Blogging The Rubicon

Digital Media Players -- A quick follow up

2009-04-14T22:07:00.003-04:00

Maybe I just forgot to mention in my article from a few days ago...but, yeah, I realize that the trend for smaller players is a flash vs. HDD thing...I still personally find that to be fucking stupid. A 32GB flash based player will cost almost as much or more than a 120GB HDD based Zune. I've owned 3 HDD based media players and haven't been gentle with any of them...and haven't experienced any drive failure issues. If we're completely moving towards flash based players, it will be around 2 years before we have a flash based player that matches or exceeds the capacity of the biggest iPods/Zunes...I don't necessarily call that progress. I know SSDs are the future but traditional mechanical drives also aren't going away any time soon.

Best Metal Bands of the Last Decade

2009-04-13T09:36:00.005-04:00

It started with a simple text message. Lucas, my musical partner in crime sent me this missive: "I hope I'm not out of touch thinking Amon Amarth is the best metal band of the past decade."

This got my mind racing. I love a conversation like this! I messaged him back and brought up Opeth. We'd pretty much agreed that they're the best band in the world with an unparalleled streak of 9 amazing albums, a posting on the Billboard Top 40 and no sign of slowing down.

He cut me off at that particular pass...

"I'm taking Opeth out of the running simply because they straddle too many lines...They're truly and unrivaled entity."

Okay, fair enough. I sent him over a list of several other bands I thought were in contention for it. He came back with good counters to all of them. Bloodbath, for example, is well known enough. Iron Maiden has been producing great material, but he was thinking of bands that had hit their peak this decade, not 25 years ago. The whole thing snowballed and we ultimately agreed on a list of 20 bands and came up with a set of criteria by which to judge them. We'd rank each band 1-20 in each criterion and average out the rankings to come up with a list of the top metal bands of the decade.

The bands:
Amon Amarth
Arch Enemy
Black Label Society
Bloodbath
Candlemass
Children of Bodom
Dimmu Borgir
Dragonforce
The Haunted
Iced Earth
In Flames
Kataklysm
Killswitch Engage
Kreator
Lamb of God
Mastodon
Melechesh
Nevermore
Primordial
System of a Down

We admittedly left some bands out. We can only listen to SO much music between the two of us and 20 bands seemed like a good base to work from. To be included, a band must have had 3 proper studio releases since the year 2000. They need to have hit their peak/come into their own/etc within that time period as well. I think there's a couple exceptions on this list...like Candlemass, but we agreed that they had significantly reinvented themselves since reforming a few years ago. We also felt that bands like Dimmu, Arch Enemy, In Flames had done their best work in the 90s but that they didn't reach mass awareness until this decade.

Here are the criteria we used to rate the bands:

Quality of Releases
Popularity
Musical Prowess
Originality
Personal Bias

The first four criteria we tried to make as objective as possible. The final one, well...taste isn't always tied to some subjective measure, so we wanted to be able to influence our ratings by what bands we just LIKED.

So we agreed on the bands, agreed on how we'd rate...so we took our own ratings, averaged them together...and we got a top 20. We decided we'd make some blog articles out of it...so we're going to reveal our top 5 over the next few days and talk about what it is we like about these bands.

Digital Media Players -- Why Smaller?

2009-04-11T07:39:00.003-04:00

Am I the only one bothered by the trend of decreasing capacity in digital media players? With the near ubiquity of the iPhone and iPod touch (which are purely flash based and therefore have limited storage capacities) and the rumored Zune HD, the kings of the media player kingdom are moving us towards players with smaller capacity.

I've owned three different media players: a creative nomad (30GB), a fifth-gen iPod classic (80GB) and a 2nd-gen Zune (120GB). I have a lot of music. According to Winamp, it's 896 albums and 10693 tracks. I keep them all on my media server in a lossless format and keep a seperate, lossy copy of my library to copy to media players. I started using WMAs when I switched to my Zune, since WMAs generally compress better and have a better sound quality than MP3s at comparable bitrates. I have around 70GB in lossy files. I like to keep all my music with me and I'm not going to stop buying CDs any time soon. I'm rather enamored with my Zune, honestly. The sound quality is great, particularly compared to an iPod (I personally think that the combination of iPods and 128kbps AAC files from the iTunes store is dumbing down an entire generation of music listeners). The interface is slick and I enjoy some of the features of Zune social, particularly the power listener badges. It's just...I want to carry around my collection with me in a lossless format.

Right now, Archos seems to be the company that's waving the flag of large-capacity media players. I'm not sure how the quality or usability is on those, but they're damn expensive. Apple seems more interested in producing iterative upgrades of their faux-trendy touchscreen products for people who want to feel cool by buying the same thing all the other hipsters have. Microsoft, with the pending launch of the Zune HD, seem to be chasing Apple with a touchscreen Zune. That doesn't leave me with a ton of options in terms of what I'm looking for out of a media player.

If anybody out there in the intarwebz land has experience with the Archos players, drop me a comment and let me know what you think.

Guitar Hero: Metallica Doesn't Suck

2009-03-31T14:58:00.002-04:00

In fact, it's actually pretty good. The setlist is absolutely killer. I'd actually forgotten about the presence of Judas Priest on the game, in the form of "Hell Bent For Leather"...which is a pretty kickass pick. Definitely not their most well-known song and a cool pick by the Met guys.

The presentation on the game is awesome...the opening video of Met walking to the stage when you start career mode gave me chills. After the video, you tear into "For Whom The Bell Tolls" and "Unforgiven." The game presents you with a loose plot of your being part of a band inspired by Metallica and opening for them on tour. Your band appears during the non-Metallica songs. The plotline is presented in a series of humorous vignettes similar to those found in Guitar Hero 3.

The career mode is kept simple and similar to the older Guitar Hero games. You're not forced to play setlists as you were in World Tour and new songs are unlocked by earning stars rather than completing an entire setlist. You can have all of the songs in the game unlocked quickly this way.

Unfortunately, I still don't really think Activision or Neversoft "get it." They included the god-awful music studio in this game, too. Only the Death Magnetic DLC can be used in the game...a decision I've mentioned before an I absolutely despise. I really believe this game turned out so well because of Metallica's branding and influence.

If you enjoy heavy music and like the GH/RB games, by all means, check this out. If you're one of those message board lurkers who inexplicably thinks that a game called "Guitar Hero" shouldn't have so much metal, you can go ahead and skip this game and go jump off the nearest tall building.

Guitar Hero: Metallica drops this weekend

2009-03-25T14:20:00.003-04:00

So Guitar Hero: Metallica is coming out this weekend. I was pretty disappointed in World Tour...I still haven't completely played through the career mode. It feels like a chore...whereas I still play Rock Band 2 very frequently. The tour process on there feels so much more fun and fresh and I look forward to all the gigs I play...all Neversoft did with their tour mode was take the old GH concept of setlists and have you play all the songs back-to-back rather than one at a time. There's not any real innovation there.

However, I'm still all over GH: Metallica. I'm a huge fan of the band...an utter fanboy, in fact....and I'll probably buy about any guitar game that has a cool setlist. I downloaded the demo last week. It definitely captures the Metallica vibe, visually, but I have some complaints. Firstly, Actvision has to cut this bullshit of releasing all these stand alone games. I have GH2, GH3, GH: A, GH:WT and soon GH:M for Xbox 360. None of the DLC is compatible, except for Metallica's Death Magnetic, which can be played in GH 3, GH:WT and GH: M. None of the tracks from any of the games can be exported into other games. Exactly why can I not play any DLC I've downloaded in Guitar Hero: Metallica? Why can't I export the tracks from GH:M into GH:WT? And, my god, why is Activision releasing a standalone "Greatest Hits" game that has tracks which can't be played in any other game? The Rock Band series allows completely compatibility, which almost all of the RB1 tracks playable in RB2...and ALL the DLC is compatible AND the AC/DC game servers as both a stand-alone game and a track pack that can be exported. I hope this trend continues with the upcoming Beatles game.

I'm pretty certain Activision could release a lot of these games as an expansion. While I enjoyed GH: A, after I finished I didn't feel it was worth the $60 that most new games go for. Why not reward the loyal fans of your series by knocking down the price of these entries in the series?

I'd like to see more innovation in the gameplay as well...and this applies to both Harmonix and Neversoft. Currently, the guitar/bass mechanism is the least realistic of any of the instruments (although the vocals should allow more improvization). Firsly, for a game like GH:M, players should have the option of playing with two guitar tracks or at least picking to play James' or Kirk's particular part rather than do a horrible job of creating a note chart that drifts between the two parts. An essential feature of Metallica's music is the interplay between guitars and that element will be sadly lost in the full game. Both the GH and RB series need to make this change. Also, the gameplay needs to be beyond the now tried-and-true "5 colored button" gameplay. The guitar controller should be modified to add multiple rows of buttons to more closely simulate holding chords or doing fast runs of notes across the fretboard. I haven't quite imagined yet how they'd present this on the screen but I think it'd be useful in preventing the gameplay from getting stale...eventually new songs won't be enough.

If I manage to avoid laziness and apathy enough, I'll write a short review of GH:M on Sunday sometime. I can't imagine I'll be horribly disappointed since the set list is simply phenomenal...but I don't imagine I'll be blown away, either. Here's to hoping I'm wrong, though!

Eh, you all fucking annoy me.

2009-03-08T08:50:00.003-04:00

As a Gen-Xer, I'm naturally cynical. I try to can it as much as possible and actually have well thought-out opinions on things, preferring to stay away from the Matt Stone/Trey Parker style of commentary where you just sort of point and laugh at everybody rather than doing some level of meaningful satire. However, the entire copyright/downloader debate is just so goddamn ridiculous and both sides are such absolute fucking morons that I can't particularly side with either one.

Firstly, you have the publishers/copyright owners. They obviously want to receive some level of compensation for the works that they've created owned. Seems fair. However, the idea that every track/game/movie downloaded equates into a sale is fucking ludicrous. Do you think tweens grabbing tracks off Limewire have enough access to cash to buy the hundreds or thousands of tracks they've grabbed online? I have over 1000 CDs and that is probably from a solid 15 years of buying music. So, please understand that not everybody will pay money for your stuff and will grab it for free if they can (more on this later).

As a content publisher/creator/owner, it's key to understand that people aren't going to buy your product unless you create a compelling product experience that has some level of value for the customer. $18 is too much for a standard CD release. Throwing in a bonus disc with some live tracks or DVD helps a lot. Maybe throw in a coupon for discounted tickets to the bands tour or a code to download the tracks into the music video game of preference. These things add VALUE to a purchase and exclusive, adding a compelling reason to go into a store and purchase them.

Content owners, don't fucking lock down our products in a way that limits how we can use them. You have a hard enough time creating a compelling product experience...now you'd like to detract from it by essentially treating me as a thief? Don't try to keep me from ripping my CD threw some jacked off copy prevention. I like owning the CD so I have a copy in case something happens to my digital music...but a CD I buy will leave its case once, to get ripped. Don't insist that I have a CD in the drive for a PC game. Don't check my system from disc image software. It's my goddamned computer, I can have installed what I want. Your shitty DRM methods simply manage to make your game unplayable on some computers...and they can ALL be cracked. See the paragraph above about creating a more compelling product experience if you want to turn some of those would-be pirates into paying customers.

...and let me make this clear before I rail on the downloaders...DOWNLOADING IS NOT STEALING...I'd be hard pressed to even call it a crime. The phrase "illegal downloads" makes me want to fucking vomit. If I walk into Best Buy and steal a CD, I've denied them revenue on that disc. Not only did I get it for free, but nobody else can purchase it. If I download that same disc from the Pirate Bay, I've not prevented anybody else from buying it...and, honestly, I was clearly not interested in buying the goddamn thing anyway....let's make that clear. Wondering aloud: How much money from the RIAA lawsuits do think ends up in the hands of artists?

Okay...the downloaders...

Seriously, who the fuck do you people think you are? Nobody is forcing you to spend money on movies, music or games. That is ABSOLUTELY your choice. However, if you choose not to part with your cash, then you don't get to ENJOY said media. Many people put a lot of time and effort into producing even just a single CD. While there's certainly a love of the art involved, ultimately this unwiedly beast we call capitalism allows people to spend their careers creating movies, music or games and getting them to you at a (sometimes) reasonable price. By not paying for it, you're reducing not just the motivation but the ability for these people to spend their time creating. Sure, plenty of people would make games or music even if they didn't get paid but you can also bet that the quality and availability might be much lower. If you like it, buy it. If people chose to just pirate software for your favorite console, it would cease to exist very quickly (see: Dreamcast).

I'm tired of hearing the argument that the music industry sucks (though it does) and that if they put out good music, people would start buying again. Firstly, since the birth of rock 'n' roll, there has always been good music available, whether in the mainstream or the underground. If you think there's no good music available, perhaps you should spend your time finding some...otherwise, stopping bitching. Furthermore...if the music is so awful, why are you spending your time acquiring and listening to it?

Finally, the quality of downloaded stuff is absolute crap. Why...THE FUCK...would anyone watch a cam version of a movie. Why download a 128kbps mp3 of an album? Why play a cracked game...it's a fucking modified EXE...sure, MAYBE they just stripped out the CD check or whatever...but how can you be sure? When you go through this methods to acquire media, you're not getting the full, BEST experience. I would rather drop $15 on a CD so I can get the high fidelity, lossless experience rather than download some shitty rip of the same CD (with the track names all wrong in the id3 tags).

