Rockin' Review: Guitar Hero III (PS3)

Last weekend, I picked up Guitar Hero III for my PS3. It's the first GH game I've ever owned, and if a picture is worth a thousand words, I think this says it all about my response:

Face obscured to allow the victim some semblance of remaining dignity.

For those who are currently scratching their heads going "What's a Guitar Hero, and why is this grown man holding a child's toy guitar?", I'll give a bit of explanation. Basically, the Guitar Hero series is karaoke for people who'd rather play an instrument than sing, or Dance, Dance Revolution for those who would rather play an instrument than dance. The guitar has five buttons on the neck, plus a strum switch and whammy bar. Notes cascade down on the screen, and timing a button press on the neck with a flick of the strum switch does a pretty good approximation of playing a note or chord.

That's kind of a long-winded explanation, but here's a video example, courtesy of YouTube:

You'll have to imagine the person on the other end jamming on the guitar controller to get a near flawless playthrough there.

So that's the explanation, and for me, at least, it's a lot of fun. Really, one of the bigger difficulties I run into while playing is that I'll sometimes get a little too into the music, and miss some notes because I stop paying close attention to the note cascade.

In the interest of full disclosure, I should point out that I have previously spent a little bit of time learning to play real guitars, and that I was, in fact, in a bad garage bad while in high-school.

The song list strikes me as being a good blend of old-school rock standbys from the late 60s, 70s, and early 80s, plus some grunge from the 90s, and modern rock groups like The Killers. Not having been raised on these particular brands of music, it's almost all new to me, and that's allowed me to discover some new favorites, Eric Johnson's White Cliffs of Dover in particular. On the other hand, it's caused me to wonder who enjoys some of this stuff and actually thinks it's music (I'm looking at you, Slayer and Sonic Youth).

The periodic boss battles are also somewhat frustrating, as they amp the difficulty way up, and for me, were little more than mostly un-fun progress blockers that kept me from enjoying my pretend guitar playing while I completed the very videogame task of defeating a specific boss. There also seems to be some problems with the PS3 online connections, where it takes about ten tries just to find one live match.

Still, the three boss battles, occasional dreadful song, and online weirdness aside, it's a game I'll be enjoying for quite a number of hours yet. While I doubt I'll ever be completing Through the Fire and Flames at 95% on Expert anytime this century, I'll still be having fun.

Bottom Line:
Platforms: Playstation 2, Playstation 3, PC, Xbox 360, Wii
Rated: T for ages 13+. Some songs, Talk Dirty to Me for example, contain sexually suggestive lyrics that definitely aren't appropriate for children. Also, the avatars are dressed like, well, hard rock musicians. The women's outfit options are generally tight and revealing, while the men's outfits are also mostly tight and revealing, with a dash of hideously ugly to boot.
You'll Like it if: You've ever played air guitar to your favorite rock songs.

Video Game Review: Tomb Raider Legend

I knew the dame was trouble the moment she walked into my office. Dames with curves like that always are. But hey, what was I to do? I'd just set up the new office on Gametap Avenue, and a client is a client. Of course, if I'd known that talking to her was going to end with me free-climbing in the Peruvian mountains, swinging across pits of spikes hoping that the vine I'm clinging to won't break, and getting into more running gunfights than I'd care to count with the thugs that were after her, I might have have said something different when she plunked down on my desktop and said, with a British accent in her voice, "Hello, I'm Lara Croft, and I need your help." Then again, I'm a sucker for an accent, and like I said, the dame had it where counts.

She said that she was trying to locate some sword fragments. "Fair enough", I responded, "but archeology really ain't my shtick. Have you tried Dr. Jones down the hall?" It wasn't like that though. The sword fragments were connected to the Arthurian legend of Excalibur, along with more personal connections to the disappearance of her mother, and her father's research. How could I say no to that?

I've never been a huge Tomb Raider fan, to be honest. Yes, I've seen the movies staring Angelina Jolie, but the last TR game I played was the original, and it had a protracted argument with my PC's video card that resulted in a less than amicable split. But TR Legend is available on the free side of Gametap's all you can eat game service, so I figured I'd give it a shot. The game was released last year for every major console and the PC, and got decent reviews as well.

Overall, I enjoyed the game. I usually have some annoyances with the camera controls in 3rd-person perspective games, but the camera here was surprisingly trouble free. Combat was generally fun, and save for some scripted button pushing sequences that I thought were totally unnecessary, the game moved along pretty well. It took me about 10 hours to finish the single-player campaign, although there are a lot of unlockables that could double that play time if you wanted to play Barbie dress-up with Lara and all her outfits. Then again, I'm married with two kids, and well past the Jr. High days of being amused with "Look at Teh cartoon B00biez" by taking 10 hours to unlock a bikini to dress Lara in. (Spend an extra 10 hours for this? No thanks.)

The story, while not the best I've ever seen, worked for me. The voice acting was also good, and the game had some genuinely good emotional moments.

