Harmonix: Rock Band 3

Rock Band 3, the most recent installment of the ultra-popular Rock Band series. Like the other 4 games of the Rock Band series, this game features songs which can be played with the original selection of instruments: guitar controller with 5 fret buttons, drum set with 4 pads and a kick drum pedal, bass guitar(same as guitar controller), and vocals. However, three new instruments have been added to Rock Band 3. They are as follows: harmonies which can be sung in addition to the lead vocals (previously featured in The Beatles: Rock Band), a new keyboard controller with 25 keys, and a brand new "pro" guitar controller with 17 frets each with 6 strings and a button for each string on the fret which means there are (6x17) 102 buttons!!!!!! This almost forces the user to learn how to play the real guitar in order to play pro mode. Who ever can play hard difficulty on pro mode must be extremely talented, or must play the real guitar well. There is so much put into this new pro guitar controller. Basically, everything you can do with a real electric guitar, you can do with this controller. Individual string strumming, slides, chords. hammer ons and pull offs, even arpeggios, you name it. A demo of the pro guitar controller can be seen here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D5De9eCH1EU. There is also somewhat of a pro drum set controller called the ION electronic drum kit, which can also be used as an electronic drum kit outside of the game. This controller has the original 4 drum pad and kick pedal with an additional 3 cymbals and a hi-hat with its corresponding pedal. Rock Band 3 is the closest you can get to playing in a real band without knowing how to play an instrument. With so many instruments there are many songs in the game which have most if not all of the instrument in it. There are also songs which have specific instruments that play most of the song.

Harmonix Kinect project

Harmonix Music Systems recently released a game for the new XBOX 360 motion detection software, Kinect. Dance Central is the title of the new game in which players can dance to many different songs while they do the correct dance moves displayed on the screen. The Kinect is like Nintendo Wii, except the controller... is your body! The camera on the Kinect tracks movement and can be used for any type of videogame. In Dance Central, different dance moves are displayed on the screen which you must do in order to get points and to keep the dancer on the screen dancing. Popular moves like the sprinkler, the double dig, the robot, the fist pump, the knockout, the hitch hike, the freeze, and even song specific dance moves like "the jerk" and the "souljia boy". Like the rest of Harmonix's games, Dance Central is a great game to play with friends. Ok D block is over, im out.

Black Ops: Continued

I got Call of Duty: Black Ops yesterday. I played the campaign mode and I must say that I am impressed. The single player gameplay is fun and not repetitive at all. It is also kind of like a fake history lesson. It gave me an idea of what was going on during the cold war which nobody knew about. The landscapes are beautiful, especially the jungles in Vietnam and Laos and the mountains in Russia. The multiplayer online gameplay is very fun. After gaining experience points from racking up kills, you can purchase new weapons and attachments to use. A new aspect of multiplayer in Call of Duty has been introduced. That is the new currency, called COD points. Everything can be bought with these, weapons, accessories, etc. They are obtained by completing different challenges and just playing well. Since there is a currency, there are also wager matches. These are special game modes in which players bet COD points, and the winners get their respective cuts of the money at the end. Since I just started playing yesterday, i have not accumulated many weapons. I definitely enjoy the wager matches the most, because they have special fun game modes that can only be played as wager matches. And an old game mode returns from Call of Duty: World at War, Zombies. In this mode you can go solo, or team up with friends or strangers to kill endless waves of the undead. This game is intense, and i have only begun playing. I recommend buying it if you like First Person Shooter games.

Black Ops

This is no review. I am simply talking about what i know so far. Call of Duty: Black Ops is a new video game that came out a few days ago. Everyone i have talked to who has played it says that it is amazing. I have my doubts, but i will not let the get the best of me. I loved the previous first person shooter/military simulation games by Infinityward, the makers of most of the other Call of Duty games. But Black Ops is made by Treyarch, new guys. Infinityward sold the Call of Duty label to Treyarch, and my thoughts are that they did it because they are working on another huge project. Just a hunch though. I believe Black Ops is set in the vietnam war time frame. I know nothing about the single player mode(s), but the online multiplayer sounds good. Basically it is a bunch of people running around killing eachother for rewards and experience points with which can earn you new guns and other cool stuff. I may be getting the game soon, but it can wait. It certainly is not on my "MUST PLAY NOW" list.

movies based on videogames???

