There are a whole bunch of mods that can be, and should be, done to the Rock Band drums if you're serious about playing. How do you increase the sensitivity? How do you dampen the noise? What about that crappy bass pedal that always breaks? We discuss all of these things, and the different solutions people have come up with.

Contents:

00:00 - Introduction, Pad silencers/rebound
03:16 - Rock Band Drumsoft
09:44 - Sensitivity mods
15:22 - Bass Pedals
25:00 - Good Wood Mods

34 minutes, 13.5MB:

See a quick video of the mods at the bottom of this post, along with links to all things discussed (you might even want to watch the video first so you know what the stuff looks like when you listen). I also posted some score pics below to show my drums are working pretty well.
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Could this be the shortest demo ever? Yes, this is on the "high-speed" version of the game ("throttle monkey"), and I did kill the tanks as fast as possible, but my very first try at the demo on normal wasn't much longer (30 secs?). The demo ends after you kill four tanks, so it's possible to play longer, but only if you suck.

It was pretty fun, but maybe at the 40 second mark you realize there's nothing else to do. The game got pretty mixed reviews, although it's only $5. Eh.

About a year ago I wrote a review for a product called the Thylus, a thumb stylus for the Nintendo DS. A few months ago Thylus asked me to do a promotional video for them, and here it is:

The purpose of this Rabbit Run is not to beat the level as quickly as possible, it's to show a lot of the cool weapons in the game. I could have played the whole battle with a machine gun, but that's not interesting.

Showing the controller on the screen was a bit of an experiment. This is NOT something I'm going to do for every video. I just did it in this case because, well, there are a lot of controls for Snowblind, but also because I was using a lot of the controls. The whole point of this run was to show off as many different weapons as I could, so I was constantly switching.

If you think it's interesting, let me know, and maybe I'll do it again with another game if it makes sense.

About the controls: It's possible to bring up a menu to switch weapons, but that pauses the game and really takes you out of the action. The "quick" way of switching is to use the d-pad. UP/DOWN cycles guns, LEFT cycles through Augmentations (things like invisibility, abbreviated as "AUG" below), RIGHT cycles grenades.

See run notes at the bottom of this post. See also: "Project: Snowblind" Review.

Game: Project: Snowblind
Level: Rescue (End battle only)
Developer / Publisher: Crystal Dynamics / Eidos Interactive
Game Released: February 22, 2005
System: Xbox
ESRB Rating: T (Teen)
Spoilers: Shows weapons, one battle.
Length of Run: 2:40 min.
Played By: Tommy Gun
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Game: Project: Snowblind
Level: Intro
Developer / Publisher: Crystal Dynamics / Eidos Interactive
Game Released: February 22, 2005
System: Xbox
ESRB Rating: T (Teen)
Spoilers: Intro
Played By: Tommy Gun

See also: "Project: Snowblind" Review.

Karaoke Revolution 2, "I Believe in a Thing Called Love" by The Darkness.
Sung by my friend Amber, on Expert.
Platinum Record score (23954), full combo. Game vocals are off, so the only voice you hear is hers.

As I wrote at the end of the video, this was her first try, and the game doesn't like vibrato, so she could have scored much higher. I really just sprung this on her; she was here for the holidays, so I asked if I could quickly record her since I knew she could beat the song on expert. She wasn't trying for a high score or anything, so she was a little late on some of the phrases, which also lowered her score.

Probably everyone who's ever played Donkey Konga has had the idea to play more than one bongo at once. I bet a lot of people have tried it. I figured I could do it, and it would make a good video. I realize this is nothing compared to a Pop'n Music video, but keep in mind that DK wasn't designed for this. In this video I play the Pokemon Theme in Quartet Mode (4-player) by myself, and get four full combos.

Screenshot:

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Video 1: Guitar Hero II demo - Strutter (expert) with fingering!

This is a video of me playing the KISS song Strutter (expert) on the Guitar Hero II demo. I did this so people (who haven't bought the demo) could see what expert looks like. It has a lot of three-button-chords, which are new to GH2. At the same time, I decided to show the live-action part of it (frets/strum on the plastic guitar), and put it at the top of the video. I flipped the video so it's a mirror image, that way the colors match up, making it easier to follow along.
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Game: Marc Ecko's Getting Up: Contents Under Pressure
Level: New Radius Freeway
Developer / Publisher: The Collective / Atari
Game Released: Feb 14, 2006
System: Xbox
ESRB Rating: Mature 17+ (Blood, Violence, Strong Language)
Spoilers: Just level footage, glimpses of cutscenes. Minor character spoiler.
Length of Run: 6:33 min.
Played By: Tommy Gun
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Game: Far Cry Instincts
Level: Cliffs
Developer / Publisher: Ubisoft (original game by Crytek)
Game Released: Sep 27, 2005
System: Xbox
ESRB Rating: Mature 17+ (Blood and Gore, Intense Violence, Strong Language)
Spoilers: Just level footage, no cutscenes
Length of Run: 10:47 min.
Played By: Tommy Gun

This was done on the Xbox version, but the Xbox 360 game, Far Cry Instincts Predator, is basically an upgraded port, so this run should apply there as well.
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