By the way, this is a decent time for a side rant...back in college, one of my roommates (one of my best friends in the world to this day, fwiw) wanted to rip my entire CD collection. We're not talking about us SHARING music. He wanted to rip everything I own....yeah, I wasn't so about that.

I can't speak for the rest of the world...but in America, we have a gigantic sense of entitlement. As consumers, we want everything NOW, at the lowest price...which means we'll get it for free, if we can. Publishers/Copyright Owners, etc, think (Serioulsy) that they're entitled to customers and that they can force us to buy their products in the format and availability of their choosing...rather than figuring out what their potential customers want and providing that. You'd think these captains of industry would have a better understanding of market forces, but I guess not.

We have an interesting situation on our hands and the Pirate Bay trial will only make it more interesting. This is a situation I may have to revisit in the future, if you all keep acting like a bunch of fucking idiots.

1UP Sale Leads To Mass Firings (and mass whinings around the web)

2009-01-07T09:23:00.002-05:00

In case you haven't heard, 1up has been sold to UGO and EGM magazine has been shut down by Ziff-Davis. About 30 of the 1up employees were axed in the acquisition...which of course leads to mass whining about the web. I know in this day and age that we're all armchair experts at EVERYTHING but the armchair business management gets a little old after awhile. Even if UGO had the desire to keep all the 1up employees, jobs get lost in acquisitions mergers...if not, you have a lot of redundancies and hazily defined responsibilities. So, sorry your favorite writer(s) got axed, but that's just how the world works. Stop bitching about it.

Of course, the SPECIFIC article I linked to at Kotaku is written by a whiny, hyper-critical bitch who's postings make me want to grab an extension cord and go all Chris Benoit.

More CoH

2008-12-10T11:19:00.002-05:00

So I've been chugging along with City of Heroes over the last few days and since Saturday I've managed to get a new character up to level 14, which is mildly impressive as the highest level I've ever gotten a character to is 15...I'd always get frustrated and give up because I'd reach the point that I was dying constantly and would be so weighed down with XP debt that the game stopped being fun...but I'm having a much easier (and ENJOYABLE) time and I'm progressing through the game pretty rapidly.

The only times I've died in the game is when I accidentally clicked on the self-destruct power that I got for purchasing the Cyborg booster pack and then when I went along on one of the missions to stop a bank robbery...but I was with a pretty disorganized team...in fact, I ended up dying twice on that mission.

I think part of the problem in the past was that I'd try to solo a character that wasn't meant for soloing or I'd end up on bad teams. This is the first time I've had any real dedication in playing a scrapper (a martial arts/shield defense build)...I usually play tanks which can be pretty boring for solo play.

I'm not sure if the game has been made easier through years of patches, if I just have a good character build or if I've got better at this sort of game in the intervening years.

Anybody who's an expert on the game, I'd like hear some responses...but unfortunately the only people that come to this blog are to read my NCAA recruiting guide.

City of Heroes...dragging me in again...

2008-12-08T10:08:00.002-05:00

So the fine folks over at NCSoft, the owners of City of Heroes, launched their newest patch (Issue 13!) and had a free play weekend...which drug me back in again. This is probably the 5-6th time over the last several years that I got convinced to jump back in the game. As a rabid comic book fan and a lover of RPGs, I've always been pretty obsessed with this game and usually come away pretty disappointed.

I'm pretty old school as games go...I started gaming on a 2600 and I lived out in the middle of nowhere, so I typically didn't have peers to game with on a day-to-day basis so the whole lovefest with multi-player gaming is pretty lost on me. I do have a Gold subscription to XBox Live but I have to admit that I rarely use it. I don't particularly care to hear prepubescent children singing along with GH/RB songs over their headset or get threatening voice messages from some douche in North Carolina just because I bailed from a match because my controller died.

The point I'm getting at here is that the social aspects of a game like CoH don't appeal to me in the least...at least in that I don't want to meet up and play the game with strangers...my preference is to try and get friends involved in the game so we can go through it together a couple times and just generally have some fun with it.

Never quite worked out that way. If I could convince somebody to play, they'd get so obsessed with the game that they'd play for hours every night...which I didn't have the time or the desire to do. I wanted somebody to go through the game with me TOGETHER...keeping at the same level, going through the same stuff, creating a super group together all that. I thought it'd be simple to set a rule that we'd only play our characters 2-3 nights a week for a couple hours. Never quite worked out that way...

Well, in the newest issue, they introduced the concept of a levelling pact...an agreement between you and a friend to split all XP so you always stay at the same level, even if one person is offline. That combined with a free weekend was enough to get me back into the game. While I've been waiting for my good bud Wester to get his copy set up (merry xmas, ya bastard!) and getting mrs. thez0rk acclimated to the game, I've been playing through with my own character that I plan on using for solo play. I purchased the new Cyborg costume pack and made a character inspired by a certain Sentinal of Libery

Country Band

2008-12-05T08:33:00.002-05:00

So in a couple of weeks, a batch of country songs are going to be released for the almighty Rock Band. Rock Band has been very impressive with the breadth and depth of music included in the game. We have a variety of bands from venerable acts such as the Rolling Stones to modern pop acts like Fallout Boy. We have the extremity of Scandinavian metal bands (At The Gates, woo!) and the plain alternative weirdness of The Pixies. We have complete albums from Megadeth, The Who (well, sort of), Foo Fighters, etc. If you are passionate about music, odds are you'll find something to like in the game...and odds are you'll come out of the game with some new favorite songs.

I guess it shouldn't be shocking, then, that MTV and Harmonix are branching outside of the wide umbrella that is the rock genre to bring in some country music. It makes sense, really...announce it three weeks before Christmas...put the thought in holiday shoppers' heads as they're out to pick up a Wii or Xbox 360 for the family (or, god forbid, a PS3). They're potentially tapping into a pretty big market there...so from a pure money standpoint, I can't really blame them.

However, the songs just don't fit. Even as broad as the spectrum of artists is currently, branching out into this new territory doesn't fit. Everything about Rock Band (to me, at least) drips the fun, the excitement and the rebellious pageantry of Rock 'n' Roll. Country music really has none of those features and it really seems to be a poor fit in the game. Mind you, none of us have to buy the tracks...they're DLC so we'll never have to play them...

...but I think those of use who play the game are pretty passionate about it, the same way as music junkies we're passionate about a band....and when you're at the mall one day and you see some trendy hipster douchebag wearing a TShirt of your favorite band...there's a certain amount of pride that they've gone mainstream but a certain amount of anger...I mean, where does THAT fucktard get off walking around showing the colors of YOUR band? He never drove 200 miles on a Wednesday night to see them in a shitty club and hung around until 2 in the morning to get an autograph, now did he? He never posted on the message boards, spread the word through friends and blogs...

Yeah, you get the picture. Also, I'm a prick. I don't want MTV/Harmonix pandering to the country music crowd, no matter how much money they can bring to the table. I want Harminox's energies spent on digging deep into the vaults of Rock and Metal to bring me more kickass shred-fests...not a goddamn Dixie Chicks songs.