I know the idea sounds weird, but there are many videogame based movies. Many movies are made from successful or popular videogames, but are mostly terrible movies. Why? same reason as why videogames based on movies are bad. the two types of media are very different and when a crossover from videogame to movie or movie to videogame is made, the outcome isnt usually good. Also, the popular videogame Assassins Creed II was made into a TV show: Assassins Creed Lineage. I watched two minutes of it and couldnt stand to watch more. There have been many movies made from videogames. the reason you may not have heard of any is because they are all garbage.

videogames based on movies?

In my opionion, videogames based on movies are generally just awful. I'll start with some examples. The avatar videogame is absolutely terrible, every copy in the world should be destroyed. All of the james bond videogames were never that appealing to me, they are just boring. The star wars videogames are repetitive and boring. the idea of making a videogame out of a movie may seem cool to some, but a videogame is very different from a movie. also, most of the movie based videogames are made by crappy game designers. this explains how the videogame of such an amazing movie like avatar could be so bad. Low budget games which are based on movies never get any sales.

RDR

Today i downloaded the "Undead Nightmare" add-on for Red Dead Redemption. Red Dead Redemption is the newest game made by Rockstar Games and just recently for halloween an expansion to the game was released. RDR is set in 1911 in a fictional area in the west. The came is basically a cowboy style grand theft auto game. Undead  Nightmare is focused on a crazy zombie outbreak. The protagonist and player character, John Marston, investigates the cause of the zombies. So far it is fun killing zombies and zombified animals. But the one thing to know about zombies is: they don't die unless you shoot them in the head. And in a chaotic state like this, you cant trust anyone, because once they are bitten, they become a zombie in front of your eyes and then try to feast on your flesh. Although it was a nice add-on for halloween i feel like it wasn't really something i could play over again. It was worth the 10 dollar download.

Blog Update

Just a quick update. Sometime soon I may be having an interview with Alex Rigopulos, the CEO of Harmonix Music Systems. It will most likely be focused on Harmonix's upcoming game, Rock Band 3.

Harmonix Music Systems

Harmonix Music Systems is a subsidiary of MTV games. It is most famous for inventing the first Guitar Hero game. Since the game released, they have made Guitar Hero II, Rock Band, Rock Band 2, and The Beatles: Rock Band among many others. They started off making games for the Playstation 2 that used music as the base for the game. Players would hit certain buttons and make the track play while trying to get as many notes as possible. These games were called Frequency and Amplitude. Then the company made Karaoke Revolution volumes 1 2 and 3. Then in 2005, Harmonix created a video game which opened a whole new genre of games. This video game was Guitar Hero. In Guitar Hero, the game is played with a guitar shaped controller on which the player must strum and press fret buttons in order to play the selected song. This idea revolutionized the video game world. After Guitar Hero II, Harmonix won multiple awards and moved onto a new project. This new idea was a Guitar Hero, but not just with guitar. This idea resulted in Rock Band and Rock Band 2, both very popular games including the guitar as well as drums and vocals. The next project was The Beatles: Rock band, which consisted of all Beatles songs. Look out for the upcoming Rock Band 3.

The Best Video Game of the Past Decade

What is the best videogame of the last decade. I will be making my next project out of this. Please give feedback. If any great games of the decade are missing please leave me a comment with requests.

Here are some of the options:

• Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas (2004)
• Fallout 3 (2008)
• Halo: Combat Evolved (2001)
• Halo 2 (2004)
• Halo 3 (2007)
• Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare (2007)
• Modern Warfare 2 (2009)
• The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion (2006)
• World of Warcraft (2004)

Fallout: New Vegas (Review)

For those of you who have heard of or played Fallout 3, the following will be much easier to understand. For the past two days, I have been playing this brand new game for hours. Fallout New Vegas is a first/third person role playing game set in the year 2281, after a nuclear war destroyed most of the world. However, Las Vegas seems so remain rather untouched by nuclear warheads. The story begins with you customized player character being shot in the head and buried in a shallow grave for a package you were supposed to deliver. A robot named Victor finds you and takes you back to a real life town in Nevada called Goodsprings. A doctor fixes you up and you can leave the town to explore the "Mojave Wasteland". There are no boundaries or rules in the game, you can simply do anything you like. You can choose what groups you make friends and enemies with, you can choose to be good or evil. As you progress in the main story line by doing missions, you set out to find the man who tried to kill you. Since I have not yet gotten even close to the end of the game, I have no idea what is going to happen. I will continue with this review once I have played more and made much more progress. There may be spoilers, so watch out if you plan on playing the game.

