If that doesn't make any sense to you then you probably haven't played WoW, Guitar Hero, or used Xbox Live. But what it does mean is that I'd like to buy some Guitar Hero backwards compatibility...
Whilst GH2 is a lot easier than 3, and I really mean a lot. To let you know just how much, I beat every song in it. On Hard. Without ever re-trying. In part 3, well, let's just say it's a lot harder. But I digress.
What I'd like exactly would be to import all of the stuff from GH2 into GH3. To play all those songs on the GH3 engine. This is because the hammer-on/pull-off system in GH2 is very different to 3. You have to tap each fret as if you were going to be strumming along with it - you can't just hold down the fret and wait like you can in 3. After having played the bulk of GH3, and then returning to finish off some GH2, I really felt the difference between the two.
But it'd be so simple to do. Just download the note charts and audio onto the hard drive. Then migrate those into the format that is used in GH3 (if it is any different), and let 'em roll. You could even scrap the lead singer and let the vocals come from nowhere in particular.
I'm just used to the harshness of the GH3 rock-meter and the ease-of-use hammer-ons. So I want to play GH2 songs in GH3!
And done.
Sunday, March 09, 2008
Wednesday, March 05, 2008
FFLD
As you may have noticed, I like to call my teams or bands or clans or guilds in video games FFLD in honour of my hometown of Fairfield. Sure it's not really an acronym, and not even a proper abbreviation, but maybe it's just the way it'd be spelled if you had like, a limit on the number of letters you could use. And if you've paid any attention to my screenshots, you'll see that FFLD is the name of my band in Guitar Hero 2. It's also my GH3 band.
So I present to you, this:
Yes, I beat the game on Hard.
To put into perspective how decent I am at the game; I played it for months on Wii and struggled to even get up to the last songs on Hard (let alone the last boss) and I didn't get as far on Expert as I have currently. Now, on the almighty Ekbok, I've managed to best the GH2 Hard career in a single day, and GH3 in a little over a week.
I also beat Jordan and TTFAF on Hard in their respective games.
If you don't have Guitar Hero and are living in Australia, I highly recommend picking it up from Big W (for 360) because the bundle is $128 and GH2 is $40. The new Wii bundle (with 2 guitars) is at places like K-Mart and Target for $160-170, which is cheaper than what I spent on my Wii version.
So I present to you, this:
Yes, I beat the game on Hard.
To put into perspective how decent I am at the game; I played it for months on Wii and struggled to even get up to the last songs on Hard (let alone the last boss) and I didn't get as far on Expert as I have currently. Now, on the almighty Ekbok, I've managed to best the GH2 Hard career in a single day, and GH3 in a little over a week.
I also beat Jordan and TTFAF on Hard in their respective games.
If you don't have Guitar Hero and are living in Australia, I highly recommend picking it up from Big W (for 360) because the bundle is $128 and GH2 is $40. The new Wii bundle (with 2 guitars) is at places like K-Mart and Target for $160-170, which is cheaper than what I spent on my Wii version.
Of Dragonforces and WoW...
First the big news. I beat Dragonforce on Hard. I finally did it. For a long time I had lost in the first hammer-on section. Then I was eventually capable of getting through 80-90% of it consistently. But now, after getting 98% through then failing, I figured I was super close to actually beating the damned thing. So after a few runs of the whole song on Practice, playing certain sections on their own, and then revving it up for another try...
Well, after 2 attempts on Hard after that - the bitch was done.
Huzzah.
Notice also how I got a much better score on Easy -_-;;
And now to my next topic of topics. World of Warcraft.
I've been keeping my eagle-eye on WorldofRaids.com to get all the news on upcoming WoW changes and so on. A while ago I found out that the attunements for Karazhan, Mount Hyjal, and even Black Temple are being removed. I understand that it sucks to be mediocre in WoW, or part of a mediocre guild that is going nowhere. But this is just getting to be ridiculous. "Oh well, Magetheridon is too hard, let's remove TK attunement," and so on. All they're doing is letting people skip bosses that take some skill and move on. The only people who are going to kill Vashj and Kael'thas now are the ones who have already done it. People might not even bother with the T5 instances now. I have a feeling this is just going to keep happening, and the worst bit is that as you keep giving people freebies, they move up into tougher content with less skill and gear than they should have.
