Cracked Rabbit Gaming » Articles and Rants

Fez is amazing! But everyone has translated the alphabet sideways. SPOILERS!

Tommy Gun — Tue, 24 Apr 2012 00:46:03 +0000

Fez is a really great game! I had no idea it had so many puzzles and riddles…I thought it was just a quirky platformer puzzle game. So you should totally buy it, not read anything else about it, and try to figure it out yourself. You can “beat” the game without solving too much, but it’s the rest of the game that has all the mysteries. It has a whole alphabet you need to decipher, and that’s the main reason for this post. So MAJOR SPOILERS ahead!

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Read the rest of Fez is amazing! But everyone has translated the alphabet sideways. SPOILERS! (1 words)

Iron Brigade “Settlement Savior” Achievement Tips (Survival mode)

Tommy Gun — Fri, 17 Feb 2012 19:55:39 +0000

I just got the achievement for this (make it to wave 30 on Settlement); it was pretty tough! Thanks to rabies for the basic loadout/strategy.

You can do this solo, but I played with a friend of mine. The difficulty scales, but I figured with both of us being fairly good players this was the best bet. The beginning is the hardest — once you get some sniper turrets set up, you’ll be gaining tons of scrap and won’t have to run all over the place, so don’t worry if it feels like you’re getting slaughtered at the start. By wave 15 our green base had only a sliver of health left, but we made it!

Trench loadout:

At least one person should have:

Core: HoneyChurch IV with Sprint+ Legs
Weapon: Albert Sniper Rifle (Pierce+)
Emplacements: Dampening Generator, Repair Crane, Sniper Turret, Shredder Turret

My friend used a bigger Trench with heavy weapons. Use whatever you’re comfortable with. He had a collection pod. If you’re playing solo, you should probably swap the repair crane for the collection pod. I mostly stayed up near the green base, and my friend stayed down near orange. Because I had the sniper rifle, I was able to help him out from up there.

Tips:

Start with all shredder turrets. They’re cheap, and at the beginning you need all the help you can get. More is better. Don’t waste scrap on other stuff yet (maybe a collection pod after a few waves).
Scrap disappears after a while, so grab it when you can, and eventually build collection pods.
Put emplacements on top of “trees.” I think you need to be on the lowest level for this to work (don’t be on a peninsula). Knobs shouldn’t be able to kill them this way, but watch for Burst Transmitters.
Build lots of sniper turrets once you start getting more scrap, and protect them from knobs with shredder turrets. Place some snipers at the end of the peninsulas, and up by the green decoy.
Focus all your fire on the Volt Dropper if you can! They do a lot of damage and ignore dampening generators, so you need to take them out as quickly as possible. Sniper turrets are what you need here, so I hope you’ve built a few by this point. When you fire at the Volt be sure to lead the target (aim a little in front of it when you fire).
Save the decoys for waves 25+ (as long as you can wait, basically).
Eventually build a repair crane somewhere in the middle, but not until you have plenty of scrap.
Turrets are dumb, so kill Jacobs first, as soon as you can.
If you’re using the Albert sniper rifle, try to line up multiple enemies when you can because of the pierce ability. If Jacobs are protecting an enemy, shoot through the enemy to hit the Jacobs; don’t wait for a clear shot.

We made it to wave 42 with this method, and would have gotten further if we had tried. After we got the achievement we relaxed and mostly let the turrets do the work, so eventually some enemies slipped by.

Double Fine’s “Trenched”: Things I’d like to see in Trenched 2 (now Iron Brigade) I just finished Double Fine’s 3rd XBLA game, Trenched (update:...

“Outland” is punishing, and not in the way you think.

Tommy Gun — Fri, 11 Nov 2011 18:14:13 +0000

I beat Outland, and overall I really liked it (I’m a huge fan of Ikaruga). I almost gave up a few times, however, because some of the boss fights are frustrating. The main reason? No halfway checkpoints! Actually, that’s not even accurate, it’s that the checkpoints come before a long stretch of nothing for some inexplicable reason. It’s like putting a checkpoint before a cutscene. Let me show you.

There’s a spider boss, but when you start the section you have to run down a hallway, then complete a quick “hit two switches” section. It might be a little tricky the first time, but it’s no big deal. After that the spider drops down, and you have to run through a bunch more stuff to get to the real fight. It takes a minute and a half to get there in this video, and he’s fast:

1:30 may not sound like a lot of time, but chances are it’s going to take you multiple tries to beat this boss. You’re going to spend 1:30 just to get to the part where you die trying to figure out the patterns. It took me four or five tries, I don’t remember. It’s frustrating, more than it is actual wasted time, and it’s needless. Just add a checkpoint there!

Example two is the final boss in the game, so don’t watch the whole video if you don’t want to spoil it (watch the first 45 seconds).

Thirty seconds of climbing up a ladder, every time you restart! Then another 15 seconds for the fight to begin. Again, not a ton of actual time, but imagine climbing that ladder ten times. If they wanted that for dramatic effect, fine, show that the first time you load the game, but if you die or restart, have a temporary checkpoint at the top of the ladder!

I don’t mind if the game is hard. Hell, you can even make the game harder, just stop punishing me by making me replay these boring sections!

