I know, I know I’ve been a bad Hex. I just haven’t been inclined to write about anything lately and a certain game has been eating a lot of my free time.

I’m going to write a new post soon and then I’ll go back and retrospectively add some of the old posts I started writing, but hadn’t finished or formatted.

I can’t believe it, I got on to another XBL Preview! Yay! This one is for the new Twitter/Facebook/LastFM apps and the new Zune HD Marketplace. I use Facebook, Twitter and LastFM quite a lot so this has been quite interesting for me to have a play around with.

I do like it so far, although there are some niggly bits. The social networking apps seem to be removed from the 360 experience itself which I think detracts from the point of them a little.

I did enjoy logging in to LastFM and listening to my music library there, although I have upnp media servers installed so could listen to my own music anyway. Nice that it scrobbles though.

Facebook looks like it’s had the most time spent on it. I think it works pretty well. As I’ve got my XBL account linked to my Facebook account now I’d have expected it to update when I got an achievement or at least have the option to do this. It doesn’t, although this is no big deal as I already have a Facebook app which does this.

Twitter isn’t all that useful for me at the moment, not because I don’t use it, I do. A lot. The 360 isn’t the best place to use it though as it has no browser so every time I saw a tweet with a link I had to use my netbook to look at it instead. It also doesn’t tie in with your XBL account so it won’t update when you get achievements (there are some services around which do this though).

I was really excited about the Zune HD marketplace as I’ve read that they’ve really improved streaming for people with less than great internet connections (that’d be me). Sadly there’s nothing there I want to watch. I’ve either seen them, got them, or I have no interest in the films available. Might’ve been nice to add a short free HD clip we could test with.

I couldn’t check out the Inside News feature as it’s US only.

The Facebook and LastFM apps benefit from being things you can just sign into and forget until you’re feeling lazy and want to use them (seeing Facebook photos on my big TV was pretty nice). The Twitter one falls down here because even if I decide to use it just to check tweets rather than post them, I can’t with about 80% of them because they contain links and photos. I also don’t like the way Twitter doesn’t automatically log you in. It remembers your details but sits waiting for you to press the login button. MS needs to add a browser. It’ll make all this stuff so much better. Twitter without a browser is so neutered.

I’ve been playing Rock Band a fair bit since I got it a few weeks ago and… I LOVE IT! The Guitar controller is a MUCH better shape for me and although the strumbar having no clicky sound throws me a bit I think it’s probably better and wish I’d started out with a silent strumbar so I’d be used to it.

The drums are really good fun, but sadly I have ELs so they have no sensitivity whatsoever (no sock mod for me). I haven’t even got around to finishing the Easy Drum Tour yet, but there is another reason for this. The drums are pretty loud to people downstairs (and I can’t do a lot about it since I have ELs) so I can only play during the day. This means I play the guitar tours mostly… but… and this shocks me. When people are out I’m actually finding the Vocal Tours the most fun! Took me a while to get into it. I don’t sing unless I really have to, which is usually never, I mimed my way through assemblies at primary school. It shows that whilst I obviously can’t sing my guess of the pitch is pretty spot on (which is all RB cares about). I am slightly worried about the ones I keep 100%ing though. I mean ‘Maps‘ (Yeah Yeah Yeahs) is easy so that’s expected, but ‘Celebrity Skin‘ (Hole), ‘In Bloom‘ (Nirvana), ‘Black Hole Sun‘ (Soundgarden) and ‘Enter Sandman‘ (Metallica)..! Is there a grunge kid trying to get out here? Am I reliving my flannel-shirted teens?? ‘Sabotage‘ (Beastie Boys) is a nightmare for me though as it doesn’t seem to think I’m saying the words right and there’s no actual singing in it. You’d think it would be easier… but no. Maybe I need to put on my NY accent for that song.

It’s such a natural progression from GHII as well. I know they’re releasing Guitar Hero: World Tour, but really… as soon as they add in Co-Op Career on-line I’m content with Rock Band and just getting DLC for it every now and then. Talking of the downloadable tracks – wow! There are millions! OK, slight exaggeration, but there’s a bit of everything in there. I’m not downloading any (except GLaDOS’ ‘Still Alive‘) until I get to the point in it where I’m totally at my level and have to try to pass songs. I’m working my way through Easy-Medium-Hard-Expert on all the instruments to get the most out of the game. Such a shame I’ll never get any of the Band Tour achievements though. No-one ever comes here, and I’m not lugging the instruments into town. On-line co-op career would be perfect.

Another thing that I absolutely love is the character customization. Soooo much better now I can have my characters looking like me! My guitarist one is scary, she really does look like (a thinner version of) me. I love the way the band interacts too. With guitarists singing along on parts of the song. Looks so much nicer than GHIII. The guitar parts are a lot easier though. In a way it’s good, but also I don’t feel like I’ve achieved quite so much being halfway through the Guitar Tour on Expert.

I really need to update my ScoreHero now, but there’s singing to be done!

http://www.bit-tech.net/news/2008/04/08/rock_band_uk_release_date_set

So, we now have a date for the UK release of Rock Band, Friday May 23rd 2008. We also now have a UK price for the full Rock Band bundle, £180… yes my US friends, you paid $169 we will be paying around $360. Sadly I think the level of boycotting needed to get our prices down is beyond the realms of possibility.

Aaaaaages ago I saw this site and thought it was really cool. Sadly the only console I had that was on-line was my Wii so no chance of anything fun like that for me

Well since finding myself very single, very alone and with no friends and nothing and no-one to do, I bought myself a 360 (I got the Premium in the end). His one drove me insane with trying to make his off-line account link to his on-line one (had to delete the off-line one and start from scratch in the end), but so far mine has been good. Bought some 2nd hand and cheap games. Trying to 100% Assassin’s Creed if I can, just because samey & boring though it is, it’s single player. Managed to lessen my Viva Piñata addiction a little too, that was getting scary.