One irritant that I dealt with that I suspect most people won't (and haven't) was in controls. For some reason I couldn't save my custom control scheme. While I finally devised a workaround via my programmable gamepad, it was still a perpetual annoyance everytime I started the game. Of course, if you play on a console, or even the normal PC version, you likely won't have this problem.

Here's the final stats:
Genre: 3rd Person Action/Adventure
System: PC (also availabe on Xbox, Xbox 360, PS2, and Gamecube)
Rated: T (Ages 13 and up)
Appropriate for Ages: 13 and up. I guess the ESRB agreed with me, since they rated TR: Legend T for Teen. As previously noted, boys of a certain age will chuckle about Lara's "assets", but the game is worth playing regardless.
System Requirements: If you've bought a new computer in the past three years, you should be fine. Or, just play it on the console.

Friday Review: Burn Notice Pilot

The Mrs. and I watched the pilot episode for Burn Notice last night on USA. I liked it enough to do an initial review on it. My plan for shows like this is that I'll do an initial review, then around the middle or end of the season, come back and revisit any issues that I brought up in the initial impression.

Show: Burn Notice
Genre: Action
Network/Timeslot: USA, 10pm Eastern & Pacific
Appropriate for: Probably 14-15 and up. I'd say most anyone who's up at 10pm on a school night.

Burn Notice is USA's latest "Quirky Character" show, following in the similar vein of Monk and Psych in this regard. In this case, the lead quirky character is a CIA freelancer named Michael Westin who receives a "burn notice" while on a mission in Nigeria. Apparently, in the Burn Notice world, spies, at least those who don't officially work for the government but are contracted unofficially, don't get fired, they get burned. Meaning that since you can't remove the knowledge of how to operate from a spy's head, you take away the tools he uses to do his job. No money, no supporting agents, etc.

It's a pretty good setup, but fortunately for our hero, he apparently graduated from the McGuyver school of spying, since his suddenly limited budget only makes him get more creative with his tools. In the pilot alone, we see him assemble a bug out of cell phones, a pipe bomb out of household implements, and convince a drug dealer to leave using duct tape, a stud finder, a coffee can, and a .45.

It also bears noting that one of the supporting cast members is none other than Mr. Bruce Campbell, playing a burned (and burnt out) friend of Michael's. Bruce "If Chin's could kill" Campbell apparently put on a few pounds for the role, but he still manages to steal pretty much every scene he's in.

It's not all rosy in this show though. One of my biggest complaints is that everything Michael does gets a voice-over explanation. I don't mind a little bit of this (it works well in Psych), but I swear, everything he does has to be explained in the manner of
"When you're a spy, you can't just go to the bathroom. You have to check the exits, make
sure there's no one with a gun lurking in one of the stalls, then pick a urinal with an easy path
to the exit just in case. Oh, and once you finish, don't forget to wash your hands."
The deadpan delivery isn't bad, but by the end of the episode, I really didn't want to hear any more explanations.

Still, I remember that Psych took a while to come into its own, and the premise here isn't bad. It's been a long time since we've had a good McGuyver type character on TV, and if the show sticks to the spy out of water and making do formula, preferably toning down on the voice-overs, I think they'll have another hit on their hands.

Book Review: Ten Stupid Things Couples Do to Mess Up Their Relationships

Author: Dr. Laura C. Schlessinger
Genre: Self Help / Relationships
Appropriate for: Probably 15 and up.

First off, I have a confession to make: my wife and I received this book as a wedding gift more than five years ago. To whomever gave it to us, and took the time to get it autographed and personalized, I'm sorry it took me this long to read it. Had I done so sooner, perhaps my wife and I would have had a bit less Stupid Pain.

This is a book for anyone who's in a relationship, or looking to be in one. Basically, if you're fifteen or older, and not a priest or cloistered monk, this should be a must read. It's sprinkled heavily with anecdotes of callers and e-mailers from Dr. Laura's radio show, which typically are either examples of what not to do, or examples of people who "get" it, and have fixed whatever the problem was.

Inside, the book breaks down the ten stupid things by chapter. While I, fortunately, haven't been guilty of all ten, I do have to admit that at one time or another, I've been guilty of at least five of them, and recognized certain thoughts or tendencies of mine in some of the others. For me in particular, Stupid Secrets, Stupid Priorities, and Stupid Happiness were all things I saw to work on, and in a funny way, the sections on Stupid Mismatch and Stupid Breakup actually served as a validation of sorts, that I really am married to exactly the right woman and not guilty of these particular stupid things.

To me, a marriage is kind of like a car: preventative maintenance is a lot cheaper and less painful than fixing something when it breaks. You change the oil in your car regularly because it's cheaper than sitting by the side of the freeway waiting for the tow truck after your engine seizes. Likewise in a marriage, where stopping problems when their small can prevent them from growing bigger. My wife and I have always had a good marriage, but with two kids and the pressures they bring, it's easy to get a little out of focus sometimes. This book helped me get back on track, and I think my wife's been happier because of it.