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How to Fix GameStop.com

Tommy Gun — Wed, 05 Oct 2011 22:00:31 +0000

In my last post I exposed GameStop’s wish list lies. Now it’s time to fix GameStop.com, so let me outline my proposal step-by-step — but first, I’ll fix those stupid mismatching icons:

There. That took me five damn minutes, GameStop. I would be happy to send you those graphics if you’d like. Okay, so now to fix the real problems. The cornerstone of any relationship is honesty, and we can improve that in a few ways:

Step 1. Apply a liberal use of quotation marks

This menu bar could use a few changes:

No need to change the company tagline, just add a couple quotes:

They literally list some games with the normal retail price on their deals page, so:

Let’s fix that “hot item” text I hated so much in my last post, and the pop-up text:

Actually, I don’t think quotes are enough to fix that pop-up text. We’ll re-write it in a minute.

Step 2. Add asterisks where needed

A lot of people don’t consider an open box to equal new, so a quick warning:

Why does anyone buy downloadable games and DLC at GameStop?

You’ll spend more on gas driving to GameStop than you’ll get in store credit:

Step 3. Re-write pop-up text

There’s still a lot to be done to fix your reputation, but that’s a pretty good start, and I think we have a bright future ahead of us. Just stop asking me to pre-order every game.

Updated 10/12/11

More Fake GameStop Taglines When I was writing how to fix GameStop, I had...
HOT NEWS ITEM! GameStop’s Wish List lies I use wish lists on various sites to track prices...

HOT NEWS ITEM! GameStop’s Wish List lies

Tommy Gun — Mon, 26 Sep 2011 20:33:51 +0000

I use wish lists on various sites to track prices on games, and one of those sites is GameStop, everyone’s favorite store to hate™. While adding a few games, I noticed they had a warning next to them:

First of all, couldn’t they spend $20 to have someone match the background color on that icon? Anyway, scrolling through the list, I noticed that every item had that warning. Now, there’s nothing wrong with that, Amazon even lists the actual number in stock when it’s low (e.g., “Only 3 left in stock–order soon (more on the way).“). But it was pretty clear that GameStop was lying to me, as I definitely have some games on my list that are not rare or in high demand. To be absolutely sure, I added a bunch of other games to see if they’d all have that warning:(...)
Read the rest of HOT NEWS ITEM! GameStop’s Wish List lies (204 words)

Double Fine’s “Trenched”: Things I’d like to see in Trenched 2 (now Iron Brigade)

Tommy Gun — Thu, 07 Jul 2011 23:28:03 +0000

I just finished Double Fine’s 3rd XBLA game, Trenched (update: now called Iron Brigade), and loved it. I got all the achievements, which means I got gold medals on every mission (“Volcano” was tough!), and I even leveled up every weapon just because I wanted to keep playing. I beat the game in about five hours, and spent another five on gold medals/leveling. I actually wish this had been a full retail game if it meant more missions and achievements. Still, there are a lot of things they could have done to extend the replay value of this game. Here’s what I’d like to see in an update/sequel:

Split-screen co-op: No brainer. I had lots of fun playing online, but very few people used headsets, and no one I played with really strategized at all. No split-screen means I’ll never be able to play this game with my girlfriend.
Mission Leaderboards: They only have a very general leaderboard. It would be great to see mission-specific scores (lowest time to beat a boss, gold medal with fewest emplacements, etc.), and the trenches each player used to do it.
Weapon-specific challenges for each mission: By the end of the game I was sticking with three machine guns and one artillery cannon, since that worked really well. The other weapons were fun, and I wish I had more of a reason to use them (other than leveling up). Each mission could have weapon-specific challenges like “Broadcasters and Shotguns only,” different for each mission. They could even tie it into the “spoils,” where you can only unlock a great shotgun if you beat a shotgun challenge.
Randomized Missions/Trenches: They could have a co-op option where it randomizes each player’s trench. This would mean the players would have to quickly change strategies and guard different areas depending on what weapons/emplacements they were given. Maybe only one player has Flak turrets, so that player would have to collect a lot of scrap and build those while the others defend, and so on.Alternatively, they could randomize the enemies that appear, but give you some tips at the beginning so you can customize your trench accordingly. Both of these things would mean you could keep playing this game forever, as it would always be different.
Horde-style mode: You know the drill, just keep throwing tougher enemies at us until the base dies, and tell us how long we lasted. Having this option on every map with leaderboards would give everyone a reason to keep playing, and use better strategies.
Separate medals for solo and co-op: I only played a few missions solo before trying co-op, and then went back and forth. If the medals were separate, I could go back and strive for gold medals on all missions solo, but I don’t remember which ones those were.
“Vote” on next co-op mission: Anyone can choose the mission, so you’ll often get into fights with other players and keep switching it back and forth. They should allow you to vote, and either the majority wins, or it’ll take turns.
A non-pointless store: I don’t think I bought a single weapon in the game, because all the good ones are given to you. Not only that, but the best weapons aren’t even available in the store, and the normal ones don’t unlock until you already have them! So what’s the point of the store? All of the weapons should be available in the store from the start, giving me a reason to save up my money for that wicked artillery cannon, “Mr. Pancakes.”
Ability to skip dialogue: The dialogue gets really annoying when you need to keep replaying a level if you’re trying for a gold medal. Let us skip it!

While I loved Costume Quest and Stacking, Trenched is their best game yet (not counting Psychonauts of course!), and is the most worthy of a full retail release. I’m looking forward to any DLC they release, and really hope for a sequel.

Update: “Trenched” (on facebook) commented on this post!:

Trenched: Great list! These are all awesome suggestions. Thanks for putting it together!

Iron Brigade “Settlement Savior” Achievement Tips (Survival mode) I just got the achievement for this (make it to...

Kodu Game Lab is out! Remember Kodu? Anyone?

