Guitar Hero

If you're roughly my age and live anywhere in America, you've probably played, watched, or at least heard about Guitar Hero. In case you're in the dark, Guitar Hero is a series of video games that started with the original Guitar Hero, released in November 2005. The game fed off the popularity of unorthodox controllers started by Dance Dance Revolution and used a guitar-shaped controller to simulate actual guitar playing.

The series has taken off from there growing to get more and more popular, as well as a staple of any college's dorm life. If you're in a college dorm right now, think about how many feet away from the nearest guitar hero set-up you are. Right now I'm 25 feet away from one (two floors above my room) and about 80 feet from another (down the hall), it's ridiculous. So, as you may imagine, being good at Guitar Hero is a very important status symbol, so here are some tips to help you get good and look cool:

1. Unless you're in a social setting where you need to show off, play the highest difficulty you can barely survive at. You don't get good by playing songs on Easy perfectly. You get good by eeking out Free Bird on Hard.

2. Don't be afraid to use Practice mode, it's a great way to nail a hard part of a song that gives you trouble.

3. Choose your party song. The most important thing is to find the right party song. Most parties and social gatherings where you play guitar hero will have you waiting in line just to play one song. Your party song is that one song. You just have to go in there and nail it near perfectly on Expert, possibly adding some complementary dance moves. No one has to know you played that one part of the solo on repeat in Practice mode for 2 hours. They just see you kicking ass. You should try to have one party song for each volume of Guitar Hero, and it should follow these criteria:

a. Recognizable, at least by a few people
b. Catchy riff (songs that are just chords are boring)
c. Difficult/Badass solo (this is how you impress people)

My songs are More Than a Feeling for Guitar Hero, Sweet Child o' Mine for Guitar Hero 2, and Cliffs of Dover for Guitar Hero 3. They're definitely solid.


But enough of that, time for some sweet videos. This first one is a guy playing Through the Fire and Flames, the hardest Guitar Hero song ever, on Expert. Prepare to be humbled:



And here's an 8-year-old that's probably better than you. Half showmanship, half skill, all second-grader.

ULTIMATE FRISBEE VIDEO GAME...

IS A HUGE DISAPPOINTMENT.

Today I was out at the mall shopping for DS games and Nagano Snatch playing cards when I happened across something incredible in the KB Toys Bargain Bin. That's right it's Original Frisbee Disc Sports: Ultimate and Golf. I was ecstatic. Me and so many of my kind have been waiting for ages for an Ultimate Frisbee video game, and for my newly-purchased DS, what luck!

It was all downhill from the title. I couldn't agree more with Gamezone.com's review of the product when they say, "Fans of Ultimate and Disc Golf should get a few minutes of enjoyment from this DS collection." I was so determined to like this game despite how shitty I knew it would be. I mean, I knew from the box the graphics were mediocre, and it was in a KB toys bargain bin, but I was determined to put all that aside because it was an Ultimate Frisbee game. A first. A trendsetter. Unfortunately, that just isn't enough. The game creates the illusion of fun until you know how to play, and then it's over. The game is 4v4, the only option is a single game against the same AI computer every time, no difficulty settings, no different teams, nothing. But wait, you can pick your 4-man team from an exhausting list of OVER 5 PLAYERS. That meaning 6 players, and they don't have names, but they do have races, which makes the skill distribution hilarious. The asian is a handler, the black guy is really fast, the white guy is balanced, the Indian guy plays good defense... Making fun of the game developer's racial stereotyping is probably the most fun you'll have with this game. BUT WAIT! You can play against a friend! But it's necessary that they buy this heinous cartridge too, so I'd recommend cutting your losses.

The gameplay is shitty. It attempts to combine the buttons and the stylus in a way that makes gameplay awkward rather than innovative. The top screen shows the heavily pixelated players running around while the touch screen is a bird's eye view of players running around. You need to use the arrows and buttons to run around and throw, but the stylus at the same time to run plays. There are three plays each for offense and defense, but on offense you can also have a player cut by clicking him on the touch-screen and tapping where you want him to go. Cool right? Hell no. As soon as you throw it, you take control of the cutter, and have to have him continue the cut manually if you correctly remember how far and which direction the throw is going. The touch screen shows you the final destination of the throw, but doesn't show you how fast it is going or how close it is. This has you looking sort of frantically between the two screens and makes it needlessly difficult to complete a pass. That being said, if you are lucky enough to reach the brightly colored destination marker, you only have to stand there and you will catch it. Sorry Defense. Speaking of Defense, it's stupid. You can only play defense by moving into the path of the disc and catching it, no layouts, no skying, no hand blocks or any kind of knocking it away from the person that you're guarding. All of this makes man defense basically useless. So the best idea is just to play zone and try to get lucky. Any turnover you achieve feels like luck rather than skill, so any success in this game is hollow. It's just not fun.

Now there's the golf aspect too, which I can tell is more faithful than Ultimate, but I'm really not one for golfing video games. I know it's frisbee golf, and it's sort of cool that you can kind of curve around stuff. But other than that it's just a basic golf game, there are no different kind of throws, and instead of different clubs you have different discs. There's slightly more depth to golf with 18 holes and a practice mode, but that's not why I bought the game, and from what I can tell, any golf game would be better.

So here's the thing. Despite just laying down a huge whomping on this game, I can guarantee you that I'm still going to play it a bunch more times, just hoping it will get better. I know it won't, but I really like Ultimate and this is all I have right now. So, if you really love Ultimate and want to play this game knowing full well it sucks, you can buy it here. And for only $8. It's definitely not worth more.

Magic the Gathering: The Computer Game

One might be wondering why I'm typing this at 4:40 in the morning. Well, the short reason is because of Magic the Gatherings single player computer game. If you enjoy the real life card game, or card games in general, this computer game is very faithful to the cards as well as highly addictive. The single player mode, Shandalar, puts you into the game as a wizard, playing with whatever color you choose to start, and then　evolving into all sorts of crazy deck ideas. You fight all sorts of monsters enemies (in card games with your deck) and you can take cards from them if you win. You can also explore dungeons and do quests, and travel to different merchants to buy a certain card. The ultimate goal is to defeat the five wizards (one for each color) and then the main bad guy, who's name I forgot, so we'll call him Deathmaster. Deathmaster is extremely difficult, so you need to have built a very strong deck to beat him.





This game shows so much more creativity and imaginative gameplay than the string of Yu-Gi-Oh games that dominated the video card game genre years after this Windows 95 wonder's release. I'd really like to see some kind of game like it, but as this kind of game does nothing to show off graphics, but rather it's poor homeless cousin "art", it probably won't be made. Well, actually, they could make a sweet fantasy world with great CG and stuff and then the card games could use good art. I hope someone in a game developing studio reads this. Bring back Shandalar. It worked.

If you want to download the game, click here. Don't be afraid if you don't already know how to play. The game is pretty simple to pick up, and there are rules available online and in the program. That being said, it is now time to go sleep on my fresh futon. It's fresh because the dog peed on my old one. Ha ha, goddammit.