My 2K11 Review

Where do I start? When i first popped the disk into my Xbox 360, it showed Michael Jordan in the tunnel preparing to enter the arena. Then he looked back and said, "are you ready?" He ran into the arena while his name was announced. He gave high-fives to his teammates and prepared for tipoff against the Los Angeles Lakers in game 1 of the 1991-92 Finals. I tipped the ball to the point guard, and of course, passed the ball to Jordan. After a bit of dribbling, I stopped for a shot right above the key; swish. After that shot, I proceeded to get my behind handed to me by the computer (CPU) controlled Lakers, because the gameplay was so different from 2K10. I cannot express how amazingly realistic the game is. It blew my mind how every single player and every single team plays EXACTLY as they do in real life. It is unreal how real it looks. This game, by far, is the most authentic sports simulation I have ever seen. I think i have been playing it now for two hours, and it only came out today. Forget Madden NFL 11 and FIFA 11, get NBA 2K11. The presentation of the game is so amazingly realistic, that while I was playing, my Dad came upstairs to tell me that dinner was ready, and asked me who the Celtics were playing today and started watching as I played. Unlike older NBA 2K games, the artificial intelligence of the CPU is very high. So if you make a careless pass, it will be stolen, and if you take a bad shot, it will be swatted away. The gameplay is so fluid that there are no pauses in between the player's motions. Every player in the game is exactly like the real player; from the way they dunk to their jump shot, and from their crossover move to their free throw shot. Everything imaginable about basketball is perfectly replicated in this game. It is the perfect sports simulation video game. I must be going to play more of the game. Until next time.

NBA 2K11 Tomorrow!

Oh man, I am so excited. Reviews are saying that NBA 2K11 is the best basketball video game EVER. The reviewers rave about the realism in game play and in making Michael Jordan an amazing new feature. The new Jordan's Historic Games mode perfectly recreates some of Michael Jordan's best games of his career. I was also said that this was one of the best yearly improvements in a game, ever. The new big features include different pre-game presentations and rituals for each team, halftime shows, and dynamic commentating. The ten historic games of Jordan include his famous shrug after dropping 6 three pointers in the first half over Clyde Drexler and the Trailblazers, and his famous "last game" against the Jazz to win the finals. Over all, the AI (artificial intelligence) of the players is greatly improved. There are over 100 special moves for specific players, and most of the player's animated selves look almost identical. IGN said that this game is not just the best basketball video game ever, but the best sports game of this generation. This game is going to be awesome, I can't wait for tomorrow.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zp7mZxzuc68&feature=related

GTA Controversy

Where ever Grand Theft Auto goes, it brings with it a load of controversy. If you have played or have watched someone play any of the several Grand Theft Auto games, you know that the game has a lot of "adult" content. I personally am a big fan of the GTA franchise. However I do acknowledge the responsibility that comes with playing these games. Recently, I was in San Francisco looking for a GameStop so I could buy a new copy of GTA San Andreas for my Playstation 2; because my other copy was extremely scratched up and didn't work at all. I found a store on the way to Stanford University and went in with my Dad. I went straight up to the counter and asked for a new copy of San Andreas for the PS2. Not only did the person who worked there tell my Father about the game's M (for mature) rating, but she also (to my surprise) told him specifically that because it was part of the notorious Grand Theft Auto franchise, it was one of the most provocative games out there. After my Dad asked what one could do in this game, I said, "basically you kill lots and lots of people." The GameStop employee nodded her head in agreement. I wondered why GameStop specifically instructs their employees to warn parents of the content of the Grand Theft Auto games. Yesterday I was researching Grand Theft Auto when I came across a few articles about a lawyer Jack Thompson. Thompson is a former lawyer and anti GTA activist who was the prosecution attorney for a number of GTA related cases. Jack Thompson dedicated his career to banning Grand Theft Auto games in the state of Florida, and ultimately the entire USA. His angry attitude towards judges who sided with GTA got him disbarred (basically fired). In your face, Jack Thompson.

