Just for the record. At least as a cooperative single player RPG. Haven’t tried anything else yet, but it’s a BioWare game through and through. Much like KotOR, but way bigger.

We’re playing on Vornskr with our old horde guild Shadow Wolf Guard (republic) and on Drooga’s Pleasure Barge for the empire without a guild so far, but one is coming up soon.

All in all, fucking phenomonal game. Highly recommended. Especially the collector’s edition, where you get a map and a diary and a whole bunch of nice crap to make the experience even better. I really didn’t think I was going to be able to fully enjoy a game anymore (I usually get stressed and feel like I should be doing something productive instead of just sitting on my ass and wasting time), but I just swallowed it whole.

Just for funsies, here’s a link to the Deliver Hope trailer in HD:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DKRlWLDWhGI

To make certain, I dug out my other piece of shit, the ATI X1900 XT which also failed in about the same amount of time after I bought the Mac Pro. Popped it in, and everything is OK. Granted I know the X1900 always worked fine until it really started to warm up and then artifacts start showing up. Attempting to run any game that pushes it harder instantly killed the video. But at least it works for simple tasks, whereas reinserting the 8800 GT even when cool, locks up the machine with flashes and flickers on the login screen.

The 8800 GT’s been a great card though, ran cooler, quieter and faster than the X1900. I can’t say I’ve had any trouble whatsoever running any game for Mac or Windows on the highest settings, save for Crysis: Warhead. Besides WoW last year, Age of Empires 3, and most recently Dragon Age, it’s shown great performance. Unfortunately Apple no longer sells them, so I acquired another from an online reseller. I wish I knew what killed it though. I can’t say for sure if Mass Effect 2 made its fan spin faster more than Dragon Age did. Perhaps dust and static? Anyways, this will probably be the last hoorah for the Mac Pro. It’s going on 4 years, been a great machine except the two video card failures. Hoping at least the replacement card when it arrives will last (praying) another 2 years as I do use the Mac Pro for more than just games. By then I may be ready buy a new machine.

Anyways, for the time being I’ll just install Mass Effect 2 on my laptop and copy the save over. Who knows, maybe Mass Effect 2 will take out my laptop. It’s covered by Apple’s extended warranty for the rest of this year. Go-go 8600M GT chipset debacle. If the video fails on it, they’ll have to replace the logic board for free.

Road Rash was MY game back in the day.  Road Rash 2, 3D0’s version, 3D… all fantastic (except jailbreak and the ones that brought the series down), and if they really push the envelope with some incredible environments like traffic jammed interstates, crowded neighborhood streets, then throw in a great physics engine, some great bikes and deep characters and storylines, the game could be phenomenal.

So here’s me getting my hopes up insanely high.  Anyone else with me?!

While a good idea in theory, the execution of the PSPGo is currently a disaster.

You pay a premium price for a console that has only two features the cheaper one doesn’t have, one that is good but not vital (Bluetooth) and one that should be able to implement on older PSPs with a software update (“quicksave” function for all games). But besides that you pay for a drive-less console to which games will cost more than the old one (few larger stores sell games at MSRP and almost no stores goes over it), and that’s not even talking about borrowing/buying used games.

The new form factor is amazing, but it forces you to go entirely wireless… over a 802.11b network card… and it won’t work with any current PSP peripherals besides 3.5mm headphones… which almost amazes me considering some of Sony’s other decisions regarding the console.

I really want to love the Go, and I really wanted one from it was first announced… but then they announced the price and my original reaction was “they must be kidding” followed by a long time thinking “it will be worth it anyways”. But when it finally arrived… it made wanna get a PSP 3000 more than ever before. I can get two PSP 3000s for the price of a PSP go here (albeit, going to a cheaper store for the 3000 and a store at MSRP for the go), and a trade-in option at Game would allow me to trade in a DS Lite with three games to let me by a PSP Go for the price of a PSP 3000. I didn’t take it

I though Sony messed up the PS3 at launch, but I guess that was just warming up for this.

Coming up next year will be the PS3 Go, which will have users pay $1000 to be allowed to watch video streams of chinese gold farmers play FFXIV on a console with no storage media, ports (besides video out) or controller. It will be the “next step in gaming” for sure.

This does not mean that the game is so short you beat it in negative time, but that we got it one day early and the main campaign was so awesome we just couldn’t stop playing until it was done (which technically was today, at 3am…). Besides taking the dog out, we never left the sofa until we had beaten it, and then we left it reluctantly, since we hadn’t tried out the new Firefight cooperative multiplayer mode.

The game take place before Halo 3, in the city of New Mombasa, where an orbital drop goes pretty bad, and you, as the nameless trooper, have to figure out what the heck happened, once you regain consciousness 6 hours later. The “main” game has you walking the streets of night time New Mombasa at your own will, looking for clues of what happened to the rest of your squad. Once such a clue is found, you gain the perspective of somebody else in a squad to see what happened with them earlier during the day. These portions of the games are more “standard” linear Halo action, but still completely awesome.

