miffy495

Not to double post again, but... *ahem* I BEAT THE FUCKER. And not using that "Whammy him on the green bit" trick, either. I survived all honest-like up to Johnny's solo, then hit the bastard with lefty flip, double notes, and broken string at the same time. Not even that fucking son of a bitch can survive a simul-hit from those three on a fast solo. Also, finally got 5 stars on Cliffs of Dover which I love and have been playing a lot of. This leaves me with only one 3 star song (Raining Blood) and four 4 star songs. Once I can beef those up to 5 stars, I've got the game fully done. :woohoo: It's also be nice to get more than 1% completion on Through The Fire And The Flames, but that'll take a lot of time in practice mode and much cursing to do...

Man, stupid time zones. I miss all the fun controversial stuff. Finally saw The Darjeeling Limited last night. Top quality stuff. :tup:

Rock Band will have a create a player mode, not pre-designed characters, so no. Some of the GH characters returned, although far less appealingly. Johnny Napalm, who's been kind of the mascot, is back but looks like he's about three feet away from the methodone clinic. Judy Nails (who I think you play as, as she's always wearing red. Pandora wore blue) is back, but has apparently had breast surgery and now enjoys the liberation that only an extremely low-cut top can provide. Lars Umlaut and Izzy Sparks are back too, and largely unchanged, but something just feels wrong about them. And then we have Xavier Stone, who now looks more Hendrix-y than ever before and has become my new character (used to be Izzy) as he looks the most normal and sane of all of them.

OK, the battle mode has completely soured me on Guitar Hero III. It was a great tracklist, but after over 30 failed attempts to defeat Lou, I hate it. It's driving me crazy. On several occasions now I've completed the song in it's entirety but because Lou survived too I still failed. You shouldn't be able to fail and still complete the song. I won't be buying Guitar Hero IV unless they remove forced boss battles. Done and done. Still failed. HATE THESE BATTLES. :(

I still thought it was pretty sweet. Didn't really kill me until "Sometimes I name Link 'I say' because it makes all the characters sound like Foghorn Leghorn" though. Still, pretty top notch as far as I'm concerned.

I found it a bit ironic how they talked about the evilness of suicide bombing right before mentioning that their favorite perk was one that detonated their corpse when they died. Did nobody proofread this?

The most successful run I've had at him was when I just weathered the storm of his first three attacks and then fired the three I had cued up right back at him. Unfortunately, then my solo got suddenