AN INFECTION PLAYLIST.

Damn it! I have an urge to plan an online FPS...but Halo's deathmatch and objective stuff ain't cutting it for me. I just want something that's less on the competitive side and more on the "goof around" side... Infection meets this criteria, but there isn't a damn playlist, so I have to search for and add some random person that MIGHT be hosting an Infection game. Too much damn work.

Also, the gametype shouldn't suck as much as the Infection games on Halloween...

Not on any instrument!

I've only got one song left on Guitar...and it's damn Green Grass and High Tides, aka, Freebird 2.

I'm awake and I've got nothing to do. The obvious thing to do is go to sleep...but I feel like I'll miss out on doing something cool and/or useful if I go to sleep! That's why I'm posting a blog entry...to make this not-going-to-sleep thing worth while...

But now I'm going to sleep...I think.

I finally got my Rock Band replacement guitar! ...or did I?

I used my mom's credit card to opt for the "express" replacement plan for my faulting Rock Band guitar. This entails me keeping my guitar, while they send me a new one. Then I send my old broken one back after I get my new one.

Well, I get the package today...inside it...an empty box...and not just any empty box. An empty box labeled "PS3 ROCK BAND GUITAR." >=[ On the outside on a slip of paper in a ziploc bag thing, the paper says "Empty Box (Xbox 360 Guitar)." To add to the inconsistency, a slip of paper in the box tells me to take out the new guitar and send back my old guitar...but there is no new guitar!!

WTF?!?

I contacted EA support...I'm not sending them my broken guitar until I get a new guitar. >=[

Also, I cut myself while trying to open the box. =[

Nintendo came up with the Wii Remote. Pretty cool. There next peripheral? The Wii Zapper...a piece of plastic that holds a Wii Remote. Opens up no new gameplay elements...LAME.

THIS guy, though... he has come up with Head Tracking for Desktop VR Displays using the Wii Remote. Why does this mean? Potential for awesome shooting games.

Instead of being depressed this Christmas like I usually am during this time of year, I'm just bored. All of my friends are working. I've got no new games to play. Even the Internets are failing me!

This is why I'm updating my blog so damn often now! I'M BORED.

Notice any differences?

A LUEser pointed out that Leon acted irrationally in the RE2 intro, shooting at people (zombies) who didn't pose an immediate threat.

I thought this to be rather silly...until I watched it again.


Notice the lady on the ground...a bloody lady grabs his leg and starts moaning in pain. A normal person would think she's been injured and is asking for help. Not Leon! BAM, the bitch is dead!

But whatever. Leon's still awesome anyway. :P

Remember when Guitar Hero used to be awesome? It started its decline when Activision bought Red Octane, and it's continuing its decline thanks to that.

I mean, what happened after Activision bought Red Octane? We got...Rock the 80s, an over-priced expansion pack to Guitar Hero 2...Then we get Guitar Hero 3: Legends of Rock. 'course Harmonix had been bought by MTV Games by then, so they weren't on board, so Neversoft steps up to the plate with its overly complex note charts and crappy art design.

Meanwhile, Harmonix is owning Guitar Hero with Rock Band. 'course, there's one thing that sucks about Rock Band in comparison to Guitar Hero 3. That would be the guitar peripheral. While it works, for the most part, and it looks REALLY cool, the functionality on the strum bar is infinitely better on the Guitar Hero controllers. Understandable, because Red Octane is a peripheral manufacturer, and they made their living off of making DDR pads and Guitar Hero controllers.

Luckily, the GH3 controllers work on Rock Band...if you're a 360-owner. Got the PS3 version of Rock Band? Tough poop. Activision doesn't like you. At least, they'd like you if Harmonix will give them money to like you.

Now, some of this is the blame of Harmonix. They should've caught the problem of the GH3 controller not working on PS3 Rock Band before they released that game. I'm not sure how they made that huge oversight, but had they fixed it before the retail release, the game wouldn't need a patch, and Activision wouldn't be able to do crap about it. Unfortunately, that wasn't the case. Harmonix/EA shipped the game without PS3 GH3 guitar compatibility. Luckily (at the time), Harmonix began working on a patch to enable PS3 GH3 guitar support. They finished it, and were planning to release but...UH-OH! Big bully Activision tells Sony, "Can't let you do that, Star Fox!" Even though Sony doesn't have to listen to Activision, I'm sure they don't want to piss off the "new EA."

So now Activision is out-right saying, "We expect Harmonix to pay us to let you use our guitars." They claim they need "compensation"... Uh...do they know that in order to use a GH3 guitar, you have to BUY the GH3 guitar? Which means GH3 will sell more copies if they let them use the controller in Rock Band? Of course they do. So in essence, Activision is saying, "We need you to give us money to make more money." Freakin' LAME.

