GH:WT Review

Hello readers, guess what monsieur nerdy fanboy got in the mail yesterday? Guitar Hero World Tour!!!

That's right, I purchased Guitar Hero World Tour for the Wii (dual guitar pack). The only other Guitar Hero I have is Guitar Hero II for the PS2.

FIRST LOOK:
As I ripped the box to shreds to get to the game, er, quietly and patiently cut the box open, the two guitars that came with it looked very nice. I had to inspect the great new guitar. The touch-sensitive slide bar fit in very nicely with the look of the guitar, and the star power/- and + buttons looked better as well. They don't look like knobs this time, they look more like a bridge. I really don't see the need for the analog stick though, it looks a little out of place. I immediately notice the whammy bar fit your hand better.

I took a look at the second guitar that came in the package and discovered it was really just a Guitar Hero III guitar, no slide bar. I also discovered that the game also came with Guitar Hero III the game itself as well (which I haven't even opened). Pretty nice considering I didn't buy it, and also means that those of you who did, you can just buy just the game and the GH3 guitars will work.

SETUP:
As those of you who have it/researched it, as opposed to Rock Band 2, you have to place Wiimotes in the guitars to play. You basically take off a part of the back of the guitar like a battery case, plug it in to the guitar like a nun-chuck controller, and cram it all in to the hole. At first it's difficult to stuff the Wiimote in there, but once you get the hang of it it's not too bad. It is quite annoying that you have to take out the Wiimote and select the disc channel and then cram it back in every time you start the game, but there's not too much the developer could have done anyways.

SETLIST/MUSIC STUDIO:
The setlist itself is pretty good, featuring songs like 'Living on a Prayer' by Bon Jovi, 'What I've Done' by Linkin Park, 'The Middle' by Jimmy Eat World', etc. I won't list the whole setlist because you can just look it up on Wikipedia. I obviously had to cheat and look at a few of the bonus songs on Quick Play, and there were quite a few good ones as well. The game also has downloadable content, which unfortunately, you have to pay for. Basically every song on there is 200 Wii Points, which for you non-Wii users, is about $2.00.

There is also a music creator and GHTunes, which will really allow the game to be replayable. Unfortunately, the music that the game generates sounds only slightly better than a MIDI file, maybe even worse. Sometimes the notes get cut off, and repeated notes sound like a record skipping, as said in IGN's review of GHWT. I did manage to play around in the recording studio, which was pretty fun. There are two parts to the music studio, one is just a live recording area where you play whatever you want on your guitar and it records it, and the other is a more advanced one where you can record it step by step. I really wouldn't recommend using the basic recording thing, it's difficult to figure out how to record and hard to keep on beat. GHMix (the advanced recording thing) is a little difficult to work using a guitar, but you can figure it out pretty fast. It also has copy and paste functions, which became really helpful in my song. It also lets you create guitar, rythym guitar, bass, drums, and even keyboard, although it fails to have microphone capabilities (which I can understand). If you want to play the song I created, search 'Drugs' on GHTunes (on the Wii of course), it'll be by 'Hardly Working.' My song is difficult because you can't use hammer-ons and pull-offs throughout the entire song. It is possible, I finished it on Expert, although it took a few tries (the lead guitar part is accidentally on rythym guitar, oh well).

QUICK PLAY MODE:
I had to start off playing a few songs to try out the new engine, slider bar, and of course the new songs. I had to calibrate the lag first, because I can't play Guitar Hero without about 60 milliseconds of lag. I don't know why. I was halfway storming my way through What I've Done (an easier song) on Hard when I noticed that the whammy bar falls down. No, it doesn't fall off the guitar, but it turns until it is facing away from you so you can't reach it when you need it. This is highly annoying, as you have to hold the whammy bar in your hands to keep it from turning away from you. I quickly tilted the guitar like I usually do in Guitar Hero II to activate starpower, then it didn't activate. I brought the guitar to a 90 degree angle and about 5 seconds later it activated starpower, although I had already broke my multiplier. The starpower button is hard to press as well, it needs a really firm push in the middle to activate which is difficult to do during complicated parts of a song. It's not any better on the GH3 guitar either.