My old guild managed to progress through most of SSC and TK raids. Now I'm guessing that they'd at least be stuck on Vashj and Kael'thas (the last bosses of these 2 instances), and the only way they're getting into the T6 content is by waiting for the patch. Hell, I'm willing to bet that they haven't even got Mag down yet.
Whilst I don't care much for raiding nowadays. I do have respect for the people who are good at it. People who clear all the bosses, not because they need to in order to progress forward, but to show that they have the skill to do it.
Nothing in video games is impossible. All you need are the rudimentary skills, some time spent honing those skills, and a tiny bit of luck.
Well, after 2 attempts on Hard after that - the bitch was done.
Huzzah.
Notice also how I got a much better score on Easy -_-;;
And now to my next topic of topics. World of Warcraft.
I've been keeping my eagle-eye on WorldofRaids.com to get all the news on upcoming WoW changes and so on. A while ago I found out that the attunements for Karazhan, Mount Hyjal, and even Black Temple are being removed. I understand that it sucks to be mediocre in WoW, or part of a mediocre guild that is going nowhere. But this is just getting to be ridiculous. "Oh well, Magetheridon is too hard, let's remove TK attunement," and so on. All they're doing is letting people skip bosses that take some skill and move on. The only people who are going to kill Vashj and Kael'thas now are the ones who have already done it. People might not even bother with the T5 instances now. I have a feeling this is just going to keep happening, and the worst bit is that as you keep giving people freebies, they move up into tougher content with less skill and gear than they should have.
My old guild managed to progress through most of SSC and TK raids. Now I'm guessing that they'd at least be stuck on Vashj and Kael'thas (the last bosses of these 2 instances), and the only way they're getting into the T6 content is by waiting for the patch. Hell, I'm willing to bet that they haven't even got Mag down yet.
Whilst I don't care much for raiding nowadays. I do have respect for the people who are good at it. People who clear all the bosses, not because they need to in order to progress forward, but to show that they have the skill to do it.
Nothing in video games is impossible. All you need are the rudimentary skills, some time spent honing those skills, and a tiny bit of luck.
Tuesday, March 04, 2008
Xbox (not so) Live(ly)
Or maybe it's just Activision or RedOctane's fault..
Anyway.
I got Guitar Hero 2 and 3 last week, because they were insanely (or relatively) cheap, and immediately started clocking up some time with the games. I breezed through GH2 on Hard without having to retry anything. I also beat the infamous Jordan song thinger. Again, I beat it first go.
Here's my GH2 majiggy. And I just noticed that it says you've got truckload of pain when it should either be truckloads or a truckload. Silly American Engrish.
And that Dragonforce son of a bitch.
I am now officially putting Guitar Hero up there as one of my all time favourite music rhythm games. It sits comfortably alongside other games like Ouendan (on the DS), DDR (at least all of the DDR's before this shit on 360 came out -_-), and drum games like Donkey Konga and Taiko no Tatsujin.
So while I await GH: Aerosmith, and GH4 later in the year, I can kick back and play these majiggies.
Anddddd done. For now.
Edit: I totally forgot to write about what I was going to whine about in the first place.
The online scoreboards that live @ GuitarHero.com take forever to update. My GH3 stats have sat at around 78% Expert Career completion, but the score didn't update. And the same can be said for all the other careers. With the Wii version, it only took a few hours for things to update, and the 360 scoreboards take a week? Insanity. But they did update today, or at least they partially updated. Well, in time I will conquer all of GH3, and by all I mean Easy, Medium, and then a good chunk of Hard and Expert. So sometime in the future my scores should be all shiny and online.
Now I'm really done.
Anyway.
I got Guitar Hero 2 and 3 last week, because they were insanely (or relatively) cheap, and immediately started clocking up some time with the games. I breezed through GH2 on Hard without having to retry anything. I also beat the infamous Jordan song thinger. Again, I beat it first go.
