miffy495

Going into this knowing full well that I'm one of only a few PSP owners on this forum, I'd still like to know what people think of this development. I downloaded the demo tonight, and was quite impressed with what I saw. Unfortunately, what I saw was quite minimal. While I expected a demo to only give me three or so songs (these songs are "Miss Murder" "The Middle" and "Everlong") I did not expect that each one would cut out at around the point the first verse ends. For christ's sake, they don't even let you demo a full song! While this fact drives me crazy, I have to grudgingly admit that the game itself seems fantastic. Those of you who have played Frequency or Amplitude (which personally are two of my favorite games of the previous generation) will know exactly what to expect. This is because RB:U is simply a reskinning of those games with Rock Band trappings. And it plays brilliantly on the PSP. Taking it as the third game in that series rather than simply a portable Rock Band, I'm beginning to consider this a must-buy. When you let one track cut out, you feel bad. When you get all of them working perfectly together, it's a fantastic groove you get into. Love it. Going to have to go back and play those earlier titles for a while now. Those who haven't played, let me explain. Frequency and Amplitude divided songs up into chunks. I believe, though I may be mistaken, that these chunks could number anywhere from 4 to 8 depending on the complexity of the songs. As the soundtrack was mostly electronic, there was often a bunch of complexity. After nailing a string of perfect hits on one track, it would play for itself for a few bars, allowing you to pan over to a different track to activate it as well. With proper timing and a little bit of strategy, one could keep the entire song running jumping back and forth from track to track. Great gameplay, and managed to keep the game from simply being that "simon says" thing that most people who don't like rhythm games often complain about. (Hi, Twmac!) A lot of the time, this is a valid complaint, so it was very cool that Frequency and Amplitude mixed in what could almost be considered a puzzle game. Well, Rock Band Unplugged is this. Simplified to the four instruments that you know from Rock Band, which makes it a bit easier, but with those tracks being much more difficult, which throws the balance right back to where it should be. It also has Rock Band music, which is a plus. Honestly, I don't like AFI and I'm puzzled that they put that in the demo, but the RB soundtrack is definitely more hits than misses. It's really encouraging to me to see that Harmonix hasn't forgotten its roots with those two games and has even found a way to sneak out a letter to fans of the old days under the guise of Rock Band. Going to buy this. It's a matter of when. Anyone else tried the demo? Anyone just want to talk about portable music games? Ouendan, EBA, Gitaroo Man Live, Beats, Guitar Hero On Tour, whatever? Anyone besides me wish to wax nostalgic on Frequency and Amplitude?

Hey, I got a good laugh out of it. That's probably all the entertainment I'm ever going to get from this product, so I'll take it.

...And just like that, shit turns around. Today was somehow awesome. I woke up and got an email from a professor and it looks like things are finally starting to gel after a couple of months of stress over my honours thesis. For a while now, I've been trying to secure an honours supervisor. I've talked to a few people, but my first choice is unfortunately on sabbatical in England. He'll be back in September when I really need to start writing, but approaching him from a different continent is obviously not an easy thing when this sort of arrangement requires vetting. Last week I decided to hell with it and emailed him. After a bunch of correspondence to get a feel for one another's work and writing style, he's agreed to be my supervisor. Much joy from this, as it's a huge weight off my mind. The biggest thing though, is work related. I've been wanting to find a second job for the summer. Some of you who've been around for a while may remember that prior to a shake-up in upper management and some clashes about how things should be done, I was head projectionist at one of the three art-house cinemas in my city for a couple of years. After leaving on less-than-friendly (read: Them:"we think it'd be best if we parted ways" Me:"cool, do you still want this letter of resignation I brought to the meeting?") terms last March, I eventually settled into my current gig at HMV. It was always just a job to get me through school and not a real career path like it is for many projectionists, so the loss didn't really hit me that hard and taking a lower job didn't hurt too much, but I do really miss it from time to time. Well, today I went to visit my girlfriend at work. Her crappy student job is making smoothies for the local business elite at a Jugo Juice. (a Canadian-based health drink place) Just so happens that across the street from her location is another one of the art-house cinemas. This one just went through a shake-up in management as well. A friend and career-projectionist coworker from back in the day has just taken full ownership of the theater. As I was leaving, he saw me and ran out of the building to talk. Seems that they're having some difficulty finding a projectionist to work a few days a week. Art-houses are decidedly lower tech than your average multiplex. While a multiplex is largely automated these days, running a typical art-house theater's system requires months of training just so you don't catch on fire. As a 21 year old who actually has this training nowadays, I'm sort of an oddity. Most theaters just don't bother teaching people. He asked me if I'd be interested in taking charge of the place 2 or 3 nights a week. So, it looks like after about a year and a quarter hiatus, I'll be getting back into the projection game. Plus, this would be an ideal job to have during the school year as the place doesn't even open before 6. Only one screen too, which is frankly a cakewalk compared to my responsibilities at the previous theater. I'm really excited about this. There are only two other guys on the projection team right now, both of whom I've worked with in the past and get along great with. One of these is now the owner, and as such doesn't want to be running as many shows, thus the opening. It feels great to be getting back into it. And not at some huge multiplex either. One of the oldest buildings in the city, and a principal venue for our film festival as well. It just occurred to me, if I work there in September, I'll have been a projectionist for 4 of the past 5 film festivals in Calgary. That's a damn cool feeling considering that 5 years ago I was 16. Sorry, I'm rambling now, but I'm excited. May was kind of crap right up until the last day, which exploded with awesome. It's really nice to actually have some good news to tell. One fantastic day after a bunch of crap and stress is always nice. I'm kind of riding the high from all of this right now. I hope very much that some of the other recent posters in this thread have similar days quite soon. It's really staggering how quickly fortunes can reverse sometimes. Of course, knowing this, it's time to wait for the other shoe to drop...