The HUD or whatever is pretty sharp looking. The starpower isn't as obvious as it was in Guitar Hero II, instead it shows up in crystal like shapes. Just play the game or watch YouTube videos, I don't think I can explain it. I don't really have any problems with it though.

There are also 'set lists' which means instead of just selecting a song and playing it, you select several songs and play them in a row. I really don't see the need for this, but it's pretty cool I guess.

MULTIPLAYER:
Multiplayer mode is actually pretty cool. I had my friend come over to test out the band mode, where I played bass and he played guitar. It's a pretty solid try, although I doubt it compares to Rock Band. IGN's review complained that it's difficult to see when somebody is failing, but I can pretty much tell when my friend's highway is blinking red. It may be because it was just a 2-player game, not a 4-player.

The game also has online multiplayer functions. I quickly registered my other friend in my friends list (it does not use the Wii's friend list) and started a few songs. I was disappointed to found out that you cannot choose your difficulty level after the song has been selected, which really sucks because I can play Expert on some songs while I can't even play Hard on others. It also isn't obvious how to select your difficulty, instead of just selecting it at the start as with Quick Play and Career mode, you have to go into Preferences and set it. If you don't have any friends to play with, you can also just use the matchmaking function which means it just draws some other random person who's trying to matchmake and plays it. I left halfway through playing though because I didn't know how to switch difficulties yet.

CAREER MODE:
I don't really like the career mode in this game. Instead of just choosing a song and playing it and unlocking more like in the previous Guitar Hero games, you play gigs and you have to play two or three songs in a row. It also doesn't give you a choice if you want to play an encore, you just have to. I didn't really look too much at it, I only played one or two gigs then cheated to get the bonus songs.

MISCELLANEOUS:
Menus/interface:
The interface of Guitar Hero isn't too great, it looks nice but it can be confusing. For example, the tutorials are in 'Training' under 'Quick Play.' What's up with that? If I wanted to learn a tutorial, I wouldn't got to Quick Play first. I really don't see why Training is in Quick Play. There are also a few other things out of place as well. Then when you exit a song in Training mode, it doesn't take you back to the set list, it takes you back to choosing what parts you want to play of the song you JUST played. Look, if I had wanted to try again at the song, I would have selected 'Change Song Parts' or whatever, not 'Continue.'

Customization:
GHWT has extremely high levels of customization, which is really good. You can create your own rockstar, and the customization features on that are comparable to the Sims. Really. You can even customise your guitar to the fret board wood and spacer type.

Of course, not everything is free. Once you earn money doing gigs, you can buy new clothes and accesories for your character. It's pretty simple really, and you earn quite a lot. I got a lot of money, probably enough for an expensive shirt.

Cheating:
The cheat mode is pretty good in this game. Instead of finding some secret hidden place if you want to activate a cheat, the cheat screen is just right in the Options menu. Instead of entering some random 16-number code EVERY time you want to cheat, you can select previous cheats you have entered in and toggle them off or on. For example, if I for some reason didn't want all of the bonus songs in Quick Play, I could just go to the cheat screen and toggle it off. Simple as that.

Mii Freestyle:
Although pretty cool, this has no point at all. Basically, you take Miis you have created and go to this little room. You then just jam on the guitar. You can also earn 'trading cards' or whatever by doing patterns the game suggests. There are basically 9 patterns the game suggests, and you have to tilt your guitar up and down to see them all, as they only show up in groups of threes.

I do find that it's way too easy to sound cool in this minigame thing. I can hold down the orange fret and strum, and I'm playing the solo from Jordan. It does sound pretty cool to strum all five frets at once though.

I also forgot to mention that there is no point in earning the trading card things it gives you. No money, no unlockables. Nothing. I think I'll just stick to playing Wii Music to do freestyle.

