spatular

yeah i don't know what to think about that, on one hand it'd be better to have different stuff, but then i'd probably be more annoyed if i couldn't play it on the console versions. not sure what it's going for at the moment, but i think amplitude has always been quite pricy, worth it though. frequency isn't that costly though is it?

Was quite looking forward to this, initial impressions are that it's pretty good but not as god as it could have been....... it plays exactly like a cross between rock band and amplitude, you play guitar/bass/drums/vocals tracks at the same time, complete a section on one track without missing anything and that track plays itself for a while, so it's like spinning plates trying to keep everything going. this can make it pretty hard as you have to hit everything in the section, but it has the advantage that if you get an easy part of the track done at the right time you won't need to play it while it's hard - just like in amplitude. you have 4 health bars just like in multiplayer rock band wich is confusing to start with, but as there are only 4 tracks you can see most of them at all times and they flash red when they're in trouble. also star power works like in rock band and can be used to save youreslf twice before it's game over. when there's a solo your forced to play it but it works more like rock band so luckely you don't have to hit all the notes in thoes sections. all this gameplay stuff works really well and is good fun, the controls are surprisingly intuitive and didn't take long to get into, although i've played a lot of frequency/amplitude/rock band in the past so that probably helps. i started on hard, struggled at first and failed a few, then got into it and didn't have much trouble passing the early songs on hard, only getting 3 stars, then put the unlock all songs cheat on and played some less talk more rokk, expecting to fail but just passed, then failed miserably on laid to rest, did some of the early ones on expert and passed them ok too, but ones later on were crazy - instant fail! regarding the song selection, i think it's a really good selection from previous games but tbh would have preffered something completely different like the amplitude/frequency soundtracks, i really wanted this to be amplitude 2. onto the bad points - i don't like the removal of the main single player mode from rock band 2 - and this continues here. one of the best points about harmonix previous games was the great difficulty curve, if you were stuck you could go back and try and improve your scores/get more stars on previous songs and it felt like a real game with a goal at the end. this only has band world tour and quick play, band world tour is ok, and when you get so far, if it's anything like the console versions, you can pretty much play what you want, but the repetition playing stuff over and over at the start (again i'm assuming, i haven't played enough to know if it's the same) can get pretty dull. the saving grace is the easily accessible unlock all switch which lets you play whatever you want in quickplay, which is exactly how i play rb2. i can see me playing this now and then in quick play and enjoying it but not sticking at it like i would if it had an old school single player mode. also it's a lot better portable effort than the DS guitar hero games with the strap on buttons. anyone else getting/got it?

the main thing i'm worried about is what happens when current consoles/downloads are no longer supported, say something happens to my 360 (highly likely) and i can't play my xbla games or rock band songs anymore hope they come up with a solution to this, maybe make any dlc compatible with future consoles but that could only last so long...

i'm a chase cam man. which does usually make it look like you're going slower.

i don't think there's anything really wrong with this game, i'm just finding it quite dull, the environments are really nice, the crashes can be annoying and while i understand the handling i just don't really like it, it seems to make a game that should be exciting, somehow boring. i think i'm on my own with this as everyone else seems to like it.

ah, sorry, i only really did the main quests

can't you select any quest you've already started from the wrist computer thing, then it shows you the way, or at least points you in the right direction? it's been a while since i played so i could be wrong, that's something that usualy would anoy me too.

fair enough, i did try a level on veteran on cod 2 and it was an aweful experience...and with the amount of moaning about how hard/annoying they are that goes on on forums i just assumed it was all bad and people just wanted to be hardcore or something

i've never had any real desire to play this (or cod 2) on a harder difficulty than normal/easy, but everyone else does - why? i clearly don't understand the appeal of dying randomly 100's of times.

nothing in runcorn well there was traumer centre new blood (hope it's not the first wii one!) for £14 but that's not a crazy price like the others.

i'll get back to you on that, just about to listen now... edit - laid to rest is awesome, i guess i don't expect everyone/anyone to like it but the main riff is kick ass and great fun to play along to in gh2 (also available as rock band dlc). i feel bad always picking actual music from music games so am going to try extra hard to think of some actual game music....although if i (or anyone else?) haven't already mentioned it elephant bones from gh2 should really be in one of these hendo's remix of still alive was top banana, and if you want an excuse to have more of his stuff he has a track on rock band, guess you already know that as the (ace) lyrics were in your sig really liked the sotc track too and quite liked the hotd/metroid/fzero ones, was laughing most of the way through the crazy frog one, quite liked it because of the madness!

i've been playing this a bit the last few nights, up to the 3rd level/rank or whatever it is, not getting on that well with it but finding it strangely compelling for some reason. you seem to need to use the boost to steer which is strange, also most of the vehicles have pretty much no grip apart from the bikes which handle pretty well but explode if you touch another vehicle. also it's funny if you crash really slowly and tip over then suddenly your wheels fly off! i'll stick with it though as i've not played it too much, the environments are nice

tbh the prices in winsford were so crazy i think they'll be all gone now, but i'll check in runcorn next week for any of the stuff people are after.

not sure how useful this is as there could be nothing at your local asda, at mine there was some great bargains though, HOTD overkill, shaun white snowboarding and disaster day of crisis for the wii, £2.50 each and motorstorm 2 for £10, thanks to Ben for the heads up on this. had i been thinking i would have bought more, there was a guy there buying up everything to sell on ebay

rock band 1 - expert drums

i have some dodgy stuff too, i maintain that my friend who i play this with online forces me to buy it! reason for the post is i got the iron maiden pack yeasterday and it's pretty cool

^ got to agree with battlestar galactica being ace, especially the mini series, series 1/2 are great too but i didn't like 3 as much, but it was still good, not got 4 yet due to the stupid way they've released it on dvd, you have to buy 2 box sets to get the whole series - stupid. will get it at some point though. like ben i've been watchin flight of the conchords too, series 2 is being shown on bbc4 on tusedays, but i missed this weeks

yeah sorry, you're both right that sony's demonstration was better, MS's just looked like smoke and mirrors, i was much more interested when i read about people playing the burnout demo, although again your both right it's not a good application of the technology. and that's a good point about the cool things you could do in rpg's, i just didn't like milo regarding the eye toy, it's like the difference between 2d and 3d graphics, the burnout demo has people holding their hands out in front of them and steering an invisible/non existent wheel, the eye toy would not even be abe to see your hands/arms in this position, also apparently it has you accelerating/braking by moving your foot towards/away from it, again the eye toy could not even see this movement, all the eye toy can see is your outline, this can see your body position in 3d to some extent, like i've said before i think it will have problems but the difference from the eye toy in terms of the technology is massive, despite the similar looks. also the demo that everyone laughs at with the avatar following the body position of the user, despite it going crazy, it did work a little and the eye toy couldn't do that either.

nice podcast, i do feel the need to defend M$'s camera thing, i'm not expecting it to be anywhere near as good as they are expecting, but they are trying something new and the camera is pretty damn clever, this thing sees your body movement in 3D - a bit like motion capture, and some hands on reports say they already have it working with burnout, so it's not complete pie in the sky like the video they showed suggests, burnout is a bad example though as it's always going to be better with a propper conrtoller/wheel and milo is crap beyond belief (it may be clever but from a gamers point of view i have no interest in talking to a virtual person), so they need the games to go with it. and i'm not convinced it will work so great in the wild but the technology is very impressive and opens up lots of possibilities that just can't be done with the wiimote/sonys version. i however feel the voice recognition needs to be slated more, voice recognition never works properly and i won't believe it until i've tried it

thanks for the impressions Sly, i was tempted to download this, FF has completely passed me by.

i "fixed" my steering wheel today (well i took it to bits than put back together and it just started working again - bonus ) and wanted to give it a try so i thought i'd give this a go, and the force feedback is great just like dirt, took a few races to get back into the wierd handling but once i did i was having a lot of fun, mainly due to the force feedback though

yeah too right, good work Jimbo! i think trying to get that one would drive me slightly mad.

oh yes. the first one was great. i loved the orbs you could easily see on top of the buildings but then had to figgure out how to get them like some sort of giant 3d puzzle, hope there's more of that this time

god knows if i should be making a new thread but i got the metallica gh game, and it's just an expansion pack really, but i really like it so far. i'm no metallica fan but really enjoy their songs in rock band, they are really good fun on both guitar and drums, i think their music just fits these games really well. i'm not that far in so i'm expecting it to get a lot harder/annoying later. also it seems really easy to unlock everything which is good. i'd really like to try the new double pedal mode for the drums but can't because i don't have ghwt drums oh and i'd still prefer if this was in rock band as dlc or something probably no one else is interested?

thanks for the link, just listening now