Rock Band 2

I know I’m way behind the curve here, but I finally got myself a copy of Rock Band 2. I played it all night long to unlock “One Step Closer,”

then played for the rest of the week working on unlocking all the songs and finishing my solo career. I have finally *finished* the career in the since that I have beaten the “Rolling Stones Rock Immortal” setlist, but I do not yet have the 900 stars required for the Endless Setlist 2 (I have 707 so far, and I just need to keep completing setlists). All in all, I give RB:2 a 9.5/10 because it has great gameplay and great replay value. I was a little dissapointed that I cannot transfer the songs from my original Rock Band disc to Rock Band 2 without a way to connect my X-box to the internet and $5 worth of Microsoft Points or whatever it’s called… Also, the “Impossible Challenges” are not-so-impossible. The songs that make up the marathons are about as difficult as GH3’s “Raining Blood,” “Cliffs of Dover,” and the last half of “One.” I never failed any of them on Expert Guitar. Yeah, the setlist was most certainly difficult, especially as one has to play six songs in a row, and the fingers do turn to jelly about halfway through the sixth song. However, taken one or two at a time with a short break in between, the songs on the Impossible Challenges are relatively easy to beat. When I saw the words “Impossible Challenges” I was thinking along the lines of “Through the Fire and the Flames” and I must say I was a little dissapointed. Rock Band has never been as difficult on the Guitar as the Guitar Hero games, understandably, but I was still hoping for a little more of a challenge. I do have a challenge, however, in getting 5 stars on some of these songs, and it will most definately take me a while. I will continue to work on that, and once that gets boring, I’ll see about getting an internet connection for my X-Box so I can download more selections to play. I am looking forward to getting the Who’s album, as “Who Are You” is one of my top 10 favorite rock songs of all time–OH! and kudos to Harmonix for re-doing “Carry On Wayward Son.” I LOVE this song and I love the re-vamped chart for the guitar. The awesomeness factor of this one song almos makes up for the non-challenging Impossible Challenges. Some of my other favorites from the RB:2 selection are “In the Middle” by Jimmy Eat World, “Alive” by Pearl Jam, “White Wedding” by Billy Idol (I’d never really been into this song very much, I’d just heard it a few times on the radio and liked it), and, of course, “One Step Closer.” Harmonix definately beat Activision in their choice of a Linkin Park song, because “What I’ve Done” (On GH: World Tour) is waaaay too easy, even though it is a great song. “One Step Closer” is a bit more challenging, so one can enjoy the music and the note chart as well.

Rock Band Revisited

Unfortunately, I haven’t gotten a chance to play RB2, but I did finally get a replacement disc for my Rock Band game. I played around on it today and got gold stars on 4 songs without really even trying. It’s so much easier on RB than on GH, because with GH if you miss just ONE note, you have to start all over. With Rock Band, it’s simply a matter of getting enough points (I think I heard somewhere that the requirement for Gold Stars is 1.5x the requirement for 5 stars) so if you can keep a 4x multiplier through most of the song, time your overdrive right, and whammy like a mad man, you can get Gold Stars easily! Anyways, I had a great time playing “Dead or Alive” with my little brother (He’s almost 10) and jammin out solo as well.

