PS3’s firmware to version 2.01. The minor update’s major feature is increased stability during gameplay and Web surfing. The update also sharpens graphics upscaling for PlayStation 2 games on those PS3s with backward compatibility, and corrects a remote start error that led to some consoles being turned on by accident.
PS3 owners also now have a variety of new options to choose from in the PlayStation Store. Sony has decided to celebrate the US Thanksgiving holiday by releasing two casual games that use the PlayStation Eye camera–Operation Creature Feature and Aquatopia–for $4.99 and $1.99, respectively. The PlayStation store now also offers a $2.99 expansion pack for fl0w, a $9.99 Need for Speed ProStreet Collector’s Edition upgrade, and the extensive list of downloadable Rock Band songs revealed last week. In addition to the new content, Sony also temporarily discounted several older downloadable PS3 games on the PlayStation Store. Calling All Cars, fl0w, PixelJunk Racers, and Everyday Shooter have all been reduced to $4.99 through November 29.
Ironically, arguably Sony’s biggest news of the day didn’t have anything to do with the PS3 at all. This afternoon, the company launched the PlayStation Store for the PC, which will give PlayStation Portable owners who don’t own a PS3 access to downloadable games for the first time. The international shop, located at store.playstation.com, offers many of the PlayStation 1-to-PSP ports currently available in the PS3 PlayStation store, such as Twisted Metal 2 and Tekken 2. It also offers several games designed for the PSP (Wipeout Pure, Syphon Filter Combat Ops) demos, game videos, and PSP themes. A full list of titles can be found on the official PlayStation Blog. Although the games bear an
Rock Band is every wannabe musician’s dream. A game that takes the four key instruments one needs to make a band a rock band (guitar, bass, drums, vocals), and builds a highly playable and intensely addictive game around them. To a degree, developer Harmonix got a head start on the process of creating Rock Band when it developed the first two Guitar Hero games, but whereas those games were all about the decidedly solo act of severe simulated shredding, Rock Band goes in an entirely different direction. The solo play has taken a backseat to cooperative multiplayer. This game is all about the act of performance as a band, getting a group of four people together and working together to get the highest score bonuses possible as a group, all while fake guitaring and realistically singing and drumming your way through more than 40 different licensed rock hits. The steep $170 price tag for the game and bundled hardware might prove to be a barrier for entry for some, and in addition, the hardware itself comes with a few flaws. But if you’re willing to make the investment, Rock Band is a guaranteed good time for any music lover, and one of the best party games you’ll ever play.
Get some friends, shove some fake instruments into their hands, and prepare to rock.
In a sense, Rock Band is a little like three distinct games built into one. First, there’s the guitar game, which lets you play approximately the same sort of game as Guitar Hero on guitar and bass, but with a few key differences. For one, the guitar itself is built quite differently from the Guitar Hero guitars. It’s bigger, with a longer neck, and its body feels more solid. The fret buttons are larger, and are flush against the neck of the guitar, and there is a second set of narrower fret buttons all the way down the neck that you can tap on for solos. The guitar even comes with a built-in effects switcher, which puts effects like echo, flange, and wah-wah over the in-game guitar track. The only difference between guitars in the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 versions of the game is the fact that people who buy the 360 version get a wired guitar, whereas PS3 owners get a wireless one. On the flip side, PS3 owners don’t get a USB hub to connect all the instruments to, whereas 360 owners do. That shouldn’t be an issue if you have an older PS3, but if you have a newer one with the two USB ports, you’ll need to buy one of those hubs separately. It’s also worth noting that you only get one guitar with the bundle on either platform, but if you own a Guitar Hero guitar for either platform, you can use that with the game.
The actual guitar gameplay isn’t much different from Guitar Hero, with you strumming along and periodically tilting the guitar to engage “overdrive” (the game’s equivalent of star power), but a couple of neat twists do add some flavor. For one thing, solos are given their own scoring section in each song, and the game tracks the percentage of notes hit during a solo. The higher the percentage, the higher the score bonus you get at the end of the solo.
The guitar game is of good quality, though a couple of things about it might drive a few longtime Guitar Hero fans batty. For one, the difficulty of the game is a good deal less challenging than what the hardcore Guitar Hero fan base is probably accustomed to at this point. The goal with Rock Band seems to be more about bringing in newcomers, so as a result, the difficulty level sits somewhere between Guitar Hero and Guitar Hero II overall. Not a bad thing if Guitar Hero III gave you conniption fits, but potentially less exciting for some of the hardcore guitar gamers out there. Also of note is that the note charts for guitar are handled a bit differently, with notes that can be pulled off via hammer-ons and pull-offs appearing as half-sized notes on the chart. It’s not quite as easy to see these notes as in, say, Guitar Hero III, so you might end up screwing up a few solos until you get used to this new methodology.
Lastly is the guitar itself. It’s a good guitar, but it does some things differently than the standard GH model guitars. The strummer doesn’t click when you strum up or down, and the fret buttons seem a bit less forgiving in terms of timing in solos and other, tougher sections. It’s not that it’s bad or wrong–it’s just different, and it takes some getting used to. Also, you’re not going to get a ton of mileage out of things like the second set of buttons and the effects switch. Most people will probably forget the switch is even there until they accidentally turn on wah-wah, and sliding down to the second button set is a bit vexing to do just as you’re about to head straight into a solo, since it takes a while to get accustomed both to the smaller buttons and to finding exactly where they are on the neck without staring at the guitar for a few seconds. Fake-guitar virtuosos will probably dig it, but most people will likely stick to the standard method.
