Post by Date

Recent Comments

Blog Tags

videogames (219) Geek (144) Media (203) Film (33) Grafitti (11) Podcast (23) TV (43) Photos (11) Comics (25) Books (18) Music (57) Advertising (14) Movies (6) deepthought (81) Sport (34) Misc (64) Places (164)

Found this trailer for Going Postal the other day. Not sure that the golem's look too crash hot, but I suppose they're supposed to be old golems (if I remember from the novel). Looks good, but I can't find out when it's supposed to be released (and how much lag there will be before it's seen on our shores).

LEGO Rock Band, while it has been released in the US, is yet to be released here. Rather than just import it from Play-asia, I decided to get it from JB Hi-Fi, because... well I suppose I need another LEGO minifig key-ring. So I'll have to wait another week or so...

Anyway, the opening video looks awesome...

And whilst watching it, I was trying to figure how the bus was put together. But nicely LEGO Club has released the instructions. (via
FBTB has releasedinstructions for the LEGO Rock Band Bus.

Looks great.

The full track listing for LEGO Rock Band has been announced. All the tracks can be exported to Rock Band 2 for $9.99 (800 Microsoft Points). Looks like fun. The game seems to be going up against Band Hero in terms of mood/track listing.

All American Rejects, “Swing, Swing”
The Automatic, “Monster”
Blink-182, “Aliens Exist”
Blur, “Song 2”
Bon Jovi, “You Give Love a Bad Name”
Boys Like Girls, “Thunder”
Bryan Adams, “Summer of 69”
Carl Douglas, “Kung Fu Fighting”
The Coral, “Dreaming of You”
Counting Crows, “Accidentally in Love”
David Bowie, “Let’s Dance”
Elton John, “Crocodile Rock”
Europe, “The Final Countdown”
Everlife, “Real Wild Child”
Foo Fighters, “Breakout”
Good Charlotte, “Girls & Boys”
The Hives, “Tick Tick Boom!”
Iggy Pop, “The Passenger”
Incubus, “Dig”
Jackson 5, “I Want You Back”
Jimi Hendrix, “Fire”
Kaiser Chiefs, “Ruby”
Katrina & The Waves, “Walking on Sunshine”
The Kooks, “Naïve”
KoRn, “Word Up!”
KT Tunstall, “Suddenly I See”
Lostprophets, “Rooftops”
P!NK, “So What”
The Police, “Every Little Thing She Does Is Magic”
The Primitives, “Crash”
Queen, “We Are The Champions”
Queen, “We Will Rock You”
Rascal Flatts, “Life is a Highway”
Ray Parker Jr., “Ghostbusters”
Razorlight, “Stumble and Fall”
Spin Doctors, “Two Princes”
Spinal Tap, “Short & Sweet”
Steve Harly, “Make Me Smile”
Sum 41, “In Too Deep”
Supergrass, “Grace”
T-Rex, “Ride a White Swan”
Tom Petty, “Free Fallin”
Vampire Weekend, “A-Punk”
We the Kings, “Check Yes Juliet”
The Zutons, “Valerie”

Oh and Destructoid has a preview of the game which looks awesome.

Iggy Pop and David Bowie will appear as playable characters in LEGO Rock Band according to USAToday. The article also adds a new song to the track listing Bowie's Let's Dance (Iggy's The Passenger was already known to be in the game).

You can see what Bowie looks like as a minifig at RockBandAide. Don't think I've seen a minifig with different coloured eyes. I hope that LEGO puts out Rock Band sets, but they probably won't.
But at around the same time as LEGO Rock Band comes out according to Model Building Secrets, Hazel's Amazing Armory is producing custom minifig guitars so that your minifigs can rock out.

The pack will be available at the Custom Minifig Store Novermber 15 for US$20 and will come with 8 guitars and 2 hardcases in a cool looking box.

These are my quick play reviews. Basically I play a game until I get bored and tell you what I think of it. These are all for the DS and most are based on movies or TV shows. So it's not going to be great. Links will take you to either play-asia or amazon.co.uk where you can buy it if you feel so inclined (though most of my reviews probably won't convince you to).

Nicktoons Unite!
Wall of text intro. Awesome. No Idea how to play this game. Couldn't get out of the first room. Instant Fail. Oh OK, the characters are Jimmy Nuetron, Timmy (Fairly Odd Parents), Spongebob and some guy I'd never heard of. I like Fairly odd Parents and Spongebob, but this game seems impossible to play.