...and as a postscript, I've seen people on the web mention that if they're going to include country songs, they should at least give us some Johnny Cash. Let me point out two things...I would guess the master tracks for those songs aren't available, so that's likely out of the question...and bluntly, Johnny Cash isn't country. It's fucking Rock n Roll. He helped invent the genre.

Guitar Hero IV: Underwhelming

2008-10-26T19:50:00.003-04:00

Picked up GH:WT this afternoon and have been playing it on-and-off throughout the day. The gameplay is certainly tighter than GH3 (which we saw in GH:A) and the note charts seem better on the songs I have played so far. We'll see how it plays on faster/more difficult songs...GH3 really failed on stuff like Raining Blood, One and TtFatF. GH:WT gives you a wider window to hit notes than Rock Band does...not necessarily sure it's a good thing but it makes soloing and such easier.

The custom character creater is pretty nice, much more flexible and in-depth than what's in the RB games...you can really sculpt the characterss face plus there seems to be some interesting outfits...like being able to make a full-on black metal character. I enjoy the guitar editor as well...a particularly nice feature in the absence of a manufacturer license (shame on you Gibson!)

The setlist is particularly odd. There's definitely some cool songs...but there's some very odd picks that must've come from Activision corporate (Band on the Run, Beat It, La Bamba)? Seems a little bit against the spirit of the rock games...I'm not saying they're bad tunes, but do they FIT?

The career modes don't seem to be particularly special from what I've seen so far...they're still lagging far behind Rock Band in this regard. It's slightly more spiced up than the simple linear progression of old games but some more thought needs to go into it.

The song creation tools are absolutely horrendous. They're bad enough that I actually find it OFFENSIVE. I attempted to put one of the simpler songs I've written into the game and after about an hour of messing around I realized it would never come out right. The guitar sounds the game produces are horrible...you have a wide variety of tones to play but none of them sound good. Your rhythm guitar track is locked into playing basically power chords in the lowest octave on your guitar. That's right. You have one E, for example, and that's it. In the step-editor, you can seemingly only play single notes with the lead guitar track, although spread over two octaves. The tutorial seemed to indicate that you could play powerchords with the lead guitar track (perhaps I misunderstood something) but this didn't seem possible in the step-editor. If you're playing single notes, you're kind of fucked when attempting to use a diatonic scale...you get six tones, one assigned to each button and then the root being played with an "open" strum (which is a nice feature). If you want to throw in the 7th from whatever scale you're playing, you'll need to take the time to edit the scale for that particular note...you don't run into this problem for chords since you have more than enough button combinations to cover all the tones in a scale. The rhythm guitar has an odd feature known as "clean chords"...I'm not sure what these are supposed to be...they're played with 3 buttons so I supposed they're suppose to be a full on major/minor chord but the game doesn't really expand on them. The song editor also doesn't allow any sort of time/tempo changes.

With the way it's set up, you'd be unable to do any sort of sophisticated song writing...no interesting guitar parts like you'd get in Iron Maiden, Metallica, Priest, etc...It's just a very poorly thought and implemented feature. Approaching this tool with any sort of musical knowledge will be a detriment to using the tool. It seems the way to use this is in the live recording mode which will produce "music" by thrashing away on the buttons. I actually fear this game is going to dumb down a generation of potential musicians. I also don't look forward to some egotistical fuck that think's he's a composer now because he has the highest rated song on GHTunes.

Seriously, Neversoft, you guys need to focus. You're so far behind Harmonix right now and adding over-ambitious and half-implemented features isn't going to help you any. If you're going to put a fucking song editor in the game, at least give some truly advanced options so people who actually record music in real life can make some use of it. Also, don't base everything around the goddamn controller. Give me guitar tab, musical notation, SOMETHING....then automatically build a note chart off of that. Don't have me construct a song around a note chart. That's just ass backwards.

At this point, I really wish I hadn't dropped $100 on the game/guitar. It was certainly cool to see Ozzy and Zakk out on the stage when I played Mr. Crowley the first time, but man, those guys and Nuge, Jimi, Corgan and Sting don't make the game worth the price of admission.
(and, seriously, you've already had Tom Morello, Slash, Bret Mchales and all the A*smith guys in the game..you couldn't have included them in this one?)

Late Nate Rhythm Game Thoughts

2008-10-25T23:05:00.004-04:00

Okay, so I've spent the last couple hours playing Rock Revolution. I rented it on a lark..at this point, I'm so in love with the rock rhythm games that I'd play about anything that game down the pike. Now, the reviews for Rock Revolution have been horrendous (37 aggregate score on Metacritic!)...I was expecting something roughly as bad as Back to the Future on the NES.

I gotta tell ya...this isn't a bad game. Now, I've only played it for a couple hours, I haven't tried the drums yet and I wouldn't buy it (just rent it)...however, the gameplay is tight (much tighter than GH3, which is a sloppy and pathetic mess) and the covers are nowhere near as bad as I'd been told (the stuff I've heard so far is better or as good as the covers on the early GH games). The drum peripheral that's out later this fall DOES look awful and maybe the drum mode and the studio absolutely suck...but this is a solid game that is deserving of a rental...and not deserving of a the awful review that sites like IGN gave it.

GHWT is out tomorrow. It's a bit odd that I've seen NO reviews for the game so far. I played it at Best Buy yesterday and it seemed solid but the lack of reviews really means it could absolutely suck (which means IGN/Gamespot will give it a 8/10).

Let's clear something up real quick, though, just because I've seen some ignorant shit on the internet. Konami is the innovator of rhythm games like this (DrumMania/GuitarFreaks) which never really had a presence in the US. Harmonix, with some prodding by RedOctane, really invented the MUSIC genre of games in the US, with Frequency and Amplitude, Karaoke Revolution and ultimately the Guitar Hero games. These music games are now the top sellers in the US, surpassing mighty sports games like Madden. It's all due to Harmonix. So...please understand that Rock Band is not a ripoff of Guitar Hero...it's the natural evolution of the GH series...and GHWT is quite frankly copying Rock Band. If you prefer GH, that's cool, but GH3 was a sloppy piece of shit...GH:A was cool but overpriced and only worth a rental...and the DLC for the Guitar Hero series sucks. Consider the facts before treating the current incarnation of the GH series as the innovator of this genre. Neversoft are not even remotely in Harmonix's league.

kthx!

A Serious Request to the Denizens of the Internet

2008-08-04T09:10:00.004-04:00

Seriously....

if you've never developed a piece of software before, been involved significantly in any type of tech project, please stop telling game developers how to do their job. Software development is an a difficult task, particularly on the scale that's involved for a major video game title. Just because you've figured out the basics of a web browser or figuring out how to configure your wireless router doesn't mean you're a software engineer.