It's just on PSN. I updated my PSP, mostly for the hell of it, and noticed the Playstation Store was now available through it. First thing I saw was the demo.

I'm just impressed that Sucker Punch is getting flagship titles now at all. Great as Sly and Rocket: Robot on Wheels were, neither was a lead title for the PS2 or N64, respectively. I remember seeing a few ads for Sly back when it first came out, which I guess was kind of rare for a Video game at the time, but it didn't have nearly the marketing push that other titles got. Just kind of cool to see.

A name that gets that kind of response must be awesome. Quod Erat Demonstratum. I'll stop this now, I swear.

I'd just like to throw out that your username is awesome. Well played, sir.

Grah! Stupid future shop mailed it Tuesday. Trade off for getting it cheap is getting it late. Looking forward to playing it a bunch next week.

Question not addressed to me, but I may as well answer it. Yeah, the voice distortion stuff is one of the pack-ins pre-installed on the DSi. You also get the photo distortion thing that they were advertising before the film last night when I went to see Star Trek. The music was the stuff that he was talking about from PictoBits, the second-newest release on DSiWare. Got the game the second it was available, and it's amazing. The music is indeed a high point. I love that if you go into the sound test mode, start a song playing, and then close your DSi, the song keeps playing, even though the screens have gone to sleep. Basically, if you wanted to use the sound test mode as a portable music solution, with the DSi in your pocket, you can do that. Fantastic game, and highly recommended to anyone with a DSi. Gets hard as balls after a few levels, but still awesome.

Should be in. Maybe a tad late though.

Jesus, 'blix. That sounds incredibly painful. A drum stool is pretty cheap, so I just use a real adjustable one and have my leg set up just as Halgwet suggested. Thigh parallel, knee at a 90 degree angle. That, and keeping your foot down between beats, will pretty much keep your leg from cramping during the vast majority of the songs.

Really? I never would have made the jump to expert if I hadn"t forced myself to do that. I'm impressed you made it that far...

It is indeed. Shi can also be used for counting, as the Japanese have different ways of enumerating different classes of objects. Depending on what it is you're counting, different words are preferred.

Dammit. I'm still working my way through last year's "must play" games, plus trying to keep up with the ones that have hit so far this year. I really didn't need to add in replays of Ico and SotC to my stack. This thread has now convinced me that it's necessary though. Bugger.

Just played the demo. The concept of your character being magnetized and actually being drawn to metal things in the environment took me a bit to wrap my head around, but once I got a feel for it I was flying through the streets of Empire City zapping goons and singing "Gimme Gimme Shock Treatment" while thoroughly enjoying myself. Loads of fun, this. Doubly excited for the post office to drop it on my doorstep after a half hour in demo-land.

