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mashedbuttons GAMECAST Episode 33: Back in the Saddle

Well, it's been a bit, but it's back. The chaos in my life has yet to end, but I bring you good tiding from the center of it. The search for my roommate's house is over, and it looks like the craziness of painting and moving in begins next month. Work is crazy as usual. All that aside, this episode I go over:

Well, that's it. Enjoy.

Podcast Small Hiatus

So, my roommate has had his offer accepted on hour new house. His new house, where I'll be renting a room. Due to this, life just got a bit crazy. Lots of things will be going on in the near future. Sadly, this disrupts the podcasting a bit. I will try to record some when I can, but I'm going to make the official status on hiatus. If they come, then great. If not, not worries. In a week or two we should be back on track.

Thanks,

LEGO Rock Band is Official

The press release is in the wild for the forthcoming LEGO Rock Band. The game looks pretty neat. The game will be targeted slightly younger than the current game, but will retain the T for Teen rating the series has had. Looks like you'll be able to customize some LEGO dudes and hop on stage to rock out. Not only that, but it comes with a new set of tunes. While the list isn't complete, they have announced:

Blur - \"Song 2\"
Carl Douglas - \"Kung Fu Fighting\"
Europe - \"The Final Countdown\"
Good Charlotte - \"Boys and Girls\"
Pink - \"So What\"

The key will be to see if you can import these into Rock Band 1/2 and whether or not you can play existing Rock Band DLC in LEGO Rock Band. Expect to learn more details as the Holiday '09 release date gets closer. Espect the game on PS3, Xbox 360, Wii, and DS.

I'm stoked for The Final Countdown!

Podcast News

There is no podcast this week. My life and Keith's have been hectice lately. I will be returning with a solo podcast for two weeks. After that Keith and I should be back to our old format. For now, check this out:

New Fallout Game Announced

While it's not Fallout 4, it's still cool. As you may or may not know, we here loved Fallout 3. Bethesda has announced the new title Fallout New Vegas for PC, 360, and PS3 in 2010. Given the short timeline, I'd be anticipating an expansion pack with some tweaks to the Fallout 3 engine. This is not a bad thing, as Fallout 3 is pretty frickin' awesome. Also looks like we'll be spending some time in Sin City this time around. The biggest difference between this and an expansion is that it has it's own storyline. This is not a sequel, but another game in the same universe.

The developers behind this will not be Bethesda, but Obsidian Entertainment. For some RPG creds, these are the guys who picked up the reigns of the Knights of the Old Republic franchise for Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic II: The Sith Lords... Revenge of the Colon. They also picked up the reigns from Bethesda in the past for Neverwinter Nights 2. I'd assume that this means that Bethesda is too busy with the next big Elder Scrolls or Fallout game.

Either way, you should be blasting mutants away with some insane weapons and sipping the sweet irradiated waters of Sin City before the end of 2010.

[via Kotaku]

Jack's Back - No, Not Jack Bauer, Jack Thompson

Jack Thompson seemes to be back to his old tricks, this time in Utah. As everyone I'm sure already knows, Jack was disbarred from Florida and in what might be considered a last ditch effort, tried to push a video game law through Utah. This law was shot down and vetoed by Utah's governor, but apparently Jack hasn't gotten the hint.

Jack Thompson, through e-mail has apparently been sending out e-mails to complain about Utah's Attorney General and Governor.

Now, the Senate President, Michael Waddoups wants to charge Jack Thompson under the Anti-Spam laws or the CAN-SPAM Act. To make matters even more interesting, Jack Thompson wants the Attorney General, who he has been attacking, I might add, to press charges against Waddoups for violating his civil rights.

He might not be a lawyer in Florida anymore, but he's still up to his old tricks. It really seems like its just a matter of time before everyone in the government gets tired of his rants and completely tunes him out. I'm not trying to say he's never had a valid point in all his arguments, but he's really going about pushing his arguments the wrong way.

[via GamePolitics]

Rock Band: Beatles Price Gouging

The official pricing and contents of the Rock Band: Beatles game are out and they are not pretty. Sure, the disc alone costs $60, but for a long time people have been asking why the bundle will cost $250 while the normal Rock Band 2 bundle is only $190. The speculation early on had been that it would include a guitar and bass along with the drums and mic so that it was one stop shopping for players to relive the Beatles. Well, it's not. There is a bass in the box, and drums, a microphone, and a microphone stand. Yep, it's san-guitar. So, there is no real reason a plastic bass shoudl cost any more than a plastic rhythem guitar. Helllllllllo $60 mic stand!

Come on Harmonix, really? I don't even like the Beatles and wouldn't be getting this anyway, but I know a rip-off when I see one. What would John say?

