nomindo's Blog - 2old2play

My dying XBOX

So my 360 has been dying a slow terrible death due to the disc drive. I porbably should have RMA'd it when I first got it, I would occasionally get disc read errors. But they were few and far between. But that was a year ago now. I usually don't get more than an hour or two now before I have to restart. I will have a bit of a workaround when the update hits Nov 19th, but I will only be able to put,2 games at best on my lil ole 20GB HD. Oh well. For your amusement, here is a vid of my box acting up:

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Guitar Hero World Tour Review

WARNING: SPOILERS AHEAD

So that I have a canned response to everyone who asks me my opinion of GH:WT, I thought I would blog a review. So here goes:

The set list is AMAZING. Some songs I didn't realize how much fun they were to play until I did it(La Bamba). My fave guitar songs to play thus far: Satch Boogie, Trapped Under Ice, La Bamba, Beat It, Crazy Train, Escuela De Calor, Everlong, Hot for Teacher, The Kill, Today, the Tool songs, Re-Educatrion Through Labor, Rooftops, Santeria, Scream Aim Fire, Too Much Too Young Too Fast, Today, Purple Haze, and Weapon of Choice.

A lot of people complained about the difficulty in GH3, and their complaints were well founded. Forcing somebody to beat Raining Blood to pass the main setlist is somewhat of a sick joke in my book. I appreciate a good challenge, but damn man, keep the hardest stuff as extras. I think GH2 had an ideal difficulty curve. I would get stuck on a song here and there, but I got past it and was able to beat the game without want to throw my XBOX out the damned window. GH:WT approaches the GH2 standard a bit more, but it felt a little easier. I was able to solidly beat nearly every song in GH:WT my first try, and there really weren't any hand crampers like Before I Forget.

I have mixed feelings about the Career, I like the idea of playing several songs in a row, it is nice not to have to load a venue every time you pick a song, however, the load times in GH3 were fantastic, so I don't know what possessed them to fix what wasn't broken. The venues themselves are imaginative and well-done, I ecspecially liked Sunna's Chariot at the end. I miss the more ordered way of playing songs in previous Guitar Heroes, and the deliberatly half assed story that went with it. I know it's difficult to top facing off the devil himself, but i think they could have done better than playing times square on new years eve.

As far as the equipment goes, I am extremely happy with the new guitar. It is solid, strums well, and just feels better. I went back to my old Les Paul to play bass while my wife played the new guitar and I couldn't believe the difference. The LP felt so light and flimsy after the new GH guitar. I have been playing around with the touch strip a little bit. I haven't gotten the feel for sliding yet, so we will see if that turns out to work as well as advertised. One thing I do dig about the touch strip is you can "tap" your strumming, which means you can play slap bass or, you can alternate strumming and tapping if you feel like showing off (just don't break combo -- then you just look like an asshole). My drums seem to be spotty, I a waiting for a midi cable from redoctane, hopefully after I recalibrate them I can give a decent opinion, I may just review them seperatley later. I haven't tried vocals yet, I have read about some complaints about the difficulty in vocals, but my wife sang a few songs on expert and didn't seem to have too much trouble.

Online play is definatley a step up from GH3, you can actually party up now. I haven'y played a battle of the bands yet, but i have done some band quickplay and it seems to work like it should, One thing I really enjoy, however, is the 2v2. It is nice if you just want to team up with a freind to kick some ass, and it feels more true to Guitar Hero's roots.

Overall, I am fairly pleased with GH:WT. It has some definite misses, but it has a lot of very strong points. There is so much to cover, I ca't even fit it into one review, so I thought I would stick with what would be relevant to most pople out there. The custom tracks are a very interesting addition, that feature may recieve a review all it's own. I would definatley buy this gamemerely out of the quality of the guitar and setlist alone, I just wish that the deficincies like haw the career mode works would not be there so this game would blow me out of the water like I hoped it would.