The open layout of the city exploring is probably the best part though, where you have to use your visual enhancing technology to even see anything in the dark, and then everything looks awesome.

Did I mention awesome?

Just to make it certain nobody missed that part. This game is awesome. The story is awesome, the action is awesome, and, besides character faces, the graphics are completely awesome (while the faces are awesomely hilariously bad, thank Bork for awesome looking helmets). And the only thing that can break the game for us now is if Firefight isn’t as awesome. But then we’ll just play the singleplayer game more, because we have lot of more awesome details to discover in night time New Mombasa.

Also, both mine and Lovisa’s Live accounts are fired up with gold membership, so… you know… FIREFIGHT!!!

Also fun fact: ODST comes with two DVDs, one with ODST, and one with Halo 3’s multiplayer. All of it. Every (overpriced) DLC pack released so far is included in ODST. Nice bonus. There’s also the included “ticket” to Halo Reach’s multiplayer beta once that comes next year… but I prefer holding out for stable releases since singleplayer (and coop) is more our game anyways.

So, what games are mind controlling you all out of your hard earned monies?

Now first and foremost they look and feel like a cheap set of drum pads instead of fisher price plastic toys. Striking the pad immediately “feels” You get natural rebound from a drum strike and it feels sturdier and more natural. Instead of a clacking dead sound, you’re greeted with deeper thud, more equivalent if you were to tap someone’s shoulder rather briskly. By no means it is silent but its quieter than the Rock Band 1 set.

Secondly the pedal is heavy duty, completely a metal chassis, and in comparison feels more rugged than the rest of the set. Perhaps its for the better but its the loudest component by far as it emits dry metal rattling as you jam on the giant spring.It feel good but honestly, my RB1 pedal didn’t feel bad either after adding the metal billet plate I bought online. It looks identical to the Alesis DM5ProHHPedal

Lastly there’s the cymbals. Yes Rock Band actually can tell the difference between the cymbals and pads. When you play a drum fill, the four pads are snare and 3 Toms, and the cymbals are high hat and crash. Even cymbals from higher quality midi sets always feel stiff and unnatural and the Ion’s are no exception. Even my friend’s rather nice set that allows for cymbal grabs and such doesn’t feel a whole lot better to strike.  Its a nice addition but its really hard to move towards playing the high hat for all high hat notes. Its optional thus I find myself using the pads, however with a drum fill, I found myself always reaching for the crash cymbal without even thinking. 

All the pads are velocity sensitive as well. Play the drum harder (at least in fills) the louder it plays, no surprise since the Ion Drum Rocker essentially is a midi drum set, right down to the 1/4 inch cables. You could use any of these pads with a midi module provided you have one, and have a fully functioning Midi set. However, even the cheapest Midi modules set you back $250. The pedal as before is not velocity sensitive, it works with my Korg padKontrol as a sustain pedal for a drum pedal but without velocity. I’m willing to bet you could use the Midi Drum Pad to Xbox 360 remote with any standard Midi drum set which makes me wonder why they don’t sell the unit by itself, for about $120?

Its a shame there isn’t any cheap Drum pad to Midi hardware that is strictly for controllers, aka no soundbank, as I could just wire it up to my Mac Pro like my other Midi controllers, and just assign it to BFD or Drumkit From Hell, and have far far better sounds than any hardware module could provide. 

So what benefit does the Ion Rocker Drum set provide? It honestly doesn’t really change the game BUT there’s one distinct difference, you’re actually for the most part playing the drums. You can’t dilute yourself Rock Band 2 will teach you complete drumming as velocity has a lot to do with expression, there aren’t any rim shots, no flam, no alternating hand paradiddles, no cymbal grabs, no brushes, but you could certainly transition to playing a better midi drum set. Plus, it adds a new dimension to fun and certainly is crowd pleaser.  Its not a pure skill transfer for my padKontrol but it helps. Having never played a rhythm game before Rock Band, I went from easy to hard in Rock band 1 and the ability to play about 1/5 of the songs on expert on the drums. I’m hoping i’ll be able to play most of the medium difficulty songs on expert, and play them well. If I can do that, I’ll actually be actually able to be competition for three friends who actually play real drums… at RockBand.

Hopefully I’ll dump plenty of time into it to justify my purchase as it’d be nice to actually be able to half assed play drums. I’m liking them quite a bit but I have to say, its purse extravagance and probably outside of most people’s wants or needs.

If it came with Midi functionality, it’d make for a great starter kit. Hell, with a proper module, you could simply toss on some Roland CY-8s and call it good, the pads work well enough as is.