NBA 2K11

Oh man, I can't wait to finally play as Michael Jordan. For those of you who don't know what I'm talking about, allow me to explain. Next tuesday, October 5th, 2K Sports will release their greatest NBA video game yet. Before I go on about the game's features, I want to emphasize that no NBA video game has ever featured Michael Jordan in-game. Why is that? Because Jordan never wanted himself to be in a video game, because he thought the makers would over-glorify him. And not only is the greatest of all time going to be in the game, but there will be a whole game mode centered around following and playing as Michael Jordan through his career. I downloaded and played the demo of this game, and I was extremely impressed by the improvements made from 2K10. Every player in the demo looked and played almost identically to the actual player. In this demo, you are allowed to play as the Los Angeles Lakers against the far superior Boston Celtics. I focused on passing the ball to Kobe Bryant, and on every play, I took him to the basket for a completely realistic dunk or I stayed outside and shot a three pointer. More than ever, while playing this demo, I felt like I was watching a real game on TV. Other new features in this game are post-game interviews, meeting President Obama when a team wins the championship, and other new stuff. As many of you may know, the Miami Heat is one of the most stacked teams in NBA history, and I am curious as to how unfair the game will be if one was to play with them. Alright, that's all for now. Look out for my review of this game when it comes out.

History of Videogaming

While video games are relatively new, they have evolved tremendously over time. In the 1950s to 1960s, video games became available on the market. Early games such as "Spacewar!" and other space intruder games became popular. The 1970s was the "Golden Age" of video games. New arcade games were being made and became a favorite among teens. In the 1980s, new genres of video games emerged; such as fighting games and adventure games. Many famous breakthrough games were made in the 1980s. These games were Street Fighter, Dragon's Lair, Pac-Man, Donkey Kong, and Mario Bros. New consoles like the Nintendo Entertainment System were invented, and this new tier of consoles were called "Third Generation Consoles". More games were introduced, like Final Fantasy, and The Legend of Zelda. In 1991, Nintendo released the Super Nintendo Entertainment System. This and the new Sega Genesis ushered in the Fourth Generation of consoles. Games like Sims, Starcraft, Warcraft, and Mortal Kombat were released. In the Mid to late 1990s, the Playstation and Nintendo 64 were introduced, and the Final Fantasy series had huge success. Then, in 1999, the amazing Playstation 2 was released, and shortly after, in 2001 the Sega Dreamcast and the Xbox came out. This marked a huge change in video gaming. In 2001, new legendary games came out for the PS2 and Xbox respectively. For the PS2, the breakthrough sandbox 3rd person shooter Grand Theft Auto III was released by Rockstar Games. For the Xbox, another breakthrough game came out; this one was a 1st person shooter called Halo: Combat Evolved. In my next post I will write about the Fifth Generation consoles and games. With a focus on the new Sixth Generation. Thanks for reading.

My First Blog Post Ever

Hello everyone, and welcome to my new blog. This blog will be about video games and everything about them and their makers and players. On this post, I want to write about what my recent upcoming video game interest is. A year or two ago, I started playing a game called Fallout 3 for the Xbox 360. I quickly became addicted to the game and to this day have beaten it about three times. Fallout 3 is a sandbox style RPG game. For those of you who do not know what those mean, a sandbox game is a game with an open ended map. Players can explore the area and do basically what ever they want. An RPG, or Role Playing Game, is a game in which the player creates his own in-game character and plays as them through a story in which the player makes decisions that affect things around him. Fallout 3 was a game by an already somewhat well known company, Bethesda. This company has made a similar game in the past and won many awards. The Fallout video game series is about the world after an apocalyptic nuclear war between the USA and China. Fallout: New Vegas is the newest game in the series, which will be released on october 19th. This game will be an enormous open ended game, much like Fallout 3. A few months ago, i pre-ordered Fallout: New Vegas. I can not wait to play the game, and I promise to make a post about the game once i have played it. Thanks for reading.