When you spot a bug in a game or a piece of software, don't try to come up with an explanation for it. You don't know. You. Don't. Know. Explain what was happening when the bug occurred and leave it at that. Also, something happening once or twice does not constitute a trend.

Also realize that any software development process is limited by time, money and human resources. Many high profile video games are developed on an incredibly tight time schedule. Bugs, unfortunately, will come through. No amount of testing will find them all. While there are incompetent developers out there, if your most desired feature doesn't show up in a game, it's most likely not because the devs are incompetent, wanting to steal your money or even hurt your feelings. They simply ran out of time, people or money. Tough decisions have to be made during this process...which may be hard to understand for somebody who's biggest decision is whether to masturbate before or after dinner (or both.)

So, certainly, feel free to offer up valid complaints about video games you purchase. You paid your money, feel free. Give your suggestions about what's broken or missing from a game. However, don't give us your clearly expert opinion on what's wrong with the "code" or conspiracy theories on the nefarious things developers did to break the game on purpose just for you. Please, I'm begging you, SHUT THE HELL UP!

Cluster-fucking Spider-Man

2008-07-31T09:35:00.002-04:00

I read comic books...or at least I try to. I'm a busy guy. I have a full-time job, working on a Master's degree, just started a side businesses, I'm married and have a nearly infinite number of hobbies that I try to maintain...but I really dig comics. Now, I've always been a bit of a Hulk guy, and dig the dark crime aspects of stuff like Punisher and Daredevil. Make no mistake, though, I dig Spider-Man

Or at least I used to.

Marvel, in an attempt to make the character more accessible to non-adults, they've managed to totally buttfuck continuity and make Peter Parker/Spider-Man appear to be a completely incompetent buffoon.

First, some background. In the recent Marvel Civil War epic, Spider-Man initially joined up with the Iron Man/Pro-Government side of the battle, revealing his identity to the general public during a televised press conference. Of course, the reason Spider-Man (and most heroes) keep their identities secret is because they fear for the safety of their friends and family...and they have spandex and primary color fetishes.

Spidey's fear turned out to be correct...after he bailed to the Captain America/Pro-Freedom side of the battle, he went into hiding with his wife, Mary Jane, and the decrepit Aunt May. While in hiding, the Kingpin put out a hit on Spider-Man. The sniper, who posted himself outside of the seedy motel where the Parkers were staying, managed to miss Spidey and MJ both and hit Aunt May. Peter and MJ checked May into the hospital under an assumed name where she lay comatose and close to death.

Peter's anguish attracted the Marvel Universe version of the devil, Mephisto. Mephisto offered to save May's life in exchange for essentially rewriting history...Peter & MJ would have never been married, nobody would remember Peter's secret identity, May would be alive. Mephisto's reward for this? Enjoying the torment of Peter and MJ's souls, which would remember their lost love. Peter and MJ, of course, agree.

Now, honestly, this is just a crap ass plot. Amazingly enough, JMS managed to pull a damn good story out of this steaming pile of literary shit....but the logic is just baffling...The Parkers agree to give up the rest of their lives together for an ANCIENT woman that may make it another week before a fucking stroke strikes her down? Really? Yo, I dig that Spidey is an altruistic mother fucker...but this is just beyond reason.

Joe Quesada, who is the Editor-in-Chief of Marvel comics frequently cited wanting to put certain "genies back in the bottle" during his Friday interviews over at Newsarama. One of the genies was the whole mutant problem...i.e. there's too many fucking mutants and writers use mutants as an excuse to not construct intriguing back-stories. They fixed that with the House of M brouhaha. Another genie he wanted to put back in the bottle was the whole "Spider-Man got married" thing. Joe's feelings (and apparently the feelings of many prominent comic book creators) was that the marriage ruined the character. Kids could no longer relate to Spidey, as he's a grown man with a hot-ass model wife. They couldn't DIVORCE him, because that would make the character even MORE alien. So, the obvious option is to have the comic book DEVIL rewrite history.

So here's the thing with me...First of all, Spider-Man is pretty universally appealing. I'm not sure the marriage thing made that much of a difference. Also, I realize that Marvel needs to seed future customers...but I suspect with the cost of comics, many readers are closer to my age than to, say, the ages of my nieces. The mainstream Marvel comics are certainly not directed at a MATURE audience, but they definitely don't feel directed towards kids. Overall, the tone of the comics are much more grown-up than 20 years ago. Finally, Marvel has MULTIPLE Spider-Man publications that are more targeted for a younger audience, like Ultimate Spider-Man and the Marvel Age line. I just don't buy the argument at all and don't appreciate the wrecking of decades of continuity with a weak, deus ex machina plot device.

Finally...I'm a few weeks behind on my reading (which gets you behind on Spidey pretty fast, since Amazing comes out 3 times per month)...but I feel like they've turned the character into a complete buffoon. Peter Parker has always been a bit of a fuck-up...just himself, he's never lived up to his potential, but Spidey is an ass-kicker. I really feel the character is diminished when he doesn't have money to mix up a batch of web-fluid or actually loses one of his web-shooters to a criminal he's trying to abduct....and Peter was fucking living with his Aunt...where the hell does all his goddamned money go? Peter Parker may be a loser, but Spider-Man certainly isn't. I don't like seeing him painted that way.

P.S. To get the full background on these Spider-Man plotlines, check out these articles over at Wikipedia.

Dragonball DVDs

2008-07-29T12:24:00.002-04:00

So I'm a bit of a fan of the original Dragonball series. I've never quite got into anime the same way some of my friends/peers did, but I always enjoyed the charming nature of the lil kid version of Goku and the broad, epic, and serialized storytelling. In this regard, the Japanese cartoons have always been light years ahead of their Western counterparts.

A few years ago I starting buying the Dragonball DVDs. Funimation released them in 2 disc sets, with each set covering one saga (or half a saga in the case of the Piccolo storylines). I only ever got the first two sets, as they were hella-expensive, and I even had to import the Goku Saga from Australia as some licensing rights prevent it from being released in the US by Funimation. I was having plenty of money issues at the time, so I didn't get anymore.

Recently I decided that I wanted to get the rest of these sets...and discovered that they're out of print. One two disc set will fetch as much as $200 on eBay, Amazon, etc. I managed to acquire the 3rd saga for a decent price (another Australian import) and found a DVD seller on eBay selling the 4th, 5th, 6th and 7th sagas at a ridiculously good price.

I'm stilling missing the King Piccolo and Piccolo, Jr. sagas. I can get King Piccolo on netflix...and the first half of Piccolo, Jr...but the second half is not to be found...and, as previously mentioned, these discs are fetching $200 per set. I "know a guy" who can get me an "unofficial" copy of the two sagas for $100 but I'd rather have something legit.

So does anyone out there know if Funimation is planning on re-releasing these soon? They're doing the deluxe un-cut Dragonball Z sets right now...but I'd really like to get my hands on the original series.

