Wednesday, November 25, 2009

DJ Hero Quickie


It's the 4th Thursday of November. You know what that means? That's right: Dallas Cowboys football. Today's the day families get together, eat big meals, and watch the Cowboys play some damn good football. Some families also like to watch the Detroit Lions lose every year. I don't blame them; I like to watch a good comedy too. For a game like this, no ordinary meal will do oh no. For this, you need to kill a turkey (the biggest you can get) and cook it at 350 degrees for 10 minutes a pound (so Ive been told). Then, if you eat pork, you have to get ham. It's pretty much a requirement. For desert, you break out the pie. You have your apple pie, your pumpkin pie, your sweet potato pie, and if your 3rd cousin from Ohio comes over, your pu-tang pie. The rest of the meal is dealer's choice. Then, and only then, do you have a meal fit for Thursday football. How sweet it is. After the game though, you may need something to do that'll prevent you from talking to your family for an extended period of time. That's where DJ Hero comes in.

Your weapon of choice...


So far we have a dancing game (Dance Dance Revolution), a guitar game (Guitar Hero), and a band game (Rock Band). It's only natural that a dj game would be made, and quite frankly, it took long enough. The hard part about reviewing a game like this (and why it's such a quick review) is trying to describe it, but fuck it; let's try. Obviously, like every other music game, you press the buttons to the beat when the game prompts you, but there's more to it. When you need to scratch, you hold down the required button and move the disc back and forth. On the harder difficulties, the game tells you exactly which direction to scratch. The crossfader (that little thing on the side that slides left and right) is probably the hardest part to master. When the left stream moves to the left, you move the crossfader to the left, and when the stream moves back, you center the crossfader. The same thing applies to the right stream. Just like in Guitar Hero, there are moments where you have to hit the notes exactly to earn power, but instead of star power, it's called euphoria. Euphoria doubles your score and moves the crossfader for you. You press the glowing red button. When you earn a rewind, spin the disc back completely to rewind the track and play that section over. Good for when you miss a note and don't get euphoria. Confused? Yea, so am I actually, but when you see it, it'll make sense. The gameplay is incredibly addictive, and the music is.....well....that's for you to decide, but that's always the case with music games. Some of the mixes make you scratch (ha) your head and ask "...Really?" A perfect example of that is Rick James mixed with Gwen Stefani. It just might be the dumbest shit I've heard. Some mixes are just ridiculously awesome, but to me it seems like the developers just got a bunch of random songs and told the Dj's to work with it, and if that's true, then kudos to the Dj's. Daft Punk don't count since they were mixing their own songs. If you're open minded about the song list, then the gameplay is more than enough to carry it, unlike Guitar Hero. You never played a song on GH you didn't like unless you had to, but you just might in DH. Besides, it's intriguing to see how the Dj's were thinking. The weird thing is some songs are mixes with guitar tracks. What that means is that while one person is mixing with the Dj set, your friend or the computer will be working the guitar...yea. For me, it worked once and only once. If 120 bucks is too much (probably is), I don't blame you for not getting it, but when the price goes down, get it. Happy National Dallas Cowboys Day everyone!

Rating: Fuckin Awesome

NOTE: My calender doesn't say National Dallas Cowboys Day. It says Thanksgiving Day. It must be a typo.








Tuesday, November 10, 2009

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2

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Rating: Fuckin Awesome

NOTE: See, I didn't have to say anything, and you're gonna go out and buy it.

Friday, November 6, 2009

Brutal Legend


Okay, I don't really know much about Metal. In fact, all I know is what I heard on Rock Band and episodes of Metalocalypse (on adult swim), so I was wondering if Brutal Legend would be something I can get into, especially since the game is so metal up the ass I expect the disc to jump out of my xbox, grab Guitar Hero, and just rip Dragonforce on expert...and 5 star it. Luckily, you don't have to know much about metal, but if you don't know the difference between emo and glam rock, then chances are you're gonna miss some of the references. Remember: one style of rock is filled with a bunch of pussies who's gender and sexuality are constantly in question as they parade around stage, and the other is glam rock......I wonder how many people are going to get that joke. Speaking of jokes, every caption under the pictures in this review will feature a line from the video game (which may or may not be accurate). Observe.