Here's my GH2 majiggy. And I just noticed that it says you've got truckload of pain when it should either be truckloads or a truckload. Silly American Engrish.
And that Dragonforce son of a bitch.
I am now officially putting Guitar Hero up there as one of my all time favourite music rhythm games. It sits comfortably alongside other games like Ouendan (on the DS), DDR (at least all of the DDR's before this shit on 360 came out -_-), and drum games like Donkey Konga and Taiko no Tatsujin.
So while I await GH: Aerosmith, and GH4 later in the year, I can kick back and play these majiggies.
Anddddd done. For now.
Edit: I totally forgot to write about what I was going to whine about in the first place.
The online scoreboards that live @ GuitarHero.com take forever to update. My GH3 stats have sat at around 78% Expert Career completion, but the score didn't update. And the same can be said for all the other careers. With the Wii version, it only took a few hours for things to update, and the 360 scoreboards take a week? Insanity. But they did update today, or at least they partially updated. Well, in time I will conquer all of GH3, and by all I mean Easy, Medium, and then a good chunk of Hard and Expert. So sometime in the future my scores should be all shiny and online.
Now I'm really done.
Sunday, March 02, 2008
SD v.s. HD
No it's not a new video game. It's just a video standard. Or standards, rather.
There's been a big fuss over HD in recent times. Following on from digital TV, we went from getting crystal clear picture (no more snow, woot) to now getting that same picture in a higher resolution. It sounds like a big deal, and to a lot of people it probably is. Although now I've experienced both standard- and high-definition picture, and I'm confused as to why it matters so much.
If you want you can hit up the HDTV article @ Wikipedia. In that article it lists the various SD and HD resolutions. My Xbox360 runs at a mediocre 480p. I was (and am still) puzzled as to why my AU PAL console is running at an NTSC resolution. But oh well.
Your standard TV resolution is about a 0.3 Megapixel quality, and that's running it at 480p. When you bump it up to 720p, you're getting around 0.9 MP. And 1080i/p is at a relatively whopping 2MP. I can see that, for a video game, this just means more pixels in the same space. When you take a photo with a camera, that Megapixel quality determines how much of that analog real life data is captured into a digital form. In a game, it just means things get scaled (or so I think). In a game it's polygons and not pixels that determine quality. The only way you get a better picture is by using better quality models. Better quality effects. And so on. Although there are still people who swear by HD and it's awesomeness, like my good friend Rob.
He's a bit of a graphics whore, and so he's very for the whole HD thing. When I tell him that I don't see a significant difference, he thinks I'm crazy. Normally I wouldn't said anything, I've never played my games in HD, and I don't have the hardware to do it even if I wanted to. But yesterday I was at a mate's place playing his 360, and he had it set up for HD. The game I spent the most time playing was Guitar Hero 3. I've beaten a large chunk of the game on Wii, and when I played it on a 360 at EB, I was stunned at the quality of the graphics in comparison. So when I bought the game (and GH2) the other day for the 360, I was able to experience that quality for a while. Then at my mate's place, I got to play it in HD.
Not impressed.
If HD is this marvelous thing, then why is the difference negligible? I played GH3 in HD for a good while, and I don't see much difference in how it looks on my own monitor at standard def. I also played some Crackdown, CoD4, and RS: Vegas and, after taking these games home with me (borrowed, of course! [Steggles ftw]) I got to see how they look in SD. Again, no difference.
I think the whole thing behind HD is just a placebo. Someone tells you something is in HD, and you kind of nod your head uncertainly and agree. Yeah, of course you know it's HD once you've been told. If I was to take captured images from identical SD and HD footage, and then scaled them to the same size, I don't think there'd be a significant difference. After playing some Halo3 on Steggles' projector, I could see how HD would be a good thing there. Increasing the DPI is very good for lessening the crapness of picture on large displays. I imagine that playing on the projector in SD would've been smeh.