360Voice is very cool, I’m enjoying seeing what my console has to say about me Only real issue I have with it is the site updates so slowly. I know it has to wait a while to update, but the rss feed updates so much quicker. You’d think they’d both be the same.

Anyhoo, this post is a list of all the 360 type things I’m on, feel free to add me so I can pretend I have friends:

Finally got round to playing this last night (haven’t played a real game in years, it’s been all about Guitar Hero, Peggle Deluxe, etc. for me recently), can’t say I find it that great. The climbing and diving into bales of hay is cool and the killing is cool, but the walking about everywhere bores me silly. I’d only been playing for about half an hour when I got the 360 achievement for staying alive in battle for over 10 minutes… mainly because I was so bored of walking/riding I just killed… Yahtzee was spot on, it should be called Faffing-About Creed. And yeah, that FUCKING hill is well annoying.

It’s really lovely to look at (although Kristen Bells’ cross-eyed face in Heroes is bad enough without seeing it in all the lab bits too) so now I think I’ll stick doing just that, watching my mate play through it and telling him when I spot flags and stuff.

I did have fun though, when I ‘parked’ my horse next to another horse while I climbed up to a View Point, came back and some mad woman was twirling about around my horse!

Right, having played GH:III (Wii version) for several more hours now, I thought I’d re-write the previous entry:

The StarPower meter is absolute arse. It’s great that the Wii controller rumbles when you first attain starpower, but there’s nothing flashing or anything to show when it’s 100% full… so I just forget all about it. The annoying Star Power Ready text that used to explode up from the fretboard making me miss notes and therefore have to wait to use my starpower has thankfully gone. They have introduced some more annoying text that tells you when you’ve achieved 50/100/200, etc. notes in a row though. I don’t see the point in that, although the little counter that shows the number of notes in a row on the bottom left is nice. Also, why on Earth does the Wii controller use the rumble function the whole time you are using StarPower? The fret board is lit up and pretty obvious on screen, I don’t need the woooom-woooom-woooom to tell me as well. This is all assuming you can get starpower to work. You need to learn the knack of lifting slowly than shaking the controller down. It takes some getting used to. As does the new HOPO system. It was done by hand so not all of the ones you’d think are now HOPOs, but they do show up lighter than other notes which is good for working out where they can be used, even if they’ve left them out of some solos making them really hard…

I hate the male singer. In general, but mainly the close-ups of his scary, large, out of sync mouth full of shark-teeth. He’s creepy. Stop it. The crowd’s good though, the stage-diving took me by surprise and made me smile. I also giggle at the inmates synchronised dancing too much. It’s a bit distracting. The in-between ‘levels’ animations aren’t that good, and they’re a bit long. They’re amusing the first time, but nowhere near the joyful simplicity of “vroom-screeeeeetch!”

The controller is a bit pants. This is the Wii one, and I’ve been used to the old ps2 ones. I don’t like it. I love that it’s wireless and doesn’t seem to suffer from that like I’ve heard the new 360 one does. I measured it up against the old ps2 ones and it’s only slightly shorter, but that small difference is enough to have me hunched over and really uncomfortable. I play sitting down, I may have to start playing standing up. Now I have the added annoyance that the whammy bar on mine is really loose and wanders off. So I spend most of the song trying to put it back in a position where I can use it to gain star power… then it’s gone again, winding down to point at the floor. Looks like I’ll be voiding my warranty then… *whistles*

GuitarHero.com is good, linked up my account and got my friends accounts on there, nice to see it updating so quickly. This was the main reason I got it. I wanted the whole on-line thing. I’ve been using ScoreHero with Kna to fuel our insane competitiveness with the GH series but it’s always really slow when you want to update, so I end up with scribbles of my scores all over notepads. Looks like I still will though as comparing people on GuitarHero.com is nowhere near as good as on ScoreHero.

I worked my way through Easy on a friend’s Wii and annoyingly GH:III is one of those games you can’t transfer via SD card. So I’m doing it all again now just to get the bat guitar. You also earn cash and have encores on Easy which is new, the cash counts towards your career so it makes sense to play through Easy for a change. It took about 2 days for my 100% on Easy achievement Award to show up. We also had fun with the on-line scoring as GuitarHero.com got a little confused by one Wii having 2 profiles. I’ve found you have to sign in to WFC whenever you start the game too, or you’re not logged in. The scores do update later, but it takes a while as they seem to trickle through. It was updating the wrong profile for a while at the weekend, but the scores slowly righted themselves and although the high-scores look like they could be wrong, the number of groupies and percentages of the game played are now correct.

The reason why I bought this as soon as I could and didn’t pay too much heed to the crap reviews was for the on-line playing. I don’t have a 360 so this is quite a new thing for me & consoles (Animal Crossing on the DS isn’t quite as competitive). I’ve now played a few games on-line against friends and strangers and it totally rocks! There isn’t any noticeable lag at all. OK, so twice my Wii froze on me making a really nasty feedback sound, but both times that happened before I was in the match and playing, so no massive deal. I really can’t wait for RockBand to come out over here, although I may end up staying in forever :s

Links:

My GuitarHero.com Account (Hexy).
My ScoreHero Account (Hexy).

I really want one of these for Christmas… *hint* *hint*

Must have this t-shirt:

http://www.jinx.com/men/shirts/video_games/the_cake_is_a_lie.html

kthx