Our fav. Videogames

[Maou]

Guitar Hero III = I've wanted Cliffs of Dover in since the first game and here it is. Completely glorious despite being a cover. It's the best guitar song ever written.

[HEDOfloe]

You don't need anymore first person shooters after Halo 3 (whoopee ) and Bioshock!! WTF 360 developers, come up with something new!

[Inaudible-Whisper]

What, you mean something like Project Gotham 4, Skate, Beautiful Katamari, Ace Combat 6, Pro Evo 2008, Virtua Fighter 5, Burnout Paradise, Guitar Hero 3, Rock Band, Mass Effect, Lego Star Wars: The Complete Saga, Mass Effect, Army of Two, Kane and Lynch, and Lost Odyssey all before Christmas and not including a single FPS?

At least they're delivering something at all. Let's look at the Wii's holiday release schedule (Bare in mind I'm only including what will likely be a solid title, for both consoles)...

Mario Galaxy, Sonic and Mario at the Olympic Games(?) and Guitar Hero III.

Please don't attack a console because it has a lot of one genre (The most popular one, at that) when it's the only console to have a lot of anything. The fact of the matter is, the 360 has likely at least 6 Game of the Year contenders on it's hands (Mass Effect, Halo 3, Bioshock, Call of Duty 4, Assassins Creed, Rock Band) and the Wii has one (Mario Galaxy). Only half of those are FPS, and even if you take those out of the equation you're left with a fully interactive third person action adventure, a world class sci-fi RPG heralded as "The greatest Sci-Fi story ever told since the original Star Wars" and probably the most immersive music game ever made. There's probably more variety there than in the Wii's entire catalogue at present. And I happen to like the Wii. But I'll stick up for the 360, as it's my primary console. Maybe the Wii would be, if I had anything to play on it.

As for your sarcastic Whoopee about Halo 3, watch this.

[Positron]

Rock Band could be game of the year in concept, but the relatively high cost of a full ensemble could possibly keep it out of true contention.

Call of Duty 4 and Assassin's Creed might end up negating each other, leaving really only Halo 3, Mass Effect, and Bioshock in the top 3 as far as 360-primary titles go. The multi-platform Guitar Hero III has a good shot, too, especially the multiplayer and song lineup.

Even if the Wii doesn't have any Game-of-the-Year titles, you're still selling it a bit short. Other than the obvious Mario Galaxy (and Mario and Sonic at the Olympic Games, if you really want to count that), there's still Fire Emblem: Radiant Dawn, LEGO Star Wars: The Complete Saga (kinda odd since it's a revamp of the first two LEGO Star Wars combined, but the first two were fun little romps), Resident Evil: Umbrella Chronicles, Trauma Center: New Blood, NiGHTS: Journey of Dreams, Ghost Squad, and Soul Calibur Legends. (And any other weird things other third parties make.) Sure, everyone may not like everything on the list, but most can find something worth its money. (Should Link's Crossbow Training count for anything?) You're right in that it's probably not as good as 360 nor is it as good as it could or should be, but still.

Which means that it's early next year that Wii gets some really nice potential gems. At the very least, Super Smash Bros. Brawl, Mario Kart, and No More Heroes look fairly solid.

[Inaudible-Whisper]

Originally Posted by Positron

Rock Band could be game of the year in concept, but the relatively high cost of a full ensemble could possibly keep it out of true contention.

Call of Duty 4 and Assassin's Creed might end up negating each other, leaving really only Halo 3, Mass Effect, and Bioshock in the top 3 as far as 360-primary titles go. The multi-platform Guitar Hero III has a good shot, too, especially the multiplayer and song lineup.

Even if the Wii doesn't have any Game-of-the-Year titles, you're still selling it a bit short. Other than the obvious Mario Galaxy (and Mario and Sonic at the Olympic Games, if you really want to count that), there's still Fire Emblem: Radiant Dawn, LEGO Star Wars: The Complete Saga (kinda odd since it's a revamp of the first two LEGO Star Wars combined, but the first two were fun little romps), Resident Evil: Umbrella Chronicles, Trauma Center: New Blood, NiGHTS: Journey of Dreams, Ghost Squad, and Soul Calibur Legends. (And any other weird things other third parties make.) Sure, everyone may not like everything on the list, but most can find something worth its money. (Should Link's Crossbow Training count for anything?) You're right in that it's probably not as good as 360 nor is it as good as it could or should be, but still.

Which means that it's early next year that Wii gets some really nice potential gems. At the very least, Super Smash Bros. Brawl, Mario Kart, and No More Heroes look fairly solid.