AH HA! I knew it! Big ugly demon!

The game stars Jack Black who plays Jack Black who reprises the role of Jack Black as Eddie Riggs who for the sake of this review, we'll call Jack Black, and it just occurred to me that I kinda ripped off Yahtzee from the escapist. Jack Black is the world's best roadie who's working for the world's worst band, and if you played the demo, you know EXACTLY what I mean. You may also know that an accident causes blood to fall on Jack Black's badass belt buckle and summons the God of Rock to come forth and transport him into a new world that looks like the shoebox of a metal fan filled with album covers. The humans in this world are all slaves to the evil dude you see above, and it's up to Jack Black to save everyone by killing everyone else. Metal. The cool thing about the world is that EVERYTHING is metal related. There's even an animal who's skeleton can be used as a gun. Awesome (too bad you can't use it). It's a cool world to look at and explore....for maybe the first hour. Then you realize that unless you're doing side-quests, the open world is fuckin pointless. Actually, no, it's not pointless, just tedious. In order to find news moves or upgrades, you have to drive around to find them, and that gets real boring real fast.

I do this for the fans

The gameplay is simple enough. A is your melee attack, X is your magic attack, B is your block, and Y is the action button. Wait......where the fuck is the jump button? Oh you got to be shitting me. How can he not jump? Sigh* Okay, so he can't jump, but he can fight and that's what important. After you adjust to not having a fuckin jump button (minus one point, guys), the game is your typical hack and slash. You run to an area, you clear house, you rock on. Simple. After a while, you can recruit people to fight along side you for missions, which is cool because going it alone can lead to having your balls ripped out and fed to......

or one of the many many many things that want you dead. Afterward, you can assemble an army to go against other armies to....see....if......what the fuck? Real time strategy? I thought this was an adventure game. Seriously, you build a stage which is your main base, you set up merchandise stands for supplies which are actually fans, you spawn troops from the stage depending on your fans, and...oh, I guess that's it. It's really light on the whole RTS thing. If Halo Wars is an RTS for beginners, then Brutal Legend is for fuckin babies. All you do is amass a large force and point at anything you didn't create. There's really nothing to it, and it's simple enough so that you don't fuck up real bad, but this isn't what I came for. I wanted to kill legions of emos to the sounds of Motorhead, not this shit. The one thing I do like is that when your army is getting it's ass kicked, you can go down there and handle it yourself; an RTS first, although I'm still not sure if this really is an RTS. If this paragraph is confusing you, now you know how I feel. It's so hard to explain. Ah, fuck it. The story is funny, and that along with the fighting is what is important. Too bad you spend most of the time in the RTS.

ASS - KICKERS UNITE!

Honestly, I don't know what to make of Brutal Legend. It's not bad enough to be Meh, but it's not good enough to be Sweet. Having Jack Black in it was good, but the RTS sections weren't that great. The combat is good, but there's no fuckin jump button. The story is funny, but it gets more serious towards the end. The world looks very imaginative, but there's really nothing fun to do in it. Hmmmm......

Rating: Meh with a dash of Sweet

Yea, that sounds about right.

NOTE: Don't let the picture on top of the site fool you. I'm not doing a Borderlands review. I don't have that kind of time to play it. Yes, I purposely left the pic with the metal spider without a caption. No, I will not response to that guy's comment about Madden vs 2K5. Yes, I really am doing an Uncharted 2 review for no apparent reason. No, the Sonic blog is not over and done with just yet. Yes, I am getting DJ Hero. No, I'm not sure if I'll review it. Yes, I am single ladies. No, you don't have to fight over me.