Spongebob SquarePants: The Yellow Avenger
Slightly better than Nicktoons Unite, however takes so long to tell you the story (it felt like 10 minutes) I almost believed that I was't playing a game. Wouldn't be so bad if it was video, but it's just pictures with text. Got into the game eventually and... oh no, tutorials every five seconds... seems to be a platformer... but it doesn't work very well... Sorry Spongebob, fail...

SpongeBob: Creature From the Krusty Krab
Ahh... video intro, better. Spongebob is dreaming and I have to control him using my stylus in order to get objects. OK. Probably one of the better Spongebob games. Actually played through 2 major levels (made up of about 5 minor ones).

Crash Boom Bang!
Oh. Mario Party DS with Crash Bandicott... great. Hey, if there's a minigame between two CPUs, how about giving me the option to skip it instead of forcing me to watch it? Actually why not give me the option to skip minigames that I'm involved in. They just don't seem to be that good. Oh, nevermind I'll skip the game entirely.

Finding Nemo: Escape to the Big Blue
A small amount of minigames linked together and they seem to be passable, but not all that great. Did Bubbles' missions, first involved rolling to the ocean, the second was Nemo popping bubbles, the third was moving to the correct spot to catch the speed underwater, where I failed and couldn't be bothered anymore. Lovely movie, meh game. Maybe one for the kids, but think they'd get bored of it too.

Pirates of the Carribbean: Dead Man's Chest
I assume that this is the second film in the series. Bit hack and slash. Controls are fairly simple (except jumping for some reason). Works well when it's being hack and slashy, but at times fails when it tries to do anything different. Suprisingly half decent game. Played through Captain Jacks escape from the tower and a bit into the Elizabeth's wedding escape. Actually would be a better game without the plot parts.

Go West Lucky Luke
Not sure if my brain is sliding out the side of my ears. Maybe I've played too many games. Seems to follow the movie, which makes it strange when you play as the bad guys in order to move the story along. Luke has 80 days to get the pilgrims from NY to California. He does this buy playing minigames. Each attempt at a game costs a day, so your progress depends on not failing. Some of the games are clever, others are rather annoying.

Hint to developers, if you are going to make a game where the character runs along in one direction and I need to swipe the screen up or down to avoid things, make the character run right to left or give me the choice. Making the character run left to right means that because I'm right handed my hand is over the objects I'm trying to avoid, so I can't see them.

There's also a section like Elite Beat Agents, but because there's no real beat there, it's hard to do the timings. Oh and there's a kind of cooking game. I haven't played Cooking Mama, so hard to compare.

Suprisingly decent game. Like all minigame packages though, not sure how much replayability there is though.

Cooking Mama
Don't see what all the fuss is about really. Mama is truly frigin crazy. I suppose I could do really well at this, but I can't see why I would want to. Cooked 5 or 6 dishes with various results.

According to the Telegraph, the LEGO house that James May built is to be knocked down. The house was built as part for James May's Toy Stories but had no planning permission (it was meant to be temporary). Apparently, plans to move the 3.3 million brick house to LEGOland Windsor fell through, because it turned out that it would cost £50,000.

You can see photos of the house here and photos of it being demolished here. But of course the point of LEGO is that you build and then rip it apart. But what else could you build with 3.3 million bricks?

But what of the bricks? According to the Tele, they'll be donated to charity. According to Model Building Secrets, it was the largest unglued LEGO structure ever built.

Variety reports on a LEGO movie...
Quote:

Scribes Dan and Kevin Hageman are penning the script for the family comedy that will mix live action and animation. Warners is keeping the plot tightly under wraps, but it's described as an action adventure set in a Lego world.

And presumably not Bionicles. OK... maybe it might work. But...
Quote:

Hasbro and rival Mattel have recently brokered a slew of deals around town to create film adaptations of their most popular toys, including Monopoly, Candyland, Battleship, Stretch Armstrong, View-Master, Max Steel, Hot Wheels and He-Man and the Masters of the Universe.

Has Holywood really run out of ideas? Battleship? Really?
Quote:

For the studios, a toy-based film only makes it easier to promote a pic to audiences given the built-in recognition factor.

Oh so it's actually that people know these toys and then... go see a film about the Battleship game? Odd. I can't see it happening.

So, the BBC has confirmed that John Simms will return as the Master, which is to be expected really.

No really. At the end of The Last of the Time Lords, the Master is gunned down by his wife. The Doctor insists that he regenerates, but the Master refuses. The Doctor hurls him on to a pyre. End of story, right? Well there's that little scene where a hand with red nails reaches down and picks up the Master's ring from the ashes (accompanied by a wicked laugh).

"The Rani!" I cried out and mentioned to all my friends who apparently weren't as aware of who the Rani actually was.

