You may have noticed CRG has been down for a few weeks, and was a little spotty before that. Well we are now on a completely different, much better host! The old server went down unexpectedly, so some comments were lost, but that's about it (my backup was about a week old). I also got rid of all the ads!

In other news, my other roommate just bought a PS3, so at some point I might have some PS3 reviews up (though he keeps it in his room, unlike the 360 in our living room). There really aren't too many PS3 exclusive games I'm interested in playing though — LittleBigPlanet is the main one that comes to mind, and of course a new Twisted Metal if they make one.

Now we just need to get our hands on a Wii, which we've been trying to do for a year. We're all pretty broke at the moment though, so we haven't been trying that hard.

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!

With the writer's strike still on, I've had more time to play games, and I just beat this game a few minutes ago. It got such great reviews that I've wanted to play it for a while. After finishing it, do I now wish I had a magic dagger that would let me rewind time to avoid ever playing it?

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

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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.

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I finally beat the last Expert drum song. I would have done it much sooner, but the final song, "Won't Get Fooled Again," has tons of bass notes towards the end (plus we've been playing TONS of BWT mode). If I had a real bass pedal, it wouldn't have been a problem at all, but the crappy plastic pedal just wears your leg out so quickly. The song itself really isn't very hard…which is true for most of the songs. Other songs I had some trouble on:

Dead on Arrival:
This was the first song I failed on. Maybe it's because I really didn't know this song at all, but it also has a weird pattern that's pretty fast. I got it on my third or fourth try, scraping by with overdrive.

Foreplay/Long Time:
This song is fun, but the beginning is pretty tough, mostly because of the lack of rebound on the drum pads (haven't modded yet). There's a fast "L L R" pattern you need to do, but after that the song is easy.

Next to You:
I forget if I actually failed this song, but it's definitely hard. Very fast, lots of bass.

Run to the Hills:
Very fast rolls, not very complicated though. The problem was that the pads weren't registering all the hits, so I failed a few times. On my next try I played really lightly, which helped tremendously, and I passed it. It must have been pretty funny to watch.

In other news, we just got a whole bunch of DLC, including the Metallica pack. I'll have to see if I can get through Blackened, as that has tons of notes close together. Hyperspeed, please!

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!!

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I have a free month of Xbox Live Gold because I just signed up, so I figured I might as well try to get the online achievements while I can. I'm not really an online gamer for the most part, but it was fun. I was trying to get the "five-in-a-row wins" achievement.

I kept running into the same few people online — because it was late, or not many people play on Hard*, or everyone's playing Guitar.

* I would play Expert, but the songs are random, and I can't stand playing "Don't Fear the Reaper" with its ten billion bass notes in a row.

After playing Shoombabi I think two times, we played again and got "Should I Stay or Should I Go." This was the final result:

TIE! We both missed the SAME SINGLE NOTE! It wasn't even an off-beat note or anything! It was almost at the very end of the song (the 986th note, not sure how many there are total). I know I hit it, and he said he hit it too, so what's up? Either both our drums happened to glitch on us at the same time, or the game glitched. Crazy. Who else has gotten a tie (not counting 100% ties)?

Oh, and I did eventually get the achievement. :)

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Update: Regarding the probability of this happening (if it wasn't just a glitch):

Assuming there are exactly 1000 notes total, for the sake of simplicity, there's a 1/1000 chance of randomly selecting a "chosen" note. But we BOTH missed the same note, which would be:

1/1000 * 1/1000 = 1 in 1,000,000!

Correction by WildBillKickoff:

Actually, the chances of missing the same note in a scenario like that would be 1 in 1000, assuming you both intentionally missed one random note. You can't count the first 1 in 1000. It's one in a million that you would both miss that one exact note.

However, that probability is only if we CHOSE to only miss one note! But we didn't, we *accidentally* each missed only one note, and it was the same note. We could have missed more notes. So there's the probability that we each missed one note only, and the probability that it was the same note, and the probability that we were playing against each other when it happened, and…. [insert head spinning emoticon]

Anyway, the point is, it was very unlikely!

My own quick thoughts on GH3: It's a solid game. It's fun, with great songs, but a lot of it is hard for the sake of being hard. The timing window is much bigger, which makes for sloppy playing. You can pretty much just mash the buttons during the solos.

Speaking of mashing, that's basically what you have to do during "Raining Blood" Expert ("Mosh 1" section). After trying it around ten times, I got sick of it and quit, even though it was the only song I had left to beat on Expert, not counting the end boss. Then I got Rock Band. I have not played GH3 since. The Guitar Hero series will always have a place, especially playing solo; but without Harmonix, it's missing something — and I don't mean drums and a mic.

I read the following review of Guitar Hero 3 on a forum, and loved it. It really sums up a lot of people's feelings about GH3, even if they couldn't verbalize them. I asked the writer's permission to repost it here, and he agreed. So here is the full review, by ThunderPeel2001:
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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:

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