Some thoughts on Monday Night Raw

2008-07-29T08:24:00.002-04:00

I watch a lot of wrestling. I have a shocking amount of free time for a guy who has a full time job, goes to grad school and is married. Here's my thoughts from RAW last night

During the opening segment, I was REALLY worried that they'd blow their load on Cena vs. Batista too soon. Cena's right, that's a Wrestlemania main event...at least on star power. They'd work hard, no doubt, but they're both a couple of clumsy muscleheads.
Nice seeing Shane on TV again. I thought for a bit he was going to end up being the new GM. I love when he announced the tag match for Cena...Cena get's the best "oh fuck" looks on his face. Classic move with pairing Dave and Cena...the feuding babyfaces co-existing for one night, etc.
Kelly Kelly, seriously, damn cute. She puts out a nice effort, too. The Diva division is impressive that way...you have a lot of women who aren't necessarily wrestlers but are working hard to become so...and it's resulted in a damn good women's division.
D-Lo didn't get much of a pop this week. And, seriously, who cares.
Santino, as you know, is fucking hilarious. My wife felt the urge to comment that Beth has rather wide hips. All the better for birthin' kids, says my german-immigrant farmer side! I'm loving this bit with Beth Phoenix, especially the rough, aggressive kiss at the end. My kinda woman ;)
The old school in me popped when I saw them tagging up King and Hacksaw...and cried when they put Michael Cole in the ring. As we'll see later, they obviously went somewhere with it. Cole did NOT sell that clothesline well at all which resulted in Cody pretty much planting him into the canvas.
If Kofi Kingston smuggling a sausage into DC? What the fuck man, wear a goddamn jock/cup. That's as bad as Mr. Perfect, when he'd bridge back for the Perfect Plex. Seriously, I'm sure you're proud, but we only want to see Kofi...and not his Kingston.
I was pretty pumped to see Regal come back...he's been one of my favorites for a very long time. The match with Punk was pretty stiff, as you'd expect...but too stiff...with Punk getting a bloody nose (and possibly broken?) Something seemed off about the match...well, other than JBL's shit commentary (seriously, John, SHUT THE FUCK UP!) Regal may have just been rusty...or maybe he was trying to rough up Punk. He's been known to get a little rough on younger guys at times (just ask Goldberg.)
My wife let me know that CM Punk is a cute guy and that she likes Regal's new outfit. She's also expressed interest in being the wardrobe designer for WWE.
Mrs. thez0rk managed to make it through a Mickie James matches without commenting on her tacky outfit. Glad I broke her of that habit.
Adamle confused Jillian and Lillian...he's not that dumb, right? I'm pretty certain this guy is playing the character of a dimwitted, awful commentator. Seriously.
So the big reveal for the GM...I obviously knew it wasn't going to be a woman...they went out of their way to keep saying "he...or SHE." The big reveal REALLY let some air out of the room. Adamle? Really? You couldn't get someone more interesting, say....Ted DiBiase out there? I'm guessing they'll go with the angry, scorned guy angle, lashing at out wrestlers and fans for his lack of acceptance on ECW.
I wonder if JR is going to start working two shows now? Adamle obviously set up Cole to get punked out, so there's something up there. The angle COULD be interesting....COULD
aaaand they blow their load for Batista vs. Cena. Really, guys, you gotta save this one.

NCAA Football 2009 recruiting guide

2008-07-25T11:33:00.002-04:00

This is a post I made over at OperationSports.com about my experiences with recruiting in NCAA Football 2009 on the 360 (should be valid for the PS3, too). I've been playing a sim dynasty with the Idaho Vandals and have had shocking success...including two undefeated regular seasons, a national championship, invite to the Pac-10 (replacing Washington State) and a coach of the year award....I figure I must be doing SOMETHING right.

Here's what I've generally done to have some success in recruiting (and have landed a few top 50 classes with Idaho)

I generally look at the "need" positions first. These are obviously the guys I'm going to get no matter WHAT, so don't reach too far...however, if you're graduating your starting, all-american halfback, you're likely to gain interest from better prospects.

Next I look at how many juniors I have. If, for example, I have 3 corners that are juniors, I'm going to recruit at least one. How good my underclassmen are depends on whether I'll go for a 3-4 star vs. a 2 star recruit.

Finally, I look at any positions that have a weak rating, I'll add those to the list, too.

From the three criteria above, I try to get 10-15 guys on my board. I offer them all scholarships on the first week, calling them each 40-60 minutes, depending on the number of recruits. As soon as they're ready to visit, I schedule a visit for mid-season, around week 8 or so, so I have time to unlock all their likes/dislikes. When I call a recruit to schedule a, I ONLY schedule the visit, which takes about 5 minutes. I use the minutes that I would've normally spent talking to them adding a new recruit. I'll often find a decent recruit who has me as their top choice and I'll offer them a scholarship right away. I follow this pattern throughout the season. Any "Extra" minutes I have get used to add new recruits to my board.

Around mid-season, if a recruit is down to their top 3 and doesn't have me in their top-5, I'll pull them from the list. Around this time, I'll also start looking for 3-4 * recruits that don't have any offers and add them to my list. I've got some big steals this way, including a 5* WR that was a part of my national championship.

I typically don't get many recruits during the season, however, I'll usually have them pretty locked up and will have a huge number of them wanting immediate home visits once the off-season recruiting begins. I'll schedule visits right away and make promises of no redshirt/decent playing time if I have competition for the pick. I've managed to snag away a recruit that had made a soft commit to another school doing this.

You can also find a lot of high quality recruits who are still in the top 8-10 phase of recruiting. If things have gone well, you'll wrap up several of your targets in the first week and tons of free time to add more high quality guys...some of whom you can snag without even a visit!

This process has worked pretty well for me with a total bottom-feeder like Idaho. I haven't tried it with any other teams/situations yet. Any comments/feedback are appreciated!

Why I hate message boards

2008-07-18T10:49:00.002-04:00

So I've been spending some time on a prominent sports game message board...NCAA Football 2009 just came out so I like to jump on the boards when a new release I'm excited about hits...but I usually don't hang around too long. I find forums to be an absolute pox on the internet and I avoid them for many, many reasons...

Well, anywho, NCAA is a fun game but far from perfect....so there's a lot of bitching. Here's a list of my 3 biggest pet peeves that I've been seeing this week.

1. Bitching about a product being overpriced: If it costs too much, don't buy it. Publisher won't adjust the cost if you still buy it. It's worth what you're willing to pay for it.

2. Complaining about the yearly release cycles: Publisher releases the game yearly because YOU expect a new game, with new features and new rosters. They don't have time to fully test/debug the game of the demands of the marketplace. Furthermore, would you rather have yearly, incremental upgrades or get a game that took 3 years to develop and sucks because the dev isn't getting yearly feedback from you?