OVERALL:
Although this game has it's obvious flaws, it's still really entertaining and replayable. I would probably give it an 9/10.

If you want to friend me on Guitar Hero World Tour (for the Wii), email me and we can swap codes.

OH YEAH!! HAPPY NEW YEARS EVERYBODY!

Skeptica Claus Part 2

DON'T READ THIS IF YOU ARE A LITTLE CHILD. NOT G-RATED.

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I realized I have a few more ways of being a smart aleck (spelling?), so I have decided to make a second part. If you missed out on Part 1, click here.

We all know elves make the toys up in his crappily placed factory. But do we see any humans? I think not. Santa is an obvious discriminator against regular humans. Although you could argue that elves are pretty alike in comparison with humans, you could also argue height discrimination. I'm pretty sure elves are less than five feet tall each, and obscenely old.

This next problem is not only a problem of logic, but of the laws of nature as well. How does Santa's sleigh fly? Why, of course, his 8 magic reindeer! But think about it logically, Santa would have to be going a good 40 miles per hour to keep from falling out of the sleigh. Don't see my logic? Think about it while keeping physics in mind and look at my 30-second artwork (keep in mind, it's just a demonstration. I know there's only 4 reindeer. I know it):

Now, unless Santa's leashes are actually metal poles, Santa will be tumbling out on to the street for all the world to find before you can say 'Ho ho ho.' If you think about it, it would be more probable to take the 'hot air balloon' approach and...well just look at my next artwork:

Of course, there might be a problem with all the reindeer 'excretions' finding their way to Santa's head, but if the reindeers are magical, they might as well poop cookies. If they don't poop cookies, Santa can find another use for it (we need to conserve coal anyways).

Well, I guess that's all the points I can cover right now. I'll probably think of more, but that can wait.

Merry Christmas!

Internet Quotes

I really can't think of anything to write today, so I'll share some of my favorite quotes about the Internet.

"Well, I equate the web to like being in rush hour traffic. Everyone is really bold inside their box and they're just giving the finger out the window." - Adam Savage, from MythBusters

"Looking at the proliferation of personal web pages on the net, it looks like very soon everyone on earth will have 15 Megabytes of fame." - MG Siriam (?)

"Getting information off the Internet is like taking a drink from a fire hydrant." - Mitch Kapor

"You can't take something off the Internet - it's like taking pee out of a pool." - Anonymous

And for you people who *still* have dial-up or some old slow connection (I don't, but I used to):

"I calculated the total time that humans have waited for web pages to load. It cancels out all the productivity gains of the information age. Sometimes I think the web is a big plot to keep people like me away from normal society." - Scott Adams, author of the Dilbert comic


Happy Holidays!

How I see the world

Ever since I added the DuckyAtePaste feed among my others to check if it worked, I keep checking it hoping it automatically updated it for me.

Anyways, here's a new piece of crap art for you guys:

New Labels

Sorry for the triple post here.

I admit, I've been lazy over the past blog posts, I never added labels. Well, I added labels to every post today.

- 'g-rated' means it is pretty okay for everybody. Some of the 'g-rated' posts are mildly violent, but it's just stick figures.

- 'observational' means an observation on life, like the serving size test.

- 'best posts' I saved what I think are my best posts on the blog.

The others are pretty self explanatory.

So, for instance, if you would like to see videos I have made, you would click on the little 'video' label on the side of the site.

Also, it's the tuleyide, no, yuletide season, I encourage you to look at my wishlist that I created last year. It's actually pretty funny.

Mail Time *not for kiddies*

DO NOT READ THIS, THIS CONTAINS THE WEIRD SEXUAL REFERENCES MY SPAMMERS SEND ME.

No, not your average mail time where readers send in pics of their obese cat. No, this time it's time to revisit the horrors of SPAM MAIL.

First of all, do you remember those weird duplicate emails I got when I posted the original spam mail post? Well guess what, THEY KEEP COMING. AND THEY ARE EVEN WORSE THAN BEFORE.

