February 28, 2009
You Know The Movie To Watch This Week (Week 14)
February 25, 2009
Safari opens 4 beta
February 23, 2009
81st Oscars reactions; balls are kept
February 22, 2009
Guitar Hero World Tour vs. Rock Band 2
February 21, 2009
Movies Opening This Week (Week 13)
February 15, 2009
Rock Band 2 Wii Hands-on
I've waited months upon months, called number upon number, and now, I finally have it: Rock Band 2 for the Wii- funded by a shared amount of saved allowance 5 months in the making.
Here's the thing: setup is a bitch. OK, roll out the cardboard artwork, get a blade for the packaging tape, take the tape off the sides of the front of the cardboard found inside, then the back. You know what, I could go on all day.
Moving on since I don't want to bore you further, here's something that you might want to know: Guotar Hero Wii peripherals are guaranteed to work with this game, but not the other way around. Additionally, Rock Band 2 Wii peripherals are not in dire need of additional remotes ala Guitar Hero as they come with their own USB powered sensors.
So on to the game, finally! I'm already sweating since the setup is pure exhaustion, and here we are introduced to several modes. The mode we tried for the night are the Quick Play and World Tour (local) modes.
In Quick Play, you can set your own playlist for successive, uninterrupted play like in Guitar Hero World Tour and you can also set to choose songs one at a time, whichever you prefer. The default list of songs (meaning that not all 84 songs are present right out of the box yet) are pretty good, but my favorites for now are Eye of the Tiger (a track that Guitar Hero also has), the Duran Duran song Hungry Like the Wolf and Paramore's recent hit That's What You Get.
In the World Tour mode, you and your band (aka, your friends and family) can embark on a journey to the top of the rock and roll mountain, while earning cash with your custom-created characters. The character creator is pretty flexible and the randomized band names are really fun.
Here we go to the instruments themselves. Personally, I thought that the guitar could use some more tactility, but other than that, it looks more plasticky and toy-like than the pictures depict and is a solid controller. Like a real guitar, you hold down on a fret, and strum with the other hand.
As for the drums, they're great, responsive, and somehow deceptively simple as it is easy to learn but hard to master. Gameplay-wise, people who are seasoned with the guitar may find a bit of difficulty with this control scheme (that is, if they're making the jump to band games) but Harmonix says that real-life drum players will feel at home. Can't really know whether the claim has credibility or not, but I just thought you might want to know. You might be happy to know that the sticks included are made of what seems to be real wood, so you can also do a "5, 4, 3, 2" with them and sound half-credible.
Playing vocals is like playing SingStar, although I haven't really played that game yet. A wavy line is displayed so if you don't know the song, you can still get through that song by just saying gibberish and getting your vocal range to match the lines indicated on screen. It's fairly accurate, and not that difficult unless you get to Hard which requires you to be precise with pitch.
Guess that's all I have to say about the game for now. Tune in for a review some time in the future.
Posted with LifeCast
Australia: You can separate this into parts
Starring Hugh Jackman, Nicole Kidman
Directed by Baz Luhrmann
The latest film by lauded director Baz Luhrmann, Australia is a stylish epic that involves a woman from London named Sarah Ashley whose husband was killed on the outback of Australia. She inherits his cattle farm and tries to get it back to its former glory which will be a challenge especially against the big Carvey Cattle Company. Fortunately "Mr. Rover" and an indigenous child named Nala appear and help Sarah to achieve that goal. Yet, this is during a time of war- the second World War- so the people have to be wary of the Japanese.
Back then, I thought that this was gonna be the epic that'll sweep audiences off their feet, but after watching it, I left it feeling rather exhausted. Why? Because the film is exceptional! Exceptionally long!
You could say that the epic tries to be a hybrid of several genres and social topics- but they end up seemingly more like a ruffled hodgepodge of pressing issues of social discrimination, revenge, cattle and some romance shoehorned somewhere. The way how they are tackled don't seem very seamless, in fact it's like they unfold in a queue! Hell, some scenes feel as if they don't belong to the whole damn movie (we could've done fine without the journey to the Australian port and the 15000 cattle; maybe a montage would suffice).
After reading reviews when it first came out, I now had the impression that this movie was gonna be really corny. And while I can't say that it wasn't, I can't really say that it's super sappy either. There are streaks of brilliance (the incorporation of the ever-famous Wizard of Oz song 'Somewhere Over the Rainbow, personally) showing in this mostly aesthetically-pleasing film, but meh, the sequences that follow turn out to be either overlong or just plain predictable.
It's just long, seriously. I can count 3-5 moments when I thought that the movie was about to end! It feels as if the whole movie could easily have been divided into 3 parts or something! I mean, the way the story's movie unfolds literally feels like chapters in a book- in a bad way. It's like I'd rather read a junioralization of this than watch it again.
That's not to say it's bad, if I'm misleading you. It's just that you need plenty of time to spare to be able to get into the swing of things. It's kinda predictable too, but I wouldn't think many would mind it all that much. Bottom line, it's just OK.
Rating: 6.7/10