A Rock Band Fanboy Play Guitar Hero World Tour

So, I have been playing rhythem games heavily ever since Guitar Hero 1 landed on the PS2. I was a real fan of the Guitar Hero series before it fell into the hands of Neversoft for Guitar Hero 3. At that point I shifted over to Rock Band. However, Blockbuster is having good sales on games, so I was able pick up Guitar Hero: World Tour for $35. This is, of course, for the disk only, so all of my impressions are with the Rock Band drums without cymbals.

Difficulty

Man, I have heard differing opinions, but I find the difficulty in Guiter Hero to be significantly higher than that of Rock Band. Part of this definitely has to do with the lack of cymbals, but there is more to it than that. For starters, the organization of songs in the career mode is whacked. The first set include No Sleep 'Til Brooklyn from the Beastier Boys. I struggled on the drums and my roommate struggled on guitar. We failed out the first time. We've been playing expert on Rock Band for over a year and we failed out on a first tier song. We thought we were in for a hellish experience. We were wrong, it took 4 or 5 more tiers for us to get back to a song even close to this one in difficulty. So, why is this song on tier one, but Willie Nelson's On The Road Again is on 5 or 6? It's questions like these that blow my mind. Some songs that should be fun are just a pain in the ass. I was really looking forward to Korn's Freak on a Leash, but after on run through I will likely never play it again. That song is just not fun to play. Another great example is The Guess Who's American Woman, which is a blast in Rock Band, but an annoyance in GH:WT.

Overall, the diffculty seems really shoddy. A lot of songs are in weird places and songs that sound like fun end up being hellish. I'll be interested to see how annoying the end game songs are.

Mechanics

This is where the games differ greatly. The end result is that they could both learn some lessons from eachother. GH:WT has some really cool mechanics. You can deploy start power at any time on all instruments, streaks are measured for the band instead of individual players, guest stars and the Tool level are really neat, the ability to deploy star power in sections instead of all at once is nice, and some new guitar playing mechanics keep things lively.

However, there is also the bad. GH:WT's star power deployment on drums is weird. You have to hit two drums simultaneously in the middle of play. As a drummer on Expert, this can throw you right off the beat. Also, the star power meter is located in the upper left corner of the screen. It's a pretty good distance from the notes and can be hard to peek at while playing. Also, each player activates star power seperately and there is no ability to save players. The placement of the difficulty selection is annoying. Instead of picking the difficulty on a per song basis (in career only) you have to select it for all songs. To change difficulty you have to back out and re-enter song selection. Finally, the song list sucks. I'm sorry, but it sucks. No album art, very few options for filtering/searching, and nothing to display the difficulty of songs. This is one area where RB2 absolutely SMOKES GH:WT. Rock Band definitely put more thought into the fact that DLC will expan the list significantly, which requires more options.

Music Creation

Don't bother. This is not even a factor. The music creation is terrible and they should have left it out entirely. Get a cheap Casio keyboard for a similar experience.

Overall

I came up with this after playing last night, and I think it cuts to the core of it. Guitar Hero: World Tour is either a poor man's Rock Band or a rish man's Rock Band Track Pack. If you have Rock Band and the money to pick it up, it's not bad and some of the exclusive songs are hella fun. If you're short on cash and only can grab one, GH:WT isn't a bad game. However, I will always pick Rock Band over World Tour. I feel like Rock Band is tuned for fun while all of the Neversoft Guitar Hero games are tuned for torture. They seem to make songs artificially harder to play. That is all.

In Case Anyone Ever Wondered...

In case anyone ever wondered how Nintendo got their light gun working back in the days of Duck Hunt, delsquacho.com has an interesting article on how it actually worked. Apparently, unlike most light guns that use sensors in front of the tv and through calibrating the gun prior to playing to determine where the light gun is aimed, Nintendo used the flash of the screen upon the trigger pull to determine aim.

Useless information and useless trivia for sure, but still kinda cool in its retro kind of way.

[via delquacho.com]

Job Listing Drops a Hint at what is next for Halo

Halo 3's latest map pack came out last week, we know that Halo ODST should be coming out this fall, and rumors have come out about a Halo 4 in the works, but it seems that something else, or maybe something else related to Halo ODST or Halo 4 seems to be sprouting its head and starting some rumors.

The new project appears to be a game or something else that goes beyond just the console. According to a job listing, Microsoft is looking for people to work on a new project that appears to be Halo related which goes beyond the console, and into the interwebs and mobile world. The listing doesn't specify a specific project which is understandable especially if this project is early on, and definitely since I'm sure Microsoft wants to keep it under wraps if it is brand spankin' new.

Myself being a Halo fan as well as a fan of the social webscape, this has definitely piqued my interest. I think it would be a cool idea, for any game for that matter, to create a community and game that mesh together in such a way to expand the experience beyond a TV and a console. At the same time though, I would still like to see a straight up Halo 4 done in such a way to keep the gameplay on the same level as Halo 1-3.

[via Joystiq]