Here are some examples of names of the 'senders:'

Mikles Serandos
Wahr Lilyquist
Kiest Schwingel

Here are their messages. I added asterisks, because two of them contained bad words (which shocked me quite a bit).

Mikles Serandos' message:

Subject: love love love love love :)

Body: Show your sweetheart how much you love her!!!!

***link to some website which I don't even want to look at***

Endued with great energy, covered that foremost not give
their reasons for dismissing the complaint on his powers
of illusion, slay karna, the son her in nature and age and
extraction, nala deserveth his life for islam. The muslim
with a wild cry.

Kiest Schwingels' message:

Subject: one wife is not enough

Body: I have One wife and two mistresses... I can f*** theem all several times per day!

***dumb link***

Yet now that some person had revealed his secrets, be right
to lie. Ask god to make you a way of tongue anew if well,
mrs dolly, suppose your tale lives in, if you knew how he
is wanting for food i found it empty in the morning and
threw it 'did.

Wahr Lilyquest's message (which I thought was the most interesting):

Subject: Santa Claus and Christmaas Night!

Body: WOW!! Santa Claus try our meds and f*** housewife and her daughter!

***no link fo' you!***

Must obtain permission in writing from both the quite nice.
thank you, kate. Toni gave vent to you leave the cove? At
a quarter to twelve. I canoe. There the plucky fellow was
able to get seemed impossible to believe that he in the
^telsenlabyryntfi.

Um..........wow. 'And her daughter'??? What??

I seriously get like 15 of these a day. Luckily, they all end up in my spam folder, thanks to Gmail.

Snow

Well, it's snowing.

I'm not sure how many of you readers have experienced snow, but after a while it's really annoying.

Sure, it's great fun to play around in. Sledding, skiing, building snowmen, etc. But after months of trudging to school through it, it gets extremely annoying.

Shoveling your driveway? It's like mowing your lawn every day. Working an hour of extremely hard work only having to get up the next morning and shovel twice as much. Playing in it gets to be too much trouble, as you have to put on piles of clothing to go outside and no matter what YOU ARE STILL COLD AND WET. Then, whatever piece of art you made from snow gets ruined by dumb kids with huge egos.

I do admit, Christmas does look a lot better in snow. But Memorial Day does NOT. Where I live, it starts snowing in November and oftentimes runs for 5 or 6 months, not ending until April. And all through that time it gets dark at five o' clock, you walk around in boots for 7 hours at school because it's too much hassle to bring another pair of shoes, you wear big fat coats that you end up jamming in your locker, and you can't do anything you can do in the summer. Popsicles and ice cream lose their touch, along with other frozen treats.

Winter just sucks.

Perfect weather: 80 degrees (fahrenheit) all year round, except 2 weeks around Christmas it snows, and there are a few rainstorms overnight for water.

Maybe I'll migrate in the winter, like birds.

Skeptica Claus

WARNING: If you are a small child, I would recommend not reading this post. Or even being on the Internet in general.

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Santa Claus. You know, the guy who visits all the good children of the world and gives them presents, all in one night. To whoever made him up, what kind of smokes did you obtain? Honestly.

Some old fat guy in red clothing gives presents to children in exchange for cookies and milk? If you think about it, this is quite possibly the dumbest idea ever. Of course, I'm exaggerating, but you get my point. If this was actually true, the North Pole government would be all over his rosy red butt. Unless there was a delightful cookies-to-presents exchange rate there, I don't think so.

Then of course, there would be several problems with elves working in a workshop up in the north pole, I don't think that's going to happen. How the crap would little midgets in silly costumes make 5 million Nintendo Wiis by hand? Santa must have quite a number of elves up there.

Not to mention all of the legal encounters. It can't be legally possible to have Santa make millions of copies of products, it would put the companies out of business. There is also patent laws, copyright laws, and other types of laws that would send Santa to federal prison for a few hundred years.

So, in closing, don't do drugs. You might come up with a holiday icon if you do.