Yes, well I suppose that's good and well if you're interested in those games, but I don't consider the majority of them to be of the same quality as most of the 360 games I posted. I see the potential in the Wii, I really do. I don't think the controller is a gimmick at all. But unfortunately developers are making use of it in gimmicky ways, making a ton of crappy games and ports with some "unique" way of playing that will appeal to parents and children and Nintendo are too busy focusing on the likes of Wii Fit and Brain Training (Nintendo E3 conference 2007... ) to bother to make some decent new games that it's core fan base wants, nigh needs (Aside from the obvious Mario and Smash Bros).

There's a reason why 67% of Wii owners haven't played their console recently/regularly, why Nintendo haven't had a big hit in the form of a decent game since Wii Sports and why talk of Mario Galaxy leads to people saying "Now I have a reason to dust down my console and turn it on" and that is simply that Nintendo has a decent system, very few solid games and a following of lazy developers/soccer moms. Carrying on as they are may net them huge profits but if you think this trend is good for the industry, you're kidding yourself.

As for GOTY, the Price of Rock Band shouldn't interfere with how fun it is, and it's overall longevity. You can't just brush CoD4 and Assassins Creed off the list just like that if they're both astounding games. So far CoD4 has had a perfect 10 in OPM. And Guitar Hero 3 just isn't fresh enough to make it. It's just more of the same, and the reviews are reflecting this. Not necessarily a bad thing, and I'm certainly buying it, but it won't even get a nomination for GOTY.

[Maou]

The thing I fear about Rock Band is that it'll be too easy. None of the note charts appear to be difficult and several of the songs are already in GH3 anyway. Of course, I'm looking forward to singing Maps and When You Were Young, but what's the point if people can't hear my voice online? My friends are already sick of hearing me sing those songs as it is. I need some new ears to kill.

GH3's difficulty is killing my hand. I played that damn Slipknot song a good ten times before I could pass it. 3's and 7's kicked my ass until I got the speed of the song and I freakin' failed The Number of the Beast at 99% because of those damn 3 button chords. My hand just doesn't want to do 124 chords.

[Inaudible-Whisper]

I'll probably breeze through it. I completed GH2 on expert first time through without failing once (Aside from Jordan, obviously). GH3 looks quite a bit harder. But I'm not getting Rock Band for the difficulty, it's more like a band karaoke than a test of skill. I'm pretty much getting it to jam with my friends, and I'm sure it'll have some pretty hard songs on it too. Not to mention, I'm not a drummer, so it'll be hard to master that.

[Maou]

I can dig Rock Band as a fun party game, but I hope the Expert difficulty level lives up to its name.

Then again, I never got far on Expert in GH2. I can only 3/4 star most of the songs. It's partly because I didn't have time and partly because my Explorer sucks. My Les Paul, however, kicks ass. It's absolutely perfect. I can safely say that all mistakes made are now user made instead of partially because of the sucky guitar.

I'm down to two songs left to complete before the final boss battle in GH3. One more missed note would have meant another 99% failure in TNotB. I failed One at 93% because my hand was tired. I'm not sure if I'll ever get through Mosh 1 in Raining Blood. That kicked my ass so hard that I don't even want to see that chart again.

[Inaudible-Whisper]

Well, I'm sure there will be some challenging songs, but I doubt anywhere near the leve that some of the latter GH3 songs are for a number of reasons. Firstly, it needs to be an all rounder i.e. no epic classics with no vocals, and no extreme metal songs with impossible vocals (The two genres which are usually the really hard songs). Then there's the fact that the game is being published by MTV games, which is probably the reason that we got Enter Sandman instead of something like One or Master of Puppets and why Fall Out Boy was added at the last minute. Difficulty wise, this game will come into it's own with the downloadable content. They've already announced a full Metallica album, for example. No matter what, that's gotta be hard.

Then there's the fact that they've completely changed the campaign. You don't just go through a list of songs unlocking them one by one. You start off as a garage band, and you choose a set-list for your first gig (2-3 songs) and play it. If you do well, you'll get a fan base. Do badly, and you'll have to play the gig again (Choose an easier set-list? Either way, there'll be more fans in the crowd the better you do). Then you can work your way up, getting bigger venues and more fans. Someone will offer to manage you, and you will be offered things like "A tour van to get to another city" by some roadies if you pull off a certain set-list. Eventually, you can go on a world tour and play huge shows. So not only is this much more fun, it ups the difficulty in more ways than "Hit more notes" and it extends the length of the game by not just have you play 1 song once to pass. Plus every bit of downloadable content you get is added to the campaign mode set-lists, rather than just being add-on songs to play in "Quick play".

[Maou]

Any word on how much the DLC albums are going to cost? I can't see myself buying many of them. Maybe Nevermind, but I'm not too interested in the other ones. I'm hoping for some GNR or the Strokes.