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Rock Band

I more than enjoy the Guitar Hero franchise, having got my PS2 out of the closet a year and a half ago after buying all the Guitar Hero games, including this last one on the 360 for the first time.

Tomorrow marks the release of Rock Band, and Ars Technica takes a look at it and approves.

I’m pretty excited to get it, even with the high price point, as a few of us have been known to get together and rock out to Guitar Hero. Now we just need to find a 4th… And I can play with Alex, who I am sure will get a kick out of banging the drums. I’m happy the Guitar Hero guitar works with Rock Band, but very disappointed the Rock Band guitar doesn’t work with Guitar Hero as I don’t want to buy another guitar, but really want to unlock the co-op songs in GHIII. Hopefully they will patch the 360 version so the Rock Band guitar will work with GHIII sometime in the future.

Thankfully, I have the room in my basement for the setup, although if I do pick it up, I won’t be able to play it until next week since we’re going home for the holiday.

No Halo3 Beta For Me

I bought a copy of Crackdown when it came out a few months ago, and was quite happy with the game. It was fun to play a GTA-style game on the side of the good guys for once.

An added benefit of buying Crackdown was an exclusive invite to the Halo 3 beta, which went live this past Wed. Or was supposed to. Of course demand was higher than expected, and the download was delayed a few times throughout the day.

I was finally able to download, and I start the beta through Crackdown – which takes about 10 minutes from start to finally getting in the game after going through the Halo 3 lobby and matchmaking. And each time I try to play, I get an error: “The disc is unreadable” – which is kind of funny as there is no disc.

There are a few threads on the Bungie / Halo 3 forums about this, with other folks having the same issue, and no clear cut fix. Quite frustrating, to say the least.

doh!

More X-Box Fun

Playing around with the hacked X-Box, I figured out how to edit the XML configuration file to have My Music & My Movies on the XBMC point directly to my Buffalo Terrastation that houses all my movies and music – no more network browsing to get there, nice and easy.

Then I did something which I haven’t done in forever, which was hop on IRC. Got the link to download some emulators, and threw up MameOX and a Sega Genesis emulator. Threw some roms on the X-Box, and I was playing Elevator Action. I had upped Vanguard as well – I don’t think my wife is happy with me now as that was one of her favorite games growing up and she knows it’s there just to distract her. 🙂

Modding my X-box

I soft-modded my X-Box tonight and am currently listening to an album in MP3 located on a network share on an external hard drive in my den from the comfort of my living room as I type this.

I used the Mech Assault hack to get the Evolution X dashboard installed, and then just FTP’d over the software for X-Box Media Center.

Reading the instructions X-Box Scene seemed daunting. 30 steps, downloading this file and that file, modifying files, etc. In reality, it was just a few steps:

  1. Plug in the memory card into a controller and turn the X-Box on
  2. Copy the MechAssault save file from the controller to the hard drive
  3. Reboot the X-Box with MechAssault and load the savegame which starts the softmod installer
  4. Follow the instructions, including backup your files, and Evolution X is installed
  5. Go to a PC and download the X-Box Media Center file and extract it
  6. Edit one file and follow the instructions in the notes of the file
  7. Look at your IP address on the X-Box dashboard and go to a PC. FTP in to your X-Box
  8. FTP all the XBMC files to your apps directory on your modded X-Box
  9. Reboot the X-Box. From the Evolution X dashboard, choose Applications and choose X-Box Media Center

Voila – you’re running XBMC. I went in to Music, chose look over the network, chose my Buffalo Terrastation’s workgroup, and 30 seconds later was listening to Liz Phair – and it automatically uploads the songs you’re listening to Last.fm, which I mentioned in the blog a week or two ago.

It’s pretty slick – the UI is fantastic, the applications and formats XBMC supports is impressive, and the performance is blowing away the experience I had using Microsoft’s Media Center Extender for X-Box.

I have some research to do to see if I can automount samba shares (which could be really slick when I have MythTV working later) but for now automounting music and photo’s would make me very happy.

A Gamer's Manifesto

I couldn’t agree more:

A Gamer’s Manifesto or 20 things Developers need to do now.

  1. Don’t use the online capability as an excuse to release broken games

The first time we hear the word “patch” in relation to a PS3 or XBox 360 game, we’re taking the console back to the store. Filled with our shit.

But surely the console industry, always more business savvy than their PC counterparts, will avoid making us gamers their unpaid beta testers.

Chances of that happening…

…again depends on how many turd-filled consoles they get stuck with. In other words, the consumer always gets exactly what they’ll put up with.

Best X-Box 360 Preview Yet

HardOCP has the best X-Box 360 preview I’ve seen yet.

While I’m not a fan of the color or the aesthetics, I am very intrigued by the new X-Box Live features, and the rumors of Media Center integration. HardOCP’s article also touches on the ability to plug in a portable MP3 player or digital camera and stream content right to your TV through your X-Box – pretty cool stuff.

When it rains, it pours

A week and half ago, I purchased Fable and NHL2k5 for my X-box. I’ve probably played 10-12 games of hockey, and having a blast doing it – even if on Pro I’m still winning too many, even if by only 1 goal.

I haven’t played Fable as near as much as I’ve wanted due to two things:

  1. Was traveling

  2. It’s a M rated game – as I found out after I started playing it. And Alex likes watching me play way too much for him to see me playing a role playing game as I hack away at the bad guys.

So I had received a gift card last week, and after trying out Farcry at Kent’s a week or two ago, decided to pick it up, as I enjoy a good FPS. After the fun I had playing Call of Duty single-player a year after everyone else, I decided this could be a good fit. So I bought it today. Come back to the office, and get more presents: Rome: Total War, a new real time strategy getting good reviews, and Star Wars: Battlefront (Warning: flash site) for the PC.

Considering I’ll be wiring the basement this weekend, in Orlando the following weekend, in Chicago after that, then at Lambeau the weekend after for the Cowboys game, when will I find the time? I still have Fable to play, my NFL2k5 football and hockey seasons, and two beta’s, including WoW to test. I’ve barely caught up on my TiVO from the last week or two, and here we go again… Good thing I haven’t bought X-Men from Raven yet! And I haven’t even thought about practicing for the BFG lan competition.

When it rains, it pours.

More Video Games

Purchased ESPN NHL2k5 and Fable yesterday. Tried to buy Fable Thurs. night, but they were already sold out.

Fable is pretty cool. Some of the combat controls take some getting used to, especially spells, but the story is cool so far.

NHL2k5 is suprisingly good. NFL2k5’s Crib feature blows NHL2k5 away, NHL2k5s is a dumbed down version. You still have challenges and can buy stuff, but from a room and item perspective, it’s not even close.

I am enjoying it, though I need to tweak the settings. I beat Vancouver 2-1, and the Stars 3-1, but most of the games end up being about 5-2. My shots on goal are averaging almost twice the opponents. Presentation, Sound, Graphics are all 10/10. The reflection of the ice at the start of periods after the zamboni is there is amazing – you can see the reflection of the scoreboards, and it’s a beautiful thing.

Helping Kelly build shelves today. My version of helping is watching the kids.

Off to Lambeau tomorrow.