Anyways. For all the people getting horny over HD... It's very nice and all, but unless there are several sets of graphics data stored for every game (one for each resolution) including textures and models, then HD isn't doing much. I can take a screen shot of.. My screen, which is currently at something like 1280*1024, and upscale it. Increase the DPI. And it will be the same thing. I'll try that now before I look silly.
I did it. And it just looks like I've zoomed in on it. Meh.
I think I can safely say that the difference between SD and low-end HD (like 720p) is negligible. The low-end has about 3 times more pixels and, whilst it's a good increase, it isn't much. However, 1080 is over twice the quality of 720, and over 6 times that of 480.
Dam graphics whores. Stop getting horny. Maybe when there are high polygon count options, then maybe it'll be a big deal. For now, it's not so much.
I'm done.
There's been a big fuss over HD in recent times. Following on from digital TV, we went from getting crystal clear picture (no more snow, woot) to now getting that same picture in a higher resolution. It sounds like a big deal, and to a lot of people it probably is. Although now I've experienced both standard- and high-definition picture, and I'm confused as to why it matters so much.
If you want you can hit up the HDTV article @ Wikipedia. In that article it lists the various SD and HD resolutions. My Xbox360 runs at a mediocre 480p. I was (and am still) puzzled as to why my AU PAL console is running at an NTSC resolution. But oh well.
Your standard TV resolution is about a 0.3 Megapixel quality, and that's running it at 480p. When you bump it up to 720p, you're getting around 0.9 MP. And 1080i/p is at a relatively whopping 2MP. I can see that, for a video game, this just means more pixels in the same space. When you take a photo with a camera, that Megapixel quality determines how much of that analog real life data is captured into a digital form. In a game, it just means things get scaled (or so I think). In a game it's polygons and not pixels that determine quality. The only way you get a better picture is by using better quality models. Better quality effects. And so on. Although there are still people who swear by HD and it's awesomeness, like my good friend Rob.
He's a bit of a graphics whore, and so he's very for the whole HD thing. When I tell him that I don't see a significant difference, he thinks I'm crazy. Normally I wouldn't said anything, I've never played my games in HD, and I don't have the hardware to do it even if I wanted to. But yesterday I was at a mate's place playing his 360, and he had it set up for HD. The game I spent the most time playing was Guitar Hero 3. I've beaten a large chunk of the game on Wii, and when I played it on a 360 at EB, I was stunned at the quality of the graphics in comparison. So when I bought the game (and GH2) the other day for the 360, I was able to experience that quality for a while. Then at my mate's place, I got to play it in HD.
Not impressed.
If HD is this marvelous thing, then why is the difference negligible? I played GH3 in HD for a good while, and I don't see much difference in how it looks on my own monitor at standard def. I also played some Crackdown, CoD4, and RS: Vegas and, after taking these games home with me (borrowed, of course! [Steggles ftw]) I got to see how they look in SD. Again, no difference.
I think the whole thing behind HD is just a placebo. Someone tells you something is in HD, and you kind of nod your head uncertainly and agree. Yeah, of course you know it's HD once you've been told. If I was to take captured images from identical SD and HD footage, and then scaled them to the same size, I don't think there'd be a significant difference. After playing some Halo3 on Steggles' projector, I could see how HD would be a good thing there. Increasing the DPI is very good for lessening the crapness of picture on large displays. I imagine that playing on the projector in SD would've been smeh.
Anyways. For all the people getting horny over HD... It's very nice and all, but unless there are several sets of graphics data stored for every game (one for each resolution) including textures and models, then HD isn't doing much. I can take a screen shot of.. My screen, which is currently at something like 1280*1024, and upscale it. Increase the DPI. And it will be the same thing. I'll try that now before I look silly.
I did it. And it just looks like I've zoomed in on it. Meh.
I think I can safely say that the difference between SD and low-end HD (like 720p) is negligible. The low-end has about 3 times more pixels and, whilst it's a good increase, it isn't much. However, 1080 is over twice the quality of 720, and over 6 times that of 480.
Dam graphics whores. Stop getting horny. Maybe when there are high polygon count options, then maybe it'll be a big deal. For now, it's not so much.
I'm done.
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