Independent Game Thoughts

With the newest Guitar Hero announcement, "Warriors of Rock", I'm convinced that Activision doesn't really know how to handle the Guitar/Band Hero brands.  I'm basing this on my experience with the game Band Hero and as a novice rhythm game player but let me put it this way, Activision has left a lot of my money on the table by not giving me what I've looked for in the Band Hero game.

There's three problems with the way Activision is handling Guitar/Band Hero.
1) They are not offering songs that my kids can play or that my kids want to play.  Every song is from some obscure rock band or from a popular band from the last four decades.  The song list starts and ends with the inclusion of Taylor Swift in Band Hero.
2) They do not offer many songs that are party play oriented despite outfitting the game with party play modes.
3) They've almost completely ignored Country music.
4) Activision doesn't release nearly enough DLC songs.

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A couple of nights ago, it was late when I decided to log on and check my email.  I logged on to see an email from Blizzard telling me that I had been accepted into the Beta for Cataclysm.  A link took me to the battle.net web site and I logged in to see what to do next.  What I didn't see was that battle.net was spelled batt (one) e.net.  As soon as the marketing home page for Cataclysm was displayed, I knew something was wrong.  I looked back at the email, recognized the domain to be fraudulent and immediately logged on to the World of Warcraft client.  Only a minute or so had passed so I figured I could get online and change the password before my account was logged into.

By this point, my heart is beating a million beats a second.  My Internet connection has never been slower. 

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A few weeks back, I thought that this might be a fun kids game to purchase.  I hadn't looked at it more than a few seconds but when I saw the game I immediately thought of my kids.  What I didn't know was that this game is essentially a slightly dumbed down version of Crimson Skies: High Road to Revenge.  For me, that made Snoopy Flying Ace an instant buy.  At ten bucks, the decision was a no brainer as soon as I read Ben's Arstechnica.com review of the game.

I believe Ben understates the blatant rip from Crimson Skies.  It is uncanny how immediately comfortable this game was to me.  I jumped straight in to multiplayer and the controls came back to me after about two or three matches.  My only problem was that I knew I shouldn't have started to play this game at 11pm.  2am came around very quickly and I had to force myself away from the TV to go to bed.  Great game and it is a bargain at ten dollars.  I can't say enough about it.  This might be the best XBLA game this year.  Buy it for yourself and see what I am talking about.

At the very least, play the demo.  Click here for the Xbox Live Marketplace page.

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A friend of mine commented on my recent MMO playing pattern as looking somewhat like that of a MMO whore. Indeed, it seems as if I am sleeping around with more than one MMO at a time. In the past four months, I’ve played Eve, EQ II, Lord of the Rings Online and now World of Warcraft . The problem...

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After reading about the upcoming expansion, I decided to give World of Warcraft a try again. I’ve been playing Lord of the Rings Online and Everquest II for the past year and thought it might be interesting to return to World of Warcraft just to see what it would be like. Like any good game, every...

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I hate to admit it but the iPhone/iPod Touch is a nice little gaming device. I'm using my wife's iPod Touch that was handed down to me when we bought her an iPhone. I've had the device for a couple months now and I like it. Still can't stand iTunes but I like the iPod Touch. My Treo misses...

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Since the release of the new Xbox, I've been waiting for two titles to be released. Mech Assault and Crimson Skies were two of the most played Xbox live games on the original Xbox console. Both have yet to be turned into a new Xbox 360 release. It looks like Mech Warrior will be the first to finally...

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Netflix upgrades so that you can browse their catalog instead of simply loading your queue. Last.fm integration. Facebook integration. Twitter integration. Zune 1080p video service. Sweet. Can't wait. Appropriate linkage....

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Metaplace , founded by Raph Koster of UO and SWG fame, is now in open beta. I’ve been involved in the beta for a bit now and have played around with the tools. I think that a site like this will end up being a great example of our multiple head end strategy for Ages of Athiria. Right now there...

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Interesting game. Not sure where I found it but use this link if you want to check it out so that I'll get referral credit. It's a football game where you play the role of the agent or the team owner. Reminds me of Front Page Football from many years ago on the PC. The games are totally simulated...

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