So I managed to rack up another night of playing GH:WT till 1am again, not the best idea when you have to wake up at 630 the next morning.  Complaining aside… I am really enjoying the game.  Last night I decided to give the guitar a go (due to the wife getting tired of my “thwacking” on the drums).   As I am and have always been… horrible at GH, I kept difficulty to Medium (I know… lol) and definitely enjoyed it.  

The track list shines well in this version of GH and the Online Play portion is much better than I had originally though.  The Matchmaking ability turned out to work fairly well as it placed me with a full band about 3 times in a row.  I still think the online portion could use some polish, but we will have to wait on that.

The guitar is so nice, a whammy bar that mimics the real deal and the touch pad for those tricky tapping (think Eddie Van Halen) riffs work quite well.  

Almost forgot to mention: I tried the tape trick with my orange cymbal and had great results.  It almost got a bit too sensitive though, so I had to take a bit of tape off.  All in all I am quite satisfied with the drum set and the game as a whole.

I can’t wait to get some people over so we can have some full band rock outs!

Ok so on the way home last night I stopped at Gamestop and returned my 4 day old “Used” purchase of The Force Unleashed.  I then applied the 50 bucks to the purchase of the Guitar Hero World Tour “Bundle” for Playstation 3.

Fast forward about an hour…. and I am at home in the den unpacking and setting up the instruments.  First impressions were great: The drum set is solid and the stand is made of heavy plastic connectors and metal tubes.  A real set of wooden drumsticks and realy nice rubberized drum heads and cymbals. 

The guitar is far and away better than previous versions, but I decided to stick to drums and vocals today.. soa  review on the guitar will have to come later.

Being a musician in school and in the military, I usually do well with games like this.. but I can tell you this:  Drumming is HARD and I had to set the difficulty to “Medium” to get through the songs with a decent percentage.

My one gripe is… the drum heads and cymbals are NOT as sensative as I would like.  After a bit of googling, I found that this seems to be a widespread problem that can be remedied by… you guessed it… duct tape.  

So tonight I will probably give the duct tape solution a go and see what kind of results it yields.

On to the game:  gfx are amazing, the interface is superb and the track list so far is really good.  They even threw in a Steely Dan song that definitely made my day.  As for vocals… I found it to be just like Kareoke Revolution on the PS2 so I managed to do quite well on Hard mode.  

Online play is a bit daunting… finding/hosting a band is easy enough.. but getting people to join the band is a pain.  There is no in-game communication with other members but all in all its not bad.  I figure the Activision will eventually release an enhancement to this portion of the game.  

More to follow, we will see how the drum sensitivity issue pans out and how the guitar works in my next review.

Like many other people who like things a little of the beaten path, I reserved Little Big Planet as soon as I saw the first trailer for it. Unlike my more enthusiastic gaming cousins I didn’t look into what the game was about, opting instead for surprise. I must admit shocked is probably a bit more apt. The game astounds on many levels, but I’ll break it down into a top five:

1. Graphics Graphics Graphics- At 720p it’s not the most graphically amazing game on the market, but the artists did a phenomenal job of bringing to life the textures of the crazy world that is little big planet.
2. Co-Op to the extreme- Got a friend you want to play with? How about two or three friends? With LBP you can play with 1-4 people online or offline. The game even has special missions for the co-op gamers.
3. Recidivism- The levels have enough going on that the odds of you finding all the goodies in one shot are pretty slim. This means lots of re-playability.
4. Ageless- This game has a little bit for everyone. Rated 7+ it’s great for kids but the parents can find bits and pieces of grown-up entertainment in there as well -such as a sign that says kinky.
5. Customization- Between stickers (and who doesn’t love stickers?!) outfits, objects, and materials this game is infinitely customizable. Feeling glum with day to day life? How about making your own world? Sure it’ll probably enable your already failing socialization skills, but at least I’ll have fun playing it.

So, last night at around 1am, I finished the game.  Playing on “Sith Lord” difficulty I found the game quite challenging.  A few thoughts:

The game definitely needed more unique boss encounters.  I found the boss battles to be entertaining, but they were all quite similar when it came down to the actual execution, i.e. Block/Dodge at the right time, jump to avoid the big knock back, attack from behind when the boss is tired and when the boss gets really low…. hit the button sequence that pops up on the screen “A la God Of War” and watch the cool cinematic killing blow.

The storyline was fantastic…. the way it spanned the end of the clone wars all the way to the beginning of the Rebel Alliance really kept me interested.  The scenery and backdrops are amazing, the music score, sound effects and visuals were top notch.  I couldn’t imagine playing it on anything other than a PS3 or high end gaming PC.  The entire reason I chose not to get it for the Wii is the lackluster graphics performance I was expecting out of it.

On a side note….I have been amazed at how much I was missing with the Wii and with my PS2 in regards to surround sound in gaming.  Playing GTA4, The Force Unleashed, Deadspace and Midnight Club: Los Angeles has really shown me how powerful 5.1 can be in a game.  It had me looking at new 7.1 receivers in REX the other day.  I especially liked how “Unleashed” was encoded in DTS instead of Dolby Digital as I prefer DTS over Dolby in movies.  

Well… on to Deadspace… I hear it’s a much longer game, we will see how it pans out.

Yep, new features are popping up all over the place!  To the right you will find my “Video of the Day” and 2 RSS feeds that I read frequently: The Daily Show and The Colbert Report (Comedy Central ftw).   

The video is a classic clip from SNL that mocks Andy Gibb.  Jimmy Fallon and Justin Timberlake are hilarious!

Thats right folks!  Only 7 Days left till ELECTION DAY!!!  Not only is this a presidential election year… its probably one of the most important presidential elections in U.S. History!  The staff at The G Log (that would be me) wants you to excercise your rights as an American Citizen and VOTE for your cantidate.

A few links:

http://www.votesmart.org/index.htm

http://www.vis.org/ (Voter Information Services)

http://maps.google.com/vote   (Google’s Voter Location tool using Googlemaps)

First post of many!  Today I decided to register my new domain name and get posting, lots to follow so please check back often!

Oh!  And I got a Playstation 3 on Friday!  FYI Deadspace is a “Lights on” game (if you get my drift).  The Force, Unleashed is my favorite game so far!