Next there’s the singing game, which closely emulates the mechanics of Karaoke Revolution and SingStar, but, again, with a couple of specific differences. You sing along as the lyrics display on the screen, trying to match your vocal pitch to the meter that moves up and down with the original vocal track. The key thing about singing is that the number of sections where a singer actually gets to do his or her thing is somewhat limited. But even those down moments aren’t left for pure silence. Sometimes the vocal area of the screen will turn yellow, indicating for you to “make some noise,” which then engages overdrive. There are also sections where you can simply tap the microphone to the rhythm of the song to get a tambourine or cowbell section going.
If you’ve ever played a Karaoke Revolution game, the singing mechanics should be immediately familiar.
Beyond these wrinkles, the core of the vocal game design is to just sing, sing, sing…and occasionally rap. If there is any complaint to be made about the vocals, it’s that it doesn’t leave a lot of room for interpretation. On the higher difficulty settings, the game is extremely intent on you hitting the mapped pitches as closely as possible, even in situations where it seems like the mapped pitches aren’t quite exact to what the original vocalist is doing. The same goes for the timing of each word. In some songs vocalists will trail off, but you can’t really do that and still get the max score, which makes the vocals feel a bit robotic. Still, most vocal pieces are quite fun regardless, and in a nice touch to help middling vocalists everywhere, you can adjust the original vocal track volume via the controller as you play, so you can use it for as much or as little of a guide as you prefer.
Finally there are the drums, easily the most intense and enjoyable instrument of the bunch. The kit consists of a collection of four color-coded pads and a kick pedal, along with a pair of drum sticks. There’s really no reference point for the drums portion of the game except for, well, real drums. You hit the pads in time as you would with a realistic drum kit, and on expert, the game practically maps out each song’s drum part note for note. Make no mistake: When you are playing on expert, you are playing the drums. If you can do well on expert, you can probably pull out a decent beat on a real drum set at will. The good news for novices is that easy difficulty does a pretty good job of easing you into the act of drumming. The number of notes is much more limited, kick pedal usage is rare, and drum fills are eased back quite a bit.
Speaking of fills, one really cool thing about the drum portion of the game is that it allows for some improvisation. The way the drums handle overdrive is to give you some blocked-out sections where you can just bust out any kind of drum fill you want. The pads act as a snare, two tom-toms, and a crash cymbal. Go nuts, but just be sure you hit the last crash cymbal note at the end of the fill, at which point you will engage overdrive.
If there is any issue to be taken with the game’s hardware, it’s its reliability. For instance, one of our pre-release kick pedals from the drum kit, which is made up of a somewhat thin piece of plastic hooked into a spring underneath it, actually snapped in half during a particularly heated rendition of The Who’s “Won’t Get Fooled Again.” The other pedals we used for testing held up despite some extreme thrashing, but all the same, our suggestion is that if you’ve got a Mr. Heavyfoot in your band, tell them to go shoeless and ease up on the pedal slammage a smidge. Another issue is the USB microphone. One of our retail boxes came with a broken mic that cut in and out and wouldn’t register our vocals properly. Any supported USB headset mic will apparently work in a pinch on the PS3, and the standard Xbox 360 headset works on there as well, but regardless, that’s still a concerning issue. At least EA seems to be aware of potential hardware issues, as a big flyer inside the box explains the 60 day hardware warranty that comes with the game and directs you to an EA Web site. You might want to keep that URL handy if you run into any issues.
Those are all the technicals of the instrumental gameplay, but none of that quite emphasizes how excellent the game is at emulating the act of band play. By themselves, each instrument is basically fun, but when you get four people together playing at once, something spectacular emerges. Part of it is the way in which scoring has been designed for cooperative play. Overdrive can be turned on by anyone, but the more people you have in overdrive at once, the higher the score bonuses. By the same token, if one person in your band fails out of a song, another can simply engage overdrive (provided enough is stored up at that point) and come to the rescue, bringing the player back into the fold. But it goes beyond even the scoring mechanics. There’s just something intangibly brilliant about the way having everyone play together feels. For instance, because the drums emulate the real-life instrument so closely, having a good drummer is paramount for success. If your drummer gets off beat, it can badly screw everyone up. Along the same lines, when your drummer is in a solid groove and the rest of the band is able to lock into that groove, the feeling that you’re actually performing a song as opposed to simulating one is palpable, and it is quite the exhilarating feeling.
The hardware the game comes with is all fun to play with, though there are some reliability concerns.
The game’s song list goes a long way toward making that multiplayer even more enjoyable. Though the game includes only 45 licensed songs (along with 13 bonus tracks from lesser-known bands), many of these 45 are big-name tracks that are immediately recognizable and span multiple rock genres. Alternative rock fans will find such ’90s delights as Weezer’s “Say It Ain’t So,” Smashing Pumpkins’ “Cherub Rock,” and Nirvana’s “In Bloom.” Modern rockers will find The Killers’ “When You Were Young,” Foo Fighters’ “Learn to Fly,” and Yeah Yeah Yeahs’ “Maps.” Classic rock fans will delight in being able to rock their way through Black Sabbath’s “Paranoid,” The Rolling Stones’ “Gimme Shelter,” and KISS’s “Detroit Rock City.” Other, less specifically denominational yet altogether awesome songs include The Ramones’ “Blitzkrieg Bop,” Rush’s “Tom Sawyer,” and Metallica’s “Enter Sandman.”
The vast majority of these songs are original tracks from the artists, with only a few covers scattered throughout the tracklist. Only a few of the covers really stick out much. The Geddy Lee on “Tom Sawyer” is a bit overblown, and the singer of Mountain’s “Mississippi Queen” is a bit odd sounding as well. But by and large, the covers blend in nicely, and whoever did the vocals for Steven Tyler and Bruce Dickinson on the Aerosmith and Iron Maiden songs respectively deserve some kind of vocalist soundalike merit badge.
;)