Here's my thought. The Rani would somehow bring the Master back. To be honest I thought it would happen last year, but no...

But hey, now he's back. So does that mean the Rani is back or was I wrong?

Well, Russel T Davies says I'm wrong... according to Wikipedia:
Quote:

In the podcast commentary of the episode, Russell T. Davies jokingly refers to it as "the hand of the Rani", and also states that they will not be picking up on that scene next year — he just put it in there to give any future production teams something to use if they want to bring back the Master. In Doctor Who Magazine, Davies explains that he "didn't know the Rani was that well known" and that the hand was not actually intended to represent the Rani.

Don't know why I never listened to the podcast. Anyway. So let's say it is the Rani. The whole "I'd know if there were any Time Lords" thing that the Doctor's always saying (and was explained for the Master) goes out the window (or needs some sort of strange explanation). One of those explanations which stretches the statement to it's extreme is that the Rani is a Time Lady, not a Time Lord. But meh.

Speculation on the net, due to the secrecy surrounding the next companion's (Karen Gillan) name, has ran rampant. Theories that she is Donna Noble, Romana, Sally Sparrow (strangely) and of course the Rani. The BBC has announced that her name will be Amy Pond.

But the BBC isn't about to take away this speculation...
Quote:

The latest photo which we revealed earlier today indicates Amy will have a laid back, contemporary look. So far we've had no suggestion as to whether we'll meet the new companion's family, or even if she has a family.

Sigh. Well if she turns up in the 2010 Finale, maybe she will be the Rani. And maybe she will bring back the Master. And maybe we'll find out at Christmas?

Hey, so you can pre-order Rock Band: The Beatles from JB Hi-Fi. The Aussie price is $349 for the Limited Edition Premium Bundle, which contains the game, the Höfner Bass controller, The Beatles branded drums, a microphone and stand and stuff?

So as for the content of the game, there's some new news. Kotaku have a new gameplay video, which contains 8 new (at least for Rock Band) songs. Those are:
“Twist & Shout”
“Can’t Buy Me Love”
“Eight Days A Week”
“Paperback Writer”
“Yellow Submarine”
“Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band”
“Within You Without You”
“Revolution”

Fab! So we now know 18 of the 45 songs. Rock Band: The Beatles will be released on 09.09.09 in Australia (according to JB) so that gives us just over 2 months to brush up on The Beatles tracks.

Destructoid adds some more tracks...
“Do You Want To Know A Secret”
“I Wanna Be Your Man”
“And Your Bird Can Sing”
“With A Little Help From My Friends”
“Birthday”
“Dig A Pony”
“I’ve Got A Feeling”

But suggest that "Within You Without You" is actually “Within You Without You”/“Tomorrow Never Knows” (from 2006’s remix album, Love).

They also take a look at the Vocal trainer which sounds great, unless like me you can't sing to start with.

So we know 25 of the 45 songs...

Rock Band is introducing the Rock Band Network, it's answer to GH:WT's Music Studio. Kind of, sort of, well not really. The end result is sort of the same though.

Where Music Studio gives GH players the ability to create thier own tracks, Rock Band Network gives bands/studios/record labels the ability to create tracks using the same software that Harmonix uses to create tracks.

Once created (and submitted), the tracks go into a peer review system. The Rock Band Creators community reviews the track and once approved, the tracks become available in the Rock Band Store (but in a seperate section) for purchase. The creator can decide the price of the song (from US$0.50 US$3) and will recieve 30% of track sales.

Rock Band players will be able to preview the songs before they purchase.

The system is only available for Xbox 360 (currently) as the system uses Microsoft’s Creators Club and the XNA. Of course this means that for an artist (or studio/label) to create tracks they will need to have a premium membership to Microsoft’s XNA Creators Club Online ($49.99 for four months or $99.99 for a year). Stand out tracks will eventually make it to PS3 and Wii.

But will RBN contain thousands of bands that you've never heard of? Will it get you to listen to bands that you've never heard of? Will every band in the world start promoting themselves as "As Heard in Rock Band"? Certainly if Harmonix likes a song, then this could give a band much needed exposure.

The system sounds capable (and certainly better than GH:WT) but the proof will be in the quality of songs produced and RB users taking up the new songs.

Events...

Contact Urbaer

Blogroll

• Miriam Parkinson
• Cameron Reilly
• Michael Specht
• Jay
• Bianca Chen
• Jam
• Richard Giles
• ComicBookDB collection
• Goodreads
• Flickr
• Picassa
• scientaestubique
• urbabe
• Last.fm
• Twitter
• Lauren

Disclaimer