Video Game Review: Sam & Max: Season 1

Having recently finished playing through the last episode of the season, it's time to take a few moments and review the aggregate first season of Sam & Max.

A little background before I get started, I first encountered Sam & Max in the back of the LucasArts Company Store catalogs that used to be packed in with games purchased in the pre-internet dominant days of the early and mid-nineties. Not too long after that, I found that our local library had a copy of the Sam & Max graphic novel. I was hooked. That book became pretty dog-eared over the years, and I'm pretty sure a lot of the readers were my brothers and me.

A couple of years later I got my first computer, and acquired a copy of Sam & Max: Hit the Road. Arguably the pinnacle of the LucasArts SCUMM engine games, Hit the Road was an instant classic with lines I still quote to this day. If you ever walk into a room and someone says "You're back! And you're bigger than a breadbox. Three breadboxes even!" then you're in the presence of a Sam and Max fan.

Thus it was with great joy that I learned that LucasArts was going to resurrect the six-foot dog and three-foot rabbitty-thing for a new adventure, and great sorrow when I learned that they'd canceled it. Telltale Games announcement that they had picked up the license, and would be publishing new Sam & Max games in an episodic format was met with cautious optimism. Hey, it was new Sam & Max, and they were working with the original creator, but episodic? I wasn't convinced.

I'm convinced now. Each of the six episodes, taken alone, play out as short 2-3 hour games. Some are a bit better than others (Episodes 4 and 6 are my favorites), but each can stand alone. However, much like a good TV drama (Firefly, SG-1, ER) where individual episodes stand out on their own merits, but full seasons weave more complex plots and over-arching stories that cary from episode to episode, so it is with Sam & Max. The first three episodes serve to establish an overall conspiracy and introduce the cast of characters. Things take a dramatic turn in the fourth episode though, and the remaining two are madcap jaunts through ever-growing weirdness before reaching a conclusion of truly global proportions.

For those who aren't familiar with the previous incarnations of Dog and Bunny, here's the ADD summary: Sam is a six-foot dog, and the nominal voice of reason for the duo. Max is a three-foot rabbitty-thing and the voice of insanity and mindless violence. They're private detectives, and freelance police. Each episode opens with a call from the commissioner, providing them with some new case to look into. In each episode they also have encounters with Bosco, the owner/operator of the local Inconvenience store, and Sybil, the job-hopping careerist down the street.

The first episode revolves around a plot to take over the world hatched by the washed up stars of a '70s children's TV show. Of course, they must be stopped, but this is only the grease-tipped tail of the massive rat called Conspiracy.

The games are available now on Gametap or from Telltale Games' website. If you fondly remember the original game, or just want to try a great new adventure game, give these a shot.

For an additional taste of weirdness, check out http://www.maxforpresident.org/

Genre: Adventure Game
System: PC
Rated: T (Ages 13 and up)
Appropriate for Ages: Probably ten and older, although at that age, they may not get some of the more obscure or esoteric humor.
System Requirements: If you've bought a new computer in the past three years, you should be fine.

TV Review: Shin-Chan

For my first non-introductory post, I'll kick it off with a review of one of the animes I'm currently enjoying, Shin-Chan. I'll try to set up a format that I'll use for all subsequent reviews.

Show Name: Shin-Chan.
Genre: Comedy Anime
Network/Timeslot: Cartoon Network, 12:30am Mon-Thurs
Appropriate for Ages: Old enough to watch South Park

Review:
Shin-Chan is a slice-of life anime dealing with the trials and tribulations of its protagonist, the overly self-aware first grader Shin, and his baby sister, overworked and cranky mother, and dead-end job working salesman father. I find the show hilarious, with the best bits being the ones with some slight basis in reality, that remind me either of myself as a child, or of my kids now. To me, that's some of the best kind of humor: the kind that can make you laugh at yourself, at your own foibles, and at the stuff that sometimes seems so serious.

It's not everyone's bag of candy though. Mrs. Caster was in the room for one episode and went to bed afterwards saying she felt dumber just for having heard the show. If cartoon first-graders with potty mouths offend or annoy you, just pass this one by. Also, the art style, while less ugly than South Park (and really, just about anything short of stick figures looks better than South Park) is still minimalist to the point of ugly. Presumably this is a result both of the show having a slim production budget, and also that it was originally created in 1990.

Like all animes on Cartoon Network, Shin-Chan has been dubbed into English. While I'm sure this upsets and annoys some purists, for a show that involves Family Guy proportions of pop-culture references, it's probably a good thing, and the re-writes are generally pretty sharp. A woman in the supermarket begging Shin to "Be her Bill O'Reilly" and tell her what she needs to think is a lot funner to me and likely most Americans than whatever Japanese cultural reference was originally there.

Final Analysis: If you like South Park or Family Guy, give it a shot. Because it makes me laugh consistently, I give it a 4.5 out of 5.