Tommy Gun — Thu, 23 Jul 2009 22:34:54 +0000

Kodu, you may remember, is the game programming tool shown at CES by “actual 12-year-old girl,” Sparrow. It was cartoony and cute and bright, and many people wrote it off instantly: “LBP rip-off!”, “Stupid rock-carrying game?!”, and so on. I really wanted to try it out, and now, apparently, it’s out. I say apparently because it’s gotten almost no press, and the only way I found out was by randomly browsing the Community Games channel and seeing it there. (Okay, Joystiq and other sites did post about it, but I had relatives over for the past two weeks so maybe I just missed it.) Still, after the CES demo I thought its release would be a much bigger event, and it would show up somewhere on the Xbox dashboard (Spotlight). It’s too bad it wasn’t released on XBLA rather than the CG channel, the place where no one dares tread.

Anyway, I’ve been playing around with it for the past few days, and it’s great! You really can create all sorts of games, from FPSs, to side-scrollers, to racing games. The interface is very well designed, for the most part, using nested pie menus for all of the actions/objects. There are lots of different lighting options and ground materials to help change the look of your games, so don’t think everything created has to be blue-skies-and-rainbows. The programming is easy, but surprisingly deep if you learn how everything works. Because it was initially designed for kids, it’s also very fast. You can go from editing your level to playing it in under a second.

I was programming a dual-stick shooter for a video I hope to put up, and my roommate started watching. “What happens when you run into the UFOs?” he asked.
“They blow up and damage your ship.”
“Is that what always happens?”
“Well no, that’s what I made them do. I can program it to do whatever. I can make them…turn into apples, if I wanted to.”
“Do it!” Literally twenty seconds later I had it working that way, just for fun. The Kode (yes, I just called it that):
WHEN bump puck DO vanish me
WHEN bump puck DO create apple
Crazy how simple it can be, isn’t it?

There are definitely limitations though. One of my biggest complaints is that not every object has every option available to it — you can create a tree that shoots missiles, but a soccer ball can’t follow a path the way lights and bots can. I was hoping each object would simply look different, and have sliders set differently (bounciness, speed, etc.), but could be programmed however you want. If you like how one vehicle controls, but wished you could use a different 3D model, you’re out of luck. But this is where extreme creativity shines. With these limitations, how far can you take it? Some game types seem impossible, but someone will figure out how to make it work. Kodu comes with a bunch of samples and prebuilt games, so you can learn how the more advanced games are programmed (they’re all editable). Be sure to check out “gawlf” to see how they brilliantly used the health bar to act as your swing power meter.

Did I mention it’s only five dollars, which is a steal? I easily would have paid $20, and with a more robust system it could have been a retail game. I should mention that Kodu does a pretty poor job at introducing you to the game. They desperately need a “play tutorials” button on the main menu, with a list of tutorials that get checked off as you go along, each one with a hint system (where’s Clippy when you need him?*). There are just three tutorials that come with Kodu, mixed in with the other games, and they don’t actually explain anything. I guess they thought it was so well designed it didn’t need any explanation. So I recommend watching some video tutorials (online — none are included) first to get an idea of it before you jump in (I hope to have some tutorials up in the near future).

You won’t be able to make the next Gears of War, and you won’t even be able to make exactly the arcade game you had in mind, but new ideas will appear, and you’ll have fun doing it. If you have kids, buy Kodu. Even if they can’t use it on their own, you can create things with them. If you’ve ever had a game idea of your own, buy Kodu. It’s designed to get you thinking like a programmer, and it succeeds.

Other Notes:
Right now game sharing sucks — you have to be friends with the person, and both be running Kodu at the same time. They are working on a patch though, which will add three dedicated servers! There’s also a bug where levels seem to get deleted — if it happens, restart Kodu and it might fix it (more info here). The patch will also fix this and other issues.
The patch is out! Delete Kodu and re-download if you don’t have it (there’s no “update” function).

Links:
Kodu fan forum
Audio interview with Matt MacLaurin — back when it was called Boku.
The Kodu Blog

* Please don’t include Clippy. In anything. Ever.

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Dark Sector, and Poor Game Design

Tommy Gun — Mon, 19 May 2008 09:30:10 +0000

My roommate just signed up for GameFly, and got Dark Sector. I was never really all that interested in the game, but I figured I might as well play it since he’s only renting it. I’m not going to write a full review since I haven’t finished it (and probably never will), but I want to talk about a few things. For the record, I got to chapter 7 (out of 10) before I stopped playing.

Quick Thoughts

Dark Sector isn’t a terrible game if you’re a fan of the genre, but there are a lot of weaknesses. Enemies respawn far too often, which amounts to you ducking behind a wall for ten minutes shooting the same enemies. It copies Gears of War too much, including things that don’t make sense: as GiantBomb pointed out, your running and sprinting speed is the same as GoW — which makes no sense here as Hayden (your character) is a skinny guy, not a giant man in armor.

The “glaive” is great, and is one of the only things that sets this game apart. It’s a blade that acts as a boomerang; throw it to slice enemies in half, and it’ll come back to you. You’ll gain an “aftertouch” ability which lets you slow down time and actually direct the glaive mid-flight, which is what I spent most of the game doing.

Aside from that it’s a pretty standard shooter.