3. Trying to diagnose what's happening in the game with ass-backwards tech explanation. Somebody claiming the "physics engine" is shut off in a football game before the play starts....huh, just like a switch, just turn it on and off? Gee, wouldn't it make more sense that the physics engine is absolutely tied to any and all movement in the game AT ALL TIMES....or there's also somebody claiming that a PS2 game was intentionally broken as to not run properly on the PS3....through the magic of "back-coding"...whatever the fuck THAT means. a PS2 game doesn't "know" it's running on a PS3....and the work the developer would have to do to purposely break the game in that exact scenario would be extreme...perhaps sony should be blamed for the poor emulation?

Yeah, so usually after about a week of this shit, I disappear from the board until next year's release comes out and the cycle begins anew...

Comics Book Stats

2008-06-17T09:00:00.002-04:00

I've been a comic book collector on and off through most of my life. My first addiction started when I was in junior high...of course, I only collected 2-3 titles (Hulk, Marvel Comics Presents, What If?) and never had access to a good comic book store...depending on gas station comic racks far too often.

In my first trip through college, I worked at an online comic book store (that was doomed for failure) and I amassed quite a collection then (much of which I sold off later) and I stopped collecting once I dropped out of college.

After I returned to college a couple years later and got my own place I started collecting again in earnest and kept that up for about 6 years or so until last fall when I stopped collecting for various reasons. I was only able to quit so long. Seeing adds for comic book movies, my brother talking to me about some back issues he'd snagged from a torrent site and next thing I knew I was at newsarama checking out the latest news and going to mailordercomics.com to place my latest monthly order.

Unfortunately before I quit buying last year I'd let my collection get into quite a state of disarray. I wasn't sorting anything, I wasn't bagging/boarding anything, I wasn't entering it into my database...and I sure as hell wasn't getting any of it read.

I'm working on being a little more disciplined this time. I'm only buying comics from Marvel (I've never been that into the DC characters anyway) except for Conan. I've sorted/organized all my purchases from over the last year and have them entered into my database software...and I thought I'd share some pointless statistics. Mind you, these aren't totally accurate as I don't have full information for EVERY single issue I own..but it's good enough...

Data pulled from the 4809 comics in my collection:
Top Series (# of Issues)

Incredible Hulk, Vol. 1 - 315
Uncanny X-men - 145
Marvel Comics Presents, Vol.1 - 131
Avengers, Vol. 1 - 122
Incredible Hulk, Vol. 2 - 111
X-Men Classic - 110
Fantastic Four, Vol. 3 - 99
X-Men - 98
Exiles - 75
Amazing Spider-Man Vol. 2 - 68

Very clear trend here...I like me some Hulk and some Mutants. FWIW, I have every issue of Hulk dating back to #196...which was published sometime in 1976 (before I was born).

Top Writers (Number of Credits)

Peter David - 314
Chris Claremont - 239
Geoff Johns - 150
Brian Michael Bendis - 141
Ed Brubaker - 133
Garth Ennis/J. Michael Straczynski (tie) - 130
Mark Waid - 129
Grant Morrison - 116
Paul Jenkins - 102
Greg Rucka - 83

Peter David is a pretty obvious choice, since I have the entirety of his 12 year Hulk run...plus a bunch of his Captain Marvel work along with his current X-Factor, She-Hulk and the recently finished Friend Neighborhood Spider-Man. I have most of Claremont's orginal X-Men run in reprints along with most of his Fantastic Four run. Brubaker is a bit of a shocker since I haven't been reading his stuff that long...but he's probably my favorite current writer so I buy a ton of his stuff (Cap, Uncanny, Daredevil). Ennis is a bit of a shocker...I have the entire Preacher series, but it's all in trades, which I haven't entered here. I guess I DO have about 7 years worth of his Punisher comics.

Various Artists Stats
Pencillers

Salvador Larroca - 70
John Byrne - 56
John Buscema - 56
John Romita, Jr. - 48
Chris Bachalo - 43

Inkers

Danny Miki - 112
Tom Palmer - 112
Scott Hanna - 92
Dan Green - 84
Mark Morales - 79

Artists

Scott Kollins - 41
Sal Buscema - 39
Salvador Larroca - 39
Jae Lee - 32
Steve Dillon - 30

Cover Artists

Tim Bradstreet - 68
Marko Djurdjevic - 47
John Cassaday - 41
Adi Granov - 35
John Watson - 33

Unfortunately the credits for artists tend to be really inconsistent...because there's no standard way of referring to who drew a comic. Sometimes if a book is drawn by one person, it'll be credited as artist whereas sometimes an inker/penciller team will be credited seperately...or they'll both get credited as Artists...

Editor

Tom Brevoort - 592
Axel Alonso - 412
Michael Marts - 248
Ralph Macchio - 144
Andy Schmidt - 143
Bobbie Chase - 136
Mark Paniccia - 132
Warren Simons - 121
Mark Gruenwald - 107
Stephen Wacker - 94

While there are a few classic names on here, you can tell by Brevoort and Alonso topping the list, I've bought a LOT of new comics over the last few years.

Top Character Appearances

Hulk/Bruce Banner - 554
Wolverine - 518
Captain American (Steve Rogers) - 432
Iron Man (Tony Stark) - 408
Spider-Man - 373
Thing - 365
Mr. Fantastic - 362
Human Torch (Johnny Storm) -312
Invisible Woman - 270
Cyclops - 239
Beast - 174
Wasp - 170
Storm - 162
She-Hulk/Jennifer Walters - 161
Charles Xavier - 160
Dr. Strange - 155
Rick Jones - 153
Emma Frost - 147
Nightcrawler -142
Iceman - 137
Batman - 132
Vision - 127
Scarlet Witch - 118
Sub-Mariner - 114
Silver Surfer - 108
Edwin Jarvis - 107
Nick Fury - 106
Luke Cage - 106
Thor - 104
Daredevil - 101
Punisher - 101
Wonder Man - 100

I went a little extended with this list to just get everybody with over at least 100 appearances. I'm sure this isn't quite complete but it gives a good idea of how often certain characters are popping up relative to others. As the crew at Collectorz.com continues to update their auto-fill data for Comic Collector Pro, these stats will get more complete. Hope you enjoyed!

HULK SMASH!! spoilers ahead

2008-06-16T09:00:00.002-04:00

So, yeah, I'm a pretty big Incredible Hulk fan. Not really sure WHY...I just always have been ever since I was a little kid. It very well could have been the TV show or the cartoon that were on when I was a kid...or the Peter David penned comics from my teenage years. I remember at one point, after we were adults, my bro asking me why the Hulk was my favorite character, he was kinda baffled by it. I had to admit that the REAL reason was Peter David's 12 years writing the character...because trust me, I have about 32 years worth of Hulk comics and some of the old stuff is freakin' lame.