This, of course, creates much outrage in gamers everywhere, and even people (like me) who don't even have a PS3 are pissed off at Activision. I'm sure somebody at Activision is getting loads of hate mail in his/her inbox right now. But I doubt that'll do anything. Unfortunately, the majority of other people are still buying the crap out of Guitar Hero 3 due to the name. They don't see or care about what's really going on, as long as they get their silly notecharts and muppet-mouthed vocalists. Rock Band is simply doing "not bad", most likely due to the high entry fee and the fact that people are basing their opinions on Rock Band from ****ed up broken Walmart demo stations. I'm saying EA should slap a big old "BY THE PEOPLE WHO MADE GUITAR HERO" on the box, but Activision might want money for that, too.

I'm not gonna say something stupid about boycotting Activision or anything like that...but seriously, what games do you need from them right now? :P Call of Duty 5 is gonna suck (4 is good, though). Tony Hawk is old news thanks to Skate. I've already talked about how much Guitar Hero 3 fails in comparison to Rock Band.

Activision doesn't need more money anyway! They've merged with Vivendi, and I'm sure all World of Warcraft subscription fees are feeding them enough lobster dinners for the rest of eternity. :P

Remember when I mentioned this Kirby game that was supposedly being developed for the Wii? Yeah, that Kirby game, the awesome 4-player co-op successor to Super Star with a great soundtrack (at least, that's what the trailer made the game seem like).

I guess we'll never know how the game really was, 'cause Nintendo cancelled it... GO TO HELL NINTENDO.

You have the nerve to finish and release that stupid Donkey Kong Barrel Blast game, but you can't do the same for the awesome Kirby game? You're gonna leave us with crap like Squeak Squad? Grr...

I'm sure some of the ideas of Kirby Wii went into Smash Bros. Brawl...but that's not as good as Kirby having his own game, 'cause Kirby > everyone else. They better make up for this by un-nerfing Kirby in Brawl...and putting orchestrated music in the game. >=[

Dillon let me borrow Super Paper Mario in exchange for letting him borrow Metroid Prime 3. This exchange happened maybe a week ago, and I just today put the disc in my Wii. I started playing it...and OMG, I was so bored! TOO MUCH TEXT! If this was a normal RPG, this would be acceptable. But NO, it's supposed to be a platformer, and it took forever to get to the first actual platforming part...which lasts like...10 seconds, then you get to more talking. I couldn't take it anymore, so I went back to the Wii Menu and played Super Mario Bros. on the VC instead...

Now, I'm sure the platforming gets longer just a little bit longer into the game...but to be honest, the platforming doesn't seem that interesting either... Blah.

One of these days, when I'm not afraid of driving out of town, I will attend a Trans-Siberian Orchestra concert. It's epic Christmas music. That's..well..epic! It'd be a perfect "event" (date >_>) this time of year, y'know? Yeah.

Actually, I might not have to drive out of town, 'cause I might be in some college in a big city and the tour would actually come to that city...maybe...yeah...whatever...Witness awesomeness:

I just beat the game. The ending was dumb. It was a very boring cliffhanger. Some weird stuff appears, and you can investigate it...or look up what it means on the Internet. Still boring! Won't be interesting until it comes in game form.

AC's plot was just blah blah blah. I didn't care what the characters had to say unless it was part of the "parallel plot", but most of the information there was read through text, and reading is boring, too.

I say the next game should go sci-fi. Then I'd be more interested. SPOILERS (Like have you play as Desmond with Altair's skills and have it take place in that futuristic city he's stuck in. The Abstergo building looks like it'd be fun to climb! Also...GUNS!)

'kay, I'm almost done with Assassin's Creed, I think...I dunno if I'll be able to finish it before I have to return it today, but whatever.

There are a couple of annoyances I have with the game, and it's not just "it's repetitive." That's a given. The things that piss me off about the game are:

• Informant Missions: Informant missions consist of either collecting flags or doing stealth assassinations. Collecting flags is fine, and kinda fun. Stealth assassinations might be fun..if it weren't for the fact that the streets are littered with beggars that follow you when they see you, getting in your way. And the worst offenders are the crazy/drunk people in the streets that go out of their way to push you, and usually they push you as you're running away from an assassination, causing the guards to notice you. Sometimes they'll even push you into a guard before you've done anything and then suddenly you have a million guards on your tail...And when you fail these missions...
• You can't skip cutscenes: This includes introductions (instructions) to missions. So if you fail a mission (like the above informant ones), when you attempt to retry it, you HAVE to listen to the explanation again. SO ANNOYING. This will probably be an even bigger annoyance if I get a chance to replay previous chapters, since you won't be able to skip the long boring dialogue that you've already heard before.
• There are TOO MANY GUARDS: During the beginning of the game, combat is fine. Once you get used to it, getting into fights is kinda fun. But during those times, you're only fending off like a max of 4 guards and once, and after that, you're done. Later in the game, though, the game throws HUNDREDS of guards at you. You don't fight them all at once, but whenever you kill a guard in a group, another guard shows up to replace the one you killed. It seems like there's an INFINITE number of guards sometimes. And after you're finally done killing them, the floor is littered with loads of dead bodies...then another guard walks buy, and sees the dead body, then he attacks you, starting the process all over again.
• Assassin's can't swim: For some reason, Altair, a highly-skilled assassin that can jump free-run like a pro, CANNOT SWIM. Touching a large body of water will instantly kill him. Now, there's not really a lot of water in the game, but at one point in a dock area, I died MULTIPLE times because of Altair jumping in the stupid water as he was jumping from boat to boat. What made this worse was that guards were chasing me for some reason...I'm not even sure why they were chasing me, 'cause I actually hadn't done anything beforehand! Luckily, guards can't swim either, so throwing them to a watery grave was easy...just as easy as accidentally joining them for a swim.

Sorry, I couldn't think of a witty title.

Anyway, I rented Assassin's Creed for the 360 today, and I've been playing it for the past 4 hours. Man, this game is pretty fun. The presentation is great. The animation really is fluid! The graphics are good, of course. Glitches...yeah, it has glitches. Within the first hour, I got stuck on a cliff and couldn't move and had to reset the console. The AI is hilariously stupid, too. You can "stealth assassinate" a guard 10 feet in front of another guard, and that other guard won't notice it. He'll see you walking away from the body, towards him, and he'll say, "WHO DID THIS!?" Then BAM, you assassinate him, too. Still, it's great fun.

'course, I'm only on the third city...I can see this game getting repetitive, though. Still, it's fun right now.

The plot? I haven't been paying attention to the plot. Whenever there's some dialogue, I don't listen. But you can't skip cutscenes in this game, and it sucks. Like, if you fail a mini-mission, and you retry it, you have to wait for the guy to give you the instructions again in order to start the mission again. UGH, so annoying. So I'm not really sure what the storyline is. Who cares? I just like jumping around and killing guards.

But I just beat Solo Vocal Tour on Medium in Rock Band. :D

Now all that's left are drums...

My 360 has come back, all repaired and nice...Hopefully it won't poop out on me again...at least not for a while.

Well, looks like Space Station Silicon Valley freezes on me during the introduction cinematic. How lame. Looks like I'm going to return this...maybe get Blast Corps instead.

Another uneventful weekend. Activities included the following:

• Rented and completed Resident Evil: The Umbrella Chronicles


• Went to Jessica's house and played Umbrella Chronicles, Smackdown vs. Raw 2007 (Wii version), and MySims


• Redid blog layout


• Bought Space Station Silicon Valley for the N64 (I still haven't unwrapped it...)

Surprisingly, I didn't play any Rock Band this weekend...still waiting to play with some real band members...and I still need to finish Solo Tour on Drums.

I also planned on finishing RE4 on the Wii, but I've been too lazy to do that.

I guess I'll go plug in my N64 and try out Space Station Silicon Valley.

WTF, guys? It's been almost two weeks since I got Rock Band, and I have yet to get together with more than one of my friends and have a full band to play with! Free up your schedules, dudes! We need to rock.

I want this man's singing voice...I'm serious. It'd be hilarious AND I'd be able to sing! Win/win situation!

Well, I beat Umbrella Chronicles like an hour ago...and man...what a let down. UC didn't explain crap about what happened to Umbrella before RE4. All I really found out was where the Tyrants came from. That's about it.

But anyway, here's a few comments on the game. Possible spoilers!

Neat things:

• Hunk's "4th Survivor" Scenario from RE2 (more awesome than neat)


• Lisa Trevor's appearance in Wesker's "Rebirth" scenario


• Using some elements from the movies (the laser room and Red Queen)...sure some people may call this lame, and since I hate the movies, you'd probably expect me to hate it, too, but the laser room is just funny, and it was in RE4, too)


• Hilarious "Secret Stage"

Lame things:

• No RE2 scenarios (aside from Hunk's). That means no Leon or Claire.


• No Tofu


• Resident Evil 0 scenarios (booooring)


• Stupid story. Didn't explain crap.


• Lame new monsters. Seriously, Tryants wearing fashionable sunglasses and a big Mega Man Tyrant?

Look to the right.