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Read the rest of Dark Sector, and Poor Game Design (1,010 words)

A Musician’s View on the Rock Band Phenomenon (link)

Tommy Gun — Wed, 09 Jan 2008 14:37:36 +0000

Ever wonder what real musicians think of Rock Band? I don't normally post links to other sites, but this is a great little essay. He started off as a hater, having never played it, but actually went out and bought it. He tells the story of playing Rock Band with his friends, and how he got hooked:

A Musician's View on the Rock Band Phenomenon

Kudos for being open minded and actually playing the game!

Rock Band: Expert Pro Drums 100% flawless scores Here are some of the more notable 100%s I’ve gotten...

Review: “Rock Band” Part 2: Bullet points!

Tommy Gun — Wed, 02 Jan 2008 14:34:28 +0000

This is part 2 of my review, also see part 1.

Quick Summary: Rock Band is Guitar Hero/Drum Hero/Karaoke Revolution combined. Made by Harmonix, the creators of Guitar Hero, it's the ultimate party music game.

The game is awesome.: I’m not going to focus on all the little good things here, so let me just say that I love the game. There are some major usability issues that I’ll be discussing in the future, but the venues, characters, and core gameplay are fantastic.
Stars are displayed as you earn them.: You always know exactly how well you’re doing because the stars have orange circles around them. They fill up as you’re playing, and when you earn another star it “dings.” This can anger you when you’re one pixel away from five stars, but it also creates some cool moments. I finished the Vocal Solo Tour on Medium (my voice sucks). On a few of the songs, I just barely got five stars. I was singing “Suffragette City,” and at the end saw I was so close to five stars. I had already activated my overdrive, and just had a tiny bit left. The very last part of the song isn’t singing, it’s just yelling “Suff-ra-gette!” at the right time. Well I literally got five stars on the last syllable of the song!
The solo buttons on the guitar make tapping much easier.: Not just during the official solo sections, but for any HOPOs, you can use your right hand to hit the small orange button since it’s so close to the strum bar.
The audience sings along.: During certain parts of the song, the audience will actually sing along in the background. It’s great.

The avatars are tied to their instruments.: This part was really confusing me until I actually played it. When you create a character, you do it with the instrument you’re using. After that, you can ONLY use that character on that instrument! So when I went to play the Solo Tour, I had to create TWO more characters in order to sing and play guitar, since my original character could ONLY play the drums. Stupid. This was because our singer and guitarist were on different Xbox profiles. You also can never change height/weight/face of your character, so choose wisely! (You can change hair/clothes later.)
To buy new songs, you need to quit to the dashboard.: There’s no in-game menu for it, you actually have to quit the game, go to the dashboard, find Rock Band on marketplace, then buy songs. It’s just one giant list, and will be very cluttered once more songs are available. (And be careful not to buy a song pack, and also buy the songs again individually.)
Fan limit depends on lowest difficulty.: In BWT mode, there is a cap on the number of fans you can get, depending on the lowest difficulty someone is playing on. So if ONE person is playing on Medium, and the others are playing on Expert, Medium counts. You’ll still gain money, but no more fans once you’re at the limit. For a longer discussion on this, see my future posts.
Drum bass notes “bounce” the screen.: Every time you hit a bass note on the drums, the drum lanes “bounce” on screen. It’s very subtle, but I find it pretty annoying. I’m already getting tunnel vision from the game, and this doesn’t help. Maybe it’s cool on Easy, but on the harder difficulties there are constant bass notes. I don’t really notice it much anymore, but then what’s the point? If you see it, it’s annoying; if you don’t, why bother putting it in?
DLC songs are not well implemented: When you buy new songs, they will appear in Random setlists, or you can use them in “make your own” sets. It’s better than nothing, but I really hope they’ll change this. More about this in future posts.

Band Leader: You need to choose a “band leader” to play BWT mode. After they’re chosen, they ALWAYS have to be playing, and can’t switch instruments. So if you start with the leader on drums, and later want to play guitar/mic with someone, you can’t. Someone will always have to play the drums, or you’ll have to start a new band or play quickplay. Recommendation: make the guitarist the leader, since you’ll probably always have someone on guitar. If you want to play BWT by yourself (must play two instruments), make the vocalist the leader, and then you can switch your other instrument whenever you want. You CAN change your band name whenever you want, so that’s good.

The future is definitely bright for Rock Band. They’re offering new song downloads every single week, with full albums to come. Two dollars per song is more than I had hoped they’d be, but you have to remember you’re basically getting three games in one here. They are offering some songs for $1, but it’s only for a limited time. You also aren’t forced to buy bundles, so that’s great. The game is so solid, with new songs coming in all the time, you could be playing this for years and years. I know I will be.

Rock Band: Expert Pro Drums 100% flawless scores Here are some of the more notable 100%s I’ve gotten...

Review: “Rock Band” Part 1: hardware, difficulty, modes

Tommy Gun — Wed, 02 Jan 2008 13:28:10 +0000

Note: we have it for the Xbox 360. Each person needs to be signed into an Xbox profile (it can be the same one). Some things may be a bit different on PS3.

I started writing this review right after getting the game, two months ago, and have since added to it. There is so much more to say about the game, though, that I have left some things out to talk about later. I have broken it into two parts, and apologize for the unorganized format. It's not so much a review as it is a discussion.

Quick Summary: Rock Band is Guitar Hero/Drum Hero/Karaoke Revolution combined. Made by Harmonix, the creators of Guitar Hero, it's the ultimate party music game.