I'm in an extreme minority...I enjoyed the Ang Lee Hulk movie. They totally clusterfucked the origin and having Banner's dad as a shitty Absorbing Man knock-off villain was disappointing but they delved into some of the psychological aspects of the character. However, I was excited to find out the movie was going in a different direction and that Edward Norton was stepping into the starring role.

In summary, the movie is fucking awesome. While this movie doesn't fully re-tell the origin of the Hulk, you get a nice summary of what happened during the opening credits sequence. This time around, the origin seems to be tying in with the TV show and pretty heavily with the Ultimate version of the Hulk...i.e. the Super Solider program. If you're a marvelite, little references like that throughout the film are going to get you pretty pumped. You'll be seeing the birth of the Hulk's greatest villain, an appearance by Jim Wilson, multiple references to Captain America and an appearance by Tony Stark which perfectly sets up the next round of Marvel films.

I'm sure the CG will be widely panned again...not because it isn't good but because people have bizarre expectations on what the Hulk should look like. I found the animated goliath to be quite impressive (although somewhat video gamey). His physique seemed to throw back to the Dale Keown version of the character with the long arms and gigantic hands/feet and head that seems just SLIGHTLY too small for the body. Of course, that's what people miss out on is that while the Hulk is humanoid in shape, he shouldn't look like just like a really big green dude (like Lou Ferrigno was in the TV series)...he's a behemoth of a monster. He's not SUPPOSED to look real.

The Abomination, once fully transformed, lives up to his name. He truly looks like a creature of nightmares, almost something that Giger would come up with. He, however, doesn't particularly look like the classic version of the character, which I'm willing to let slide.

William Hurt is an excellent uber-bastard as Gen. Ross. Liv Tyler gets the job done as Betty...but she has always looked to me like she's about to start crying...so I'm not for sure if she intended to play the character that way. Tim Roth is okay...he got himself into damn good shape for the role...I guess I would've preferred a more Russian character as Emil Blonsky...even though that's hard to pull off in a modern setting (what with their being no cold war and all).

This flick is definitely worth a trip to the theater...or at the absolute least, a rental when it hits Netflix.

On a side note, since I started collecting comics again recently I've been scrambling about trying to track down the last 6 months of new comics, which hasn't always been easy. The Hulk comics was relaunched recently to coincide with the end of World War Hulk. The series is being written by a pretty big name writer (Jeph Loeb) so the first 3 issues were pretty hard to track down...they ended up costing me $30 on ebay.

I'm going to keep on reading, because it's Hulk and I'm curious as to what the fuck is going on...but I gotta tell ya, this whole "Red Hulk" thing isn't doing it for me....and I'm not for sure Rick as the new Abomination works, either. I'm willing to be wowed, though.

Shattering the myth of Guns 'n' Roses

2008-06-14T23:58:00.003-04:00

I was lounging comfortably on the couch today, getting caught up on my comic book reading (Daredevil...Ed Brubaker fucking rules...but that's another post for another day)...and half-assed watching some metal-related programming on VH1 Classic. After the highly depressing Pantera Behind The Music episode, the multi-part Heavy: The Story of Metal came on. One of the latest parts of the series starts delving into Metallica which oddly enough then transitions into GnR.

I'm not sure what particularly set me off today...perhaps it was Axl dismissing Iron Maiden (in an old clip he was asked "What do you have in common with Iron Maiden", "Nothing, I hope.") or just my long time disinterest of anything after their debut...but I snapped. I stopped my wife as she was walking through the living room and shouted "ALRIGHT! That's it! Their debut album came out 21 years ago and what the fuck have they done since? We're still sucking their dicks...all they did was release several more shitty, overrated albums...and they were a joke of a live band because of all the shit Axl pulled...why are we still so nuts about this band?"

(Side note: How hilarious is it that Iron Maiden is kicking ass around the globe...and still release amazing material...Hey, Axl, how's Chinese Democracy coming along?)

Let's look at this objectively, as much as we can. Appetite for Destruction is easily one of the greatest albums ever. The songs on the album are raw, urgent, immediate, timeless, dangerous. For the first 5 songs on the album you don't get even a second to catch a breath. Things start to peter out a bit with the second half of the album...Paradise City, as popular as it is, is a crap-ass anthem and Sweet Child O' Mine...*shudder*...but this is as close as you can get to a perfect album.

I remember the stir these guys caused when it was released...growing up in rural Indiana, this sort of stuff didn't go over well...yet at the same time it did. Axl and Izzy, both native hoosiers, definitely had some anxiety to express that your typical midwest white boy could relate to. Shit, even my dad borrowed my copy of Appetite and his bar band briefly covered Sweet Child.

However songs like It's So Easy were never going to go over well with the establishment...so with the controversy we had ourselves a genuine social phenomenon that had some very amazing, very legitimate music backing it up.

The nightrain went off the rails pretty fast. All the guys in the band had serious substance abuse problems...Steve Adler was the true degenerate of the group, actually getting kicked out for going too far. Axl was the diva rockstar in every way...diving into the crowd to attack fans, storming off the stage (most famously doing so on the night that James Hetfield was nearly burnt to death in a stage accident in Montreal) or refusing to come out at all.

GnR also were never even remotely able to follow up their first album. Lies was was throw-away release and the Use Your Illusion albums were pompous wastes of time. The mighty rock groove of a song like Welcome to the Jungle disappeared and was replaced with the Queen-wannabe rock "epics" like Civil War, November Rain and Estranged...or even worse, saccharin ballads like Don't Cry. I'm certainly not calling these songs horrid but they completely lack any of the qualities that made GnR awesome in the first place.

The band fell apart pretty quickly. Shortly after the release of the UYI albums Izzy left the band because of Axl riot-inducing stage antics and his sobriety clashing with other band members. By the mid-90s, Slash had drifted out of the band...he was supposed to have been replaced by Zakk Wylde...and GnR was not heard from for the next few years...until we started hearing rumors of Chinese Democracy in '99. Mind you, it's 9 years later and democracy in China is closer to happening than the release of the GnR album.

Axl has had a rotating cast of band members...including the completely retarded choice of Bucket head as a guitarist. Slash did some solo albums and then went on to a form Velvet Revolver with form GnR bandmates Matt Sorum and Duff McKagan. VR have been pretty popular (and have had their own share of lead singer issues) but it's pretty standard and uninteresting hard rock.

Here's where I'm going with this...GnR released one legendary, epic, hall of fame worthy album...but it's all been a pretty sharp downhill crash n burn since then. None of the members have really shown they can pump out quality material on their own...in fact, none have demonstrated consistent songwriting since Appetite for Destruction.

I'm really suggesting that we appropriately gauge GnR's place in history. We certainly should recognize their first album's place in rock/metal history but there's so many bands from that era (and before!) that have a more consistent output, are still around and have influenced many, MANY more bands than GnR have or ever will. GnR have an overblown but still great legacy...it's just time to appropriately judge their place in the rock pantheon.