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The Inhuman Achievement is MINE

Almost 2 months of trying after I beat the intro, I have now unlocked the Inhuman Achievement. I can't believe I made it through the solos. Actually, I was more in shock getting past the solos than when I beat the song. Ecspecially since I blew an easy Star power. I activated at the beggining of Herman's Solo with the intention of picing up some star power to make it through those nasty descending trips at the end of Twin Solo. I missed 2 out of three star powers, but I figured, what the hell, I will just play my ass off until I fail.... except I didn't. I came out of TwinSolo flashing red, but I was ok with that, the flashing red was like a little pulse of life. I focused, made it through the Red Snake of Death, and picked up Star Power in Rampaging Dragons. At that point, victory was secure! I activated Star Power one last time during You Rock and passed the song pegged in the green. Now I think it is time for less Guitar Hero and more Halo.

Double Kill, bitches!

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TTFATF Intro = PWNED

So I finally beat the intro for Through the Fire and the Flames in GH3. I managed to stick it out until Syth Death (the rest of the song is no cakewalk) Now, that I have finally managed that, I should be playing some more Halo.

As we all know, there is nothing better than photographic proof, so here ya go:

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My First Halo Montage

Just got done with my first Halo montage. Here it is:

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Right Hand Of God

I earned it. Guitar Hero 2 took about oh.. 2 weeks for me to beat on Expert. Guitar Hero 3? Damn near six months. I sincerely hope that in the future, they never put a song like Raining Blood in the main setlist. Bonus song? OK. But not to beat the game. Because everyone likes lists, IMHO opinion, I give the hardest songs on GH3: ( this doesn't include downloadable content, because the boss battle pack would fill the list up pretty quick)

1. Through the Fire and Flames
2. FCPREMIX
3. Take This Life
4. Raining Blood
5. tie between Mauvis Garcon, Nothing for me Here

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Beat it

finally after months of trying, I have beat Raining Blood on expert. Don't really have much to say, but damn, its about time.

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This... is amazing

This is easily the best thing I've seen all week, a coffee table NES controller!

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Beat Cliffs of Dover on expert

Now I have only one more to go. If you guessed Raining Blood, then you are definatley an Expert player on GH3. I can't think of a more cruel joke on a gamer. I've passed Mosh 1 four times. Four. Each time I failed right afterwards in Verse. Bridge shouldn't give me too much trouble, and hopefully I can use star power to get through Flood. I would be playing right now, but my fretting arm is burning. If anyone has any magic pixie dust to help me beat Raining Blood, I'm paying top dollar.

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Map Update

Here's and update on my Halo 3 map called Necromancer:

http://www.bungie.net/forums/posts.aspx?h3fileid=32323017

every thing (ahem bomb spawns) should be fixed by now.

All game types should be good to go... I really have to recommend Mosh Pit and CTF FURY.

I have more than tripled the player spawns.

The center structure has been tweaked slightly, IMO for the better.

For those of you who have not checked out this map, it is a small symetrical map on 2 levels. There are A TON of flag routes, if you play CTF, I would recommend a short flag reset timeto keep the game going, it should be hard enough to find the flag carrier.

Feel free to PM me with any questions or comments.

Here some some screens :

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Map finally ready for testing

K folks I finally got my map to a (semi) playable form. I was calling it Black Magic, but after a quick search, there was already a map called that, so I have renamed it to Necromancer. I am eager for feedback, I think that with some work and some help, that this can be an excellent map. Here's the link:

http://www.bungie.net/forums/posts.aspx?h3fileid=31923006

In other news, we started our softball season out with a bang. We were playing our rival team who mercied us twice last year and beat them 24-17.

Anyways, I hope you guys enjoy the map, please PM me with feedback, I want to make this a bitchin map, and I can't do it without the testing and opinions of all you guys.

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Ok so here's a blog for ya

And I'll figure I'd talk about a project of mine, a map I'm working on in Halo 3. It's called Black Magic, and it is a small(ish) arena style map inspired by Wizard/Warlock. It's not really a remake, due mostly to the fact that it is only 2 way symetrical instead of 4, and there will be a few other surprises. I am almost to a final draft of the map, when I do I will be putting it into my fileshare. I would really like some feedback when the time comes, so I'll post again when I have a version in my fileshare.

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