Instruments:

I actually love the guitar. The neck is a bit smaller, so it doesn’t hurt my fingers as much (I have small hands), but it’s also longer, which is nice. I absolutely love the feel of the fret buttons, it’s something you really just have to try. The strum bar is…weird. It’s kind of nice because you don’t have to move it very far, so you can alt strum really fast. However, there’s no click, and it’s so “soft” that it’s not as easy to keep a constant rhythm. So far it has not broken, after two months of play.

The drums: well, I’m pretty biased here, because I play Drummania on a Yamaha DTXplorer set in my room. So, compared to that, these aren’t great. But compared to the home drummania controller, these are way better.

The drum pads are hard, and LOUD. It takes some getting used to the placement of them, and they almost drown out the music. Mine don’t register rolls very well, which is a problem others have had. This is serious. There are songs that I’ve failed on Hard, because it has a string of red notes, and the drum simply can’t keep up with it, even though I’m hitting them. I’m going to get a replacement and hope it’s better. I’ve done the “tape mod” and beat the game on Expert, but it’s not perfect.

I was worried about the bass pedal, but it’s actually better than I expected, and pretty easy to press. Be careful not to step too hard in the middle of it, because you can feel it flex and other people have broken theirs. After beating Expert, I now loathe the pedal. It is okay for a plastic pedal, but boy does it wear out your leg. Since there’s no rebound, it’s very hard to sustain rapid beats. I hope to do one of the “real bass pedal mods.”

I also didn’t get the official “Rock Band” drumsticks, I got cheaper, rough (blank) ones. I wouldn’t use them anyway, since I have my own, but hey, I want some Rock Band drumsticks.

The microphone is good. Just a USB mic, but it’s solid, with a Rock Band logo.

Difficulty:

I was worried about the guitar difficulty, but now I’m totally fine with it. It IS easier than Guitar Hero (save for the DLC), but that doesn’t mean it’s boring. Since the guitar takes some getting used to, it’s probably a good thing they didn’t rival GH3. Plus, GH3 was hard for the sake of being hard, where RB is more logical.

When we started the BWT mode, I played drums on Expert. Compared to Drummania, it’s considerably easier. Due to my dislike of the pedal, and the fact that my other bandmates (roommates) play on Easy/Medium, I just play on Hard for the BWT. There’s no incentive to play higher, and we play for long periods at a time. The only other complaint is the lack of hyperspeed! I play Drummania on 3.5x hi-speed, and some of these songs really need it.

Difficulty Requirements:

In BWT mode, some setlists must be played with everyone on Hard/Expert, which some people don’t like. I don’t mind it, it gives the game legs — keep playing and you’ll get better, and there will be new stuff you can do. But for people who don’t like it, maybe they should have made it like the wagers (e.g., “get five stars for double the fans”). Play on Hard and you’ll get something extra if you pass it. At the very least, I wish the setlist had an icon next to it telling you what difficulty is required. It’s frustrating going through all the venues, finding a setlist you want to play, and then finding out it’s too hard for my roommates.

Logo Creator:

The logo creator is cool, and easy to use. You can grab different pieces of art, change the size/rotation/color, and use multiple layers. The annoying thing is that it takes a million button clicks! You have to select a layer, then select “modify,” then “rotate,” etc. It would be much better to have quick-menus when you pull the triggers. Hold L to select a layer, hold R to select modification — that sort of thing.

Rock Band vs. Karaoke Revolution:

I have Karaoke Revolution, and we’ve had big parties where we all play. But somehow, the RB karaoke is even better, and shouldn’t be underestimated. The scoring is even better in RB.

KR has a meter you need to fill up by singing on pitch. On Expert, you have a bigger meter. RB is different, in that you actually can be a little off pitch on the easier difficulties, but on Expert the “pitch line” is thinner so you need to be more accurate. In other words, in KR your pitch has to be dead-on, most of the time. In RB your pitch can be slightly off the entire time.

The only downside is that RB doesn’t have duet mode with the band.

Tutorials:

The tutorials are pretty cool, because they’re taught by people from the bonus song bands. The vocal tutorial is taught by Helen from Vagiant, while the drum one is taught by the dude from The Konks. I didn’t bother with the guitar tutorial.

Practice Mode:

You can change the speed of the replay by pressing the D-pad, which is great, because it also automatically loops the section you chose. So you can just keep playing it, gradually speeding it up, without ever stopping.

Disconnected instruments:

Just a tip: we accidentally bumped the cord or something, and the mic said it was disconnected. Even after completely unplugging, and plugging it back into the hub, it wouldn’t work. The same thing happened with the drum later that night. If that happens, unplug the whole hub from the Xbox, then reconnect it.

Read part 2 of the review »

Rock Band: Expert Pro Drums 100% flawless scores Here are some of the more notable 100%s I’ve gotten...

Half-Life 2: Episode 2 – “Little Rocket Man” Gnome Achievement Tips

Tommy Gun — Fri, 28 Dec 2007 04:48:33 +0000

When I first read about the gnome achievement, I knew I had to do it (partly because it sounded fun, partly because I love Amelie). I had already beaten Episode 2 on the PC, but we just got it for the 360, so I wanted to play through it again anyway (points!).

This actually isn’t as hard as you might think. There are a lot of battles where you can just set him down somewhere until after the fight. If you know the game (I assume everyone will have played through this episode at least once before trying this achievement!), you’ll know which rooms you’ll be coming back to, so you can leave him for large sections of the game. The rocket is found well before the end of the game, so it’s only a few hours of play anyway.

This is not a guide for the whole episode, just some tips on where to safely leave the gnome.

SPOILERS!! SPOILERS!! SPOILERS!! SPOILERS!! SPOILERS!! SPOILERS!!