Combat Arms

Nexon enters the First Person Shooter scene with Combat Arms. It has several maps, each different from the rest, and a unique weapons system: You use GP you gain from matches to buy weapons in the shop, but the items expire after a set amount of time and you can purchase a weapon for 1 day, 1 week, or 3 months. Some items can’t be purchased until the player reaches a certain rank. Players rank up by gaining EXP points in combat. There are several play modes: In “One Man Army” anyone is free game to kill, it’s everyone versus everyone. In “Elimitation”, two teams fight against each other to reach a certain goal of kils (Anywhere from 30 to 140). In “Capture the Flag”, the point is obviously to capture the opponent’s flag and bring it back to your own. In “Spy Hunt” everyone starts out as allies and three intel cases are spread accross the map. As soon as someone touches an intel case, they become an enemy and everyone is out to kill them. The object of the game is to obtain all THREE cases at once, and when this happens, the player with the cases becomes a “super spy.” He gets a whopping 500 armor points, a Gatling Gun, a Flamethrower, and an extremely souped up rocket launcher. I’m not too sure about “Search and Destroy” but I believe the point is to plant a bomb in the opponent’s base. Since it’s a Nexon game, there are obviously many hackers, as there is a public Cham hack that’s easy to find if you looked hard enough. There are hackers in almost every match, and since the Cham hack is impossible to prove (Without a confession from the hacker, or a screenshot of the HACKER’s screen), few of the hackers get punished. There’s also an “OPK” hack, which puts all of the opponents on one spot so that the hacker can easily kill them all with a knife, but that’s considered “VIP” and typically has to be paid for. In short: Combat Arms is a great game to play if you want to hack!

Looking Forward to Rock Band II

I read in the GameInformer magazine recently that Rock Band II is already deep in development and slated for release this September. I can’t wait for all of the new features, especially the Solo Bass Tour (Finally)!!! You’ll be able to play any songs on your hard drive from the first Rock Band, as well as grab tons of new DLC that will be available on launch day. Rock Band II will also create challenges based on the different songs on its hard drive. For instance, you may face a challenge consisting of songs from a certain artist, or a specific genre or difficulty. Characters can switch between instruments, and solo-mode works just like the multi-player World Tour from the first Rock Band. They’ve also made the guitar buttons less noisy, and the strum bar won’t be so ’squishy.’ The bass-kick for the drums will be much more sturdy, and the pads will be quieter, as well as more sensitive to the force you hit them with, allowing for more dynamic drum fills. There will be solo-lines for every instrument this time around, not just the guitar. Oh, I almost forgot: PS3 users, wait your turn, the X-Box 360 gets it first!

Guitar Hero Aerosmith Rundown

Overall, I give Guitar Hero: Aerosmith 3.5/5 I love the songs, and the new stage set up is sweet, but the game itself is pretty much Guitar Hero 3 with new songs. The game’s not difficult compared to its forerunners, even on Expert. I beat it in about two hours, and only failed one song because my little brothers were running around the house screaming like madmen. For those who like Hammer-ons and Pull-offs, this is definately your game. Almost every song has HOPOs galore. I’ve started working on getting 5 stars on every song and have already gotten over halfway through with that. It does have good replay quality, I keep coming back again and again to play it, I can’t get enough of Aerosmith. The interviews are also cool, and definate keepers for die-hard Aerosmith fans.

My Thoughts on MapleStory

MapleStory is a Massively Multiplayer Online Game developed by Wizet, a branch of Nexon. It is a game that I had, at one point, been hopelessly addicted to. Basically, you fight to level up, and once you hit certain level checkpoints (8/10, 30, 70, 140) you got a “Job Advancement” in the particular class that you chose. In the First Job Advancement, you chose to be a Magician (level 8), or Bowman, Warrior, or Rogue (level 10). You get skills that you can add points to when you level. You get more specific on your class as you advance in jobs and you gain even more skills. All in all a very simple game, but still very entertaining. The only problem: Hackers. They are everywhere. The GMs (Game Masters) don’t do enough to stop them. Every so often, they’ll go on a mass banning spree, banning about 1000 hackers for 2 weeks, and then they won’t be heard from or seen for a  very long time. I myself was never able to get past level 45. Every time I attained that level, I’d lose my account for some reason or another. MapleStory is definately a fun game, but only if you have the patience for it. The experience curve gets very boring at higher levels, and since there’s no PvP system, the game eventually becomes ’same old, same old.’ Until, of course, they come up with some huge update adding a new land to the game. Then, for about a week, the game gets interesting again. I have quit this game for now, but I may return to it sooner or later.