Well, as the Japanese symbol representing Si is pronounced "shi," which is the same as their number 4, they probably wanted to avoid confusion. "Sanco" or "Saco" just doesn't really have the same ring, so I can understand the anglicizing of it. Also, :getmecoat And finally, I think this actually looks like a really cool logical continuation of the series. Much as I loved Agro in SotC, the possibilities of my very own infant colossus (which is what I'm assuming this is until someone proves me wrong) are simply too intriguing. I'm really excited to see what this team will do with this. EDIT FOR MORE STUPID LANGUAGE STUFF: Of course, this similarity between "Si" and the number 4 does mean that now and then you'll see 4 spoken as "Yon" instead, but both are accepted. (or were when I was preforming oral tests for my Japanese teacher, anyway) It is my understanding that "si" is still the pronunciation first taught to schoolchildren at any rate, and so I'd assume still the most prominent.

Ugh. That chain-splosion still haunts me. Getting stuck in an immovable ring of burning trucks for a good 20 seconds is one of my proudest and most shameful moments at the same time. Sounds like it was a good match. I'm excited to see what goes down next week. Pity I missed hazing the new guy. You going to be around next time as well, Nevsky? (PS: You can feel free to add me as well. I'm similar to James in the "I'll never be the one to initiate contact" way, but always happy for a game.)

I preordered it. Not really because of anything specific to this game, but because it's from Sucker Punch. After playing through the Sly Cooper games for the first time earlier this month, I'm willing to drop some cash on pretty much anything these guys do. It helped that I got it 10% off for a Victoria Day sale, so now I'm just waiting on the fabulous people of the Canadian Postal Service to drop it in my mailbox. The reviews I've seen looked pretty rad too, so I'm excited. If there's any kind of substantial multiplayer, I'd be happy to meet you online a few times, 'blix. After seeing you throw down in GTA, I'm interested in what you may be able to do with the power of lightning.

Please please please please PLEASE have the style of animation from CoMI. Also, playing this with a joystick may be incredibly weird. Colour me cautiously optimistic...

Damn. I was just going to trace my hand, add some feathers, call it a turkey, and dedicate it to you. Well played, OssK. Also, happy birthday!

Happy times! Just got back from a funeral myself. This one was for an older woman, so not quite as tragic. Still, this older woman happened to be my girlfriend's grandmother and she died (bum bada bum!) on my girlfriend's birthday! After the funeral we went back with her grandfather to the house to keep him company for a while, and the gf found a bunch of stuffed animals her grandmother had knitted for her when she was little. She'd kept it together pretty well up to that point, but that was the last straw. After things had calmed down a bit, I ended up having to keep her little cousin (about 3 years old) occupied so the rest of the family could have some quiet time together. Anyone who's ever had to explain death to a three year old can probably understand how the conversation went while we were at the nearby park. We're still going to try to have a bit of a birthday thing for her, but I think it will just be me, her sister, and her best friend with her. Patters, for your friends and whatever else it is you feel less comfortable talking about, you have my sympathies. Doesn't really seem like this is a great month for a lot of people.

Don't know if I really have a favorite, but the most recent happened about an hour ago and made me chuckle a bit. After completing a playthrough of Sly Cooper (the first one. Never played it before. Really impressed) I had one piece of the book left to get. You can't actually get it until after you beat the game, so I went back to the level to do so. For whatever reason, I got there too fast for the game to realize that I was already waiting for it to tell me the combination. This resulted in 5 minutes of my sidekick yelling "PRESS O TO CRACK INTO THE SAFE!" while I sat there wondering if it would register that I'd already done that and there's no way to exit the safe cracking mode without the combination. I gave up and looked up the code online. Oh well.

S'alright. I expect to be utter crap as well. I haven't really played SF since the Game Boy Advance version of SFII back in about 2001. I've always just kinda fumbled my way through. This would be why I'm looking for thumb competition rather than pros.

Anybody still playing this? Best Buy Canada was having a sale for Victoria Day, and I just ordered it from their website on sale. When it arrives, I'd be more than happy to have a few rounds with my fellow thumbs... EDIT: 360 version, to be clear.

Unfortunately out this week, chaps. Girlfriend is celebrating the anniversary of her birth, and my attendance is required.