Getting the Gnome

About five or ten minutes into the game, when Alyx first turns on a monitor to talk to her dad, the gnome (also known as Trey by some) is under an empty wooden bunkbed, on the floor (to the left of where Alyx climbs up to get the plug). If you can’t find it, see the gnome location in this video.

The Beginning

This part of the game is actually a little annoying, as it consists of a lot of gnome carrying. This means you cannot sprint, and you cannot keep a weapon out (but you can always drop the gnome and your gun will be ready). Don’t worry, it’ll get better.

The Antlion Attack (in the tunnels)

You can leave the gnome anywhere, but I would warn against anyplace it might get hit by an antlion. Don’t leave it down by Alyx, as it could fall down the elevator shaft. I chose to put it up on the platform, away from the tunnels. This also allowed me to keep an eye on him.

After the attack is done, LEAVE HIM HERE. You will be back to heal Alyx, so go have fun getting the larval extract.

Double Antlion Attack (outside)

I set the gnome on top of the antlion repelling machine while I killed the two large antlions. Anywhere is fine, as long as you don’t lose him.

Getting the Car

This is the section where Alyx mans the sniper rifle, and you go through all the sludge up to the bridge where the car is waiting. As I read on the aforementioned blog, you have to be really quick with the gravity gun if you leave the gnome with Alyx here (and you definitely don’t want to take the gnome with you, ugh). Since I knew what was involved, I thought of a little trick to take care of this problem. I stacked a crate on top of a small health pack, against the door, with the gnome on top:

After I went all the way around and got the car, I was able to hit the switch to open the door, and have him fall through (with a little push from the Vortigaunt). You can see me do this trick in this video (sorry for the quality, I was being lazy and just filmed the tv screen):

Even easier:

Roger: Here’s a shortcut when you have to get the car. You can blast the gnome onto bridge (the part where you will land the car) if you lean out the opening that’s close to the sniper rifle Alyx uses. Be sure to save as it took me a couple tries.

My way was more fun though, I like making things overly complicated. ;) I guess it’s the Rube Goldberg part of me.

Now you’re going to have to drive the gnome around with you, which isn’t much fun. Other people have been able to wedge the gnome in the car by placing him on the back window, driving forward and slamming on the brakes, causing him to get stuck. If you can do that, great, otherwise I’d put him right here, behind the steering wheel:

That keeps him from moving forward or back, though if you turn sharply he’ll still slide out. If you’re wondering why my health is so low in that shot, it’s because I had just jumped off a cliff to save Mr. Gnome who fell out of the car.

The Hunter Attack

Alyx will contact White Forest, and you’ll have to fight a bunch of Hunters. I think I left the gnome by the car, and no one messed with him.

The Advisor

Not much to say here, but note that after the “cutscene” your car will be teleported to the front, but the gnome will not, if you left him in the car. So you’ll have to go find him, or just don’t leave him in the car.

The Hunter-Chopper Attack

This is the hardest part of the achievement, normally, but I did it the easy way. It’s hard because you need to drive fast enough so the helicopter doesn’t shoot you, but slow enough so the gnome doesn’t fall out. Well instead of that, I first shot the gnome as far as I could with the gravity gun, towards the train yard. Quickly jumping into the car, I sped down to where the gnome landed, jumped out, shot him farther, kept driving. When I got to the train yard (after breaking through the fence), I grabbed the gnome and left him underneath the very first train car.

I completed this section like normal, and drove through the train yard to the tunnel where it loads the next section. After it loaded, I hit reverse to make it reload the previous section, but now the helicopter was gone, so I drove back, got Mr. Gnome, and continued on. Maybe I could have left the gnome all the way back at the house, but I wasn’t sure if this would work, and it was pretty easy to get him that far.

It’s also possible to destroy the chopper, though you’ll have to do it again here:

Destroying the Hunter-Chopper

Just leave him under one of the train cars for protection. One of the mines knocked him away, but he didn’t go far.

Disabling the Autogun

After you destroy the helicopter and go inside, you can leave the gnome in the garage. You will come back to this room to get the car. You need to go around, ducking through the yard of dead cars to destroy the autogun. After you do that and come back, the car will be fixed, inside, and the door will be open; no tricks needed, anywhere is fine.

Ambush at White Forest Inn

Your car gets trapped between two forcefields here. I ran inside with the gnome, and put him safely in the fireplace:

No one bothered him here, and I wanted to make sure I’d be able to find him again.

You can leave him here as you run back up the road to knock out the energy ball, and you’re just about done. You will continue driving, meet DOG, and get to White Forest…

Bye Mr. Gnome

The rocket is right inside, so don’t pass it up and keep fighting! You basically have the whole last chapter left, without the gnome, thankfully.

Toss him in, shut the door, and you’re done. On the 360, it will pop up the achievement icon right away. What do you get? Thirty lousy points. That’s the downside of having so many freakin’ games on one disc.

If you have any more tips, post them in the comments.

Iron Brigade “Settlement Savior” Achievement Tips (Survival mode) I just got the achievement for this (make it to...

Rock Band: Two #1 (in the WORLD*!) Expert drum scores, leaderboards question, Rock Band vs. Drummania.

Tommy Gun — Mon, 03 Dec 2007 08:14:20 +0000

Update: see lots of my 100% Rock Band 3 Pro Drum scores in this post.

That’s right, I have two of the HIGHEST ROCK BAND DRUM SCORES in the WORLD*!

Okay, this isn’t nearly as impressive as it sounds, but I’ve gotta milk this for all it’s worth, since this’ll surely last a whole…hour? (day? week?) Actually the first one is pretty good, five gold stars:

That was my fourth try, and it was so close to 100%. I missed maybe two notes (why no advanced stats?)! It’s an easy song, but there’s this part where it throws an extra snare note in, so it’s red/yellow, red/yellow. Everywhere else the second is a single yellow, so it always threw me off, and I missed a couple notes. I can definitely get 100% if I remember that.

Here’s my other #1, but really, it wasn’t a very good run at all (98% I think). It was on my first or second try:

Clearly, not many people are playing these songs, because I was nowhere near flawless. Both of these songs are downloadable, so not everyone has them. And most people are probably fighting for high scores on Metallica or whatever they think is the hardest song. And only the U.S. currently has Rock Band. *cough* Also, pretty much everyone, including me, has broken drums right now. Once everyone starts modding, things will be very different.

As far as the game goes, I have a big advantage here, because I play a lot of Drummania. To be honest though, I’m only an average drummania player (or a bad one, compared to most youtube videos). Most people who bought Rock Band have never played the drums before, so they’re learning for the first time how surprisingly difficult the bass pedal is — something I learned the hard way a few years ago. The truth is, pretty much any good DM player could destroy every song in this game (more on this in a minute).

Leaderboards vs. 100% scores:

This raises an interesting question: what happens to the leaderboards when people get 100%? This is different from guitar for two reasons:

Guitar can activate overdrive anytime, which means people will be able to find better “routes.” Yes, drum overdrive gives you a choice, but it’s very limited, and waiting can actually can be detrimental because it’ll take away notes.
There’s also a guitar technique called “squeezing” where you activate SP right after a note, and hit the last note early, so it’ll still count (not sure if this works in RB though, it was a GH thing). Basically you just get a couple extra notes under star power.
Guitar can whammy more overdrive out of sustained notes, which drums can’t do. Even if it’s just a split-second more, that can be enough to give a slightly higher score.

So when people get 100% on drum songs, and use all their overdrive…that should be the highest possible score. What happens to the leaderboards? Do the newest ones go to the top, or the oldest? If it’s the oldest, there should be a mad rush to 100% every song you can, first, to secure your spot.

There’s another interesting (weird?) thing about the leaderboards: you’re competing against all difficulties! You can see the checkmarks at the left side; they’re color-coded (black, bronze, silver, gold) to what difficulty it was played on. I guess Expert will always have the highest possible score? Still, not really fair, is it? Why would people playing on Easy want to know how they rank against Expert? I suppose this prevents Expert players from spamming the Easy leaderboards, but…eh.

Drummania vs. Rock Band:

So, back to Drummania. It’s way harder than Rock Band drums. Go watch any of the Extreme difficulty DM videos on youtube, and your head will explode. For a point of reference, here are two (the center column is the bass):

Children’s Sketchbook extreme FC (seeing what insane things people can Full Combo in DM makes RB look like child’s play):

DD4 ext speed x1 — his score isn’t very good, but he’s playing on 1x, which is really hard to read, but it makes for a good notechart comparison because RB is fairly slow:

UPDATE: Just to clarify a bit, the above videos are not representative of the whole game. The stuff I play in DM is much easier, and more musical. I also don’t think RB needs to be that hard. I was simply comparing the hard DM songs to the hard RB songs, because people were saying that RB is really insane on Expert. I just wanted to show that it isn’t, and they should appreciate that while they can. ;) Compare it to a real drum solo, and you’ll also see how much further we have to go.

One last screenshot. This one is by no means a high score (#1 is around 250k?), but just more proof that Rock Band isn’t very hard — because, again, I’m not a very good drummer. This was my first time playing this song on Expert (I played it a couple times on Hard), so it was a sight-read (I believe this is in the second-to-last tier of drum songs):

I was being cautious with the overdrive, since I didn’t know if the song would get harder, otherwise I would have had a higher score.

Right now it seems the hardware is holding a lot of people back, not the songs, but I’m sure we’ll see more insane stuff as DLC.

Rock Band: Expert Pro Drums 100% flawless scores Here are some of the more notable 100%s I’ve gotten...

Some Thoughts on TimeShift

Tommy Gun — Sun, 18 Nov 2007 06:10:51 +0000

I had been looking forward to TimeShift for a while, but getting closer to release my excitement had been waning a bit. People sounded a bit unimpressed, the time powers weren’t really as interesting as they first seemed, and the delays meant it was no longer as groundbreaking as it may have been. I was able to borrow the Xbox 360 version from a friend, so I quickly played through it (I think it only took around 10 hours to beat). Overall, it was a fun, solid game. But, I feel like there were many things they missed out on.

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Elite Beat Agents song list revealed!

Tommy Gun — Wed, 18 Oct 2006 04:47:28 +0000

We don’t normally post news items here, but since we run one of the largest Ouendan fansites, we just had to comment.

It’s finally here, via Wired’s Game|Life, the Elite Beat Agents song list:

Walkie Talkie Man – Steriogram

ABC – Jackson Five

Sk8er Boi – Avril Lavigne

I Was Born to Love You – Queen

Rock This Town – Stray Cats

Highway Star – Deep Purple

Y.M.C.A. – Village People

September – Earth, Wind and Fire

Canned Heat – Jamiroquai

Material Girl – Madonna

La La – Ashlee Simpson

You’re the Inspiration – Chicago

Survivor – Destiny’s Child

Without a Fight – Hoobastank

Believe – Cher

Let’s Dance – David Bowie

Jumpin Jack Flash – Rolling Stones

Makes No Difference – Sum 41

The Anthem – Good Charlotte

I actually waited a day to post this just so I could get over my initial feelings. My first reaction was shock, and sickness. Avril? ASHLEE? WHAT? I just didn’t know what to do. I felt so lost and confused, like that time in High School when I really liked this cheerleader, but then I heard her telling her friend how much she loved Star Wars: Episode 1. When something so good clashes with something so bad, it feels like you just got punched in the stomach. That’s how you made me feel, EBA song list.

The “best comment” award goes to BLADEMARU:

La La….f’n La La made it on that list.

Why not throw Hollaback Girl and London Bridge on there too, then we’ll have a trifecta of crap.

I couldn’t agree more. Thankfully, those didn’t make it. If you actually don’t know those songs, trust me, you’re lucky.

Keiichi Yano, the EBA designer, said, “Also there are obviously songs that are just rhythmically fun to play!” I’m sure that’s true with probably all of those songs. Pop music is catchy, without a doubt. But I would rather stab my DS in the face than go for the high score on an Ashlee song. I can only hope that, as with Ouendan, these are all covers, and sound much different than the originals. After all, one of my biggest problems with Ashlee is Ashlee. Now there’s just the problem with her music being a pile of garbage, but Mr. Clean teamed up with Scrubbing Bubbles can’t help that.

My other problem with the list is that some of these songs are overplayed in general (YMCA), and some of these are even overplayed in other music games: “ABC” is in Taiko Drum Master, “Believe” and “Let’s Dance” are in DDR, “Rock This Town” is in Donkey Konga, and “The Anthem” is in Donkey Konga 2 — but I guess that’s just what I get for playing so many music games. For most people, that won’t be a problem.

I admit that there’s more to the game than just the music; the stories are a big part of it. However, after the first few times, I skip all the cutscenes and go for high scores, which leaves just the music. And I will never be okay with “La La.”

In the end, I just have to remember that there are only a couple songs on there that I really hate, and overall it’s a good list. I’m sure it’ll still be fun, and I’m still excited about it. Some people are saying that if you’re a true Ouendan fan, you should buy EBA no matter what. I disagree. But even if you hate half the songs on it, you’ll have fun with the other half. Plus, if it sells well, there’s always the chance of a sequel, and you might really like the songs on that one.

HOT NEWS ITEM! GameStop’s Wish List lies I use wish lists on various sites to track prices...

Why we play Guitar Hero instead of “the real thing.”

Tommy Gun — Thu, 12 Oct 2006 19:30:39 +0000

After the amazing response to the Guitar Hero videos I put up, I just wanted to take a moment to respond to some of the comments.

It seems for every Guitar Hero video posted by anyone, there will inevitably be comments like, “Go buy a real guitar!”, “What’s the point?”, “Get a life!”, and so on. I think people overestimate how much time it takes to learn how to play these games. If you play other music/rhythm games, the concept is similar and the learning curve is a lot lower. Even if you’re playing for the first time, it’s pretty simple.

Here is a list of reasons why people play Guitar Hero instead of the real thing:
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Nintendo bit Generations games originally to be two per cart?

Tommy Gun — Sun, 20 Aug 2006 23:36:33 +0000

While a lot of people love the new Nintendo bit Generations games for the GBA, many people (myself included) think they’re priced a little too high. Why couldn’t they put a few on one cart, and/or all of them on one DS cart, and sell it at full price? Well I’ve been messing around with the save files, and found something interesting — there is a second section in most of the save files for a second game:
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The best Game Boy cartridge case mod

Tommy Gun — Wed, 09 Aug 2006 03:30:45 +0000

Okay, let’s be realistic here — we’ve grown up. We all have fond memories of playing bulky gray Game Boys when we were supposed to be doing homework, or getting that sexy new Game Boy Pocket in the killer ice blue limited edition color. Maybe you still play it, maybe you sold it off when you got a GBA, or maybe it’s collecting dust in some drawer. But chances are, you still have some Game Boy cartridge cases lying around somewhere. So what are we to do with all those old cases?
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Stop making me Crazy.

Tommy Gun — Tue, 27 Jun 2006 21:47:00 +0000

I shop at used game stores a lot. The GameStop near me has been having “buy 2 get 1 free” since December, so I’ve been buying tons of games. The thing is, I always feel like they’re judging me every time I buy something (usually many things). I’ll get comments like, “Oh, well at least you’re getting ______.” So every other game I got is total crap? Listen, I know you work at a game store, and you don’t know me, but that doesn’t mean I just randomly pick stuff off the shelves because of the pretty boxes. I know what games I’m buying. What exactly are the qualifications needed to work at a used game store, anyway?

To be fair most of the people seem cool, and seem to really like games, but do they have to be so damn condescending all the time?
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Read the rest of Stop making me Crazy. (718 words)

Fable: The Lost Chapters — The choice is yours…sort of.

Tommy Gun — Wed, 21 Jun 2006 15:43:55 +0000

I beat the game last week. The original content took me just under ten hours, and the whole game took about 13 hours, which is really short for an RPG, and even short for a regular game. I did avoid a lot of the side-quests (didn’t really interest me, although I did get married twice, and totally scored like four times!), and there were plenty of other things to do — find all the silver keys, open all the demon doors, etc. Then obviously you can play through multiple times and try to be 100% evil, 100% good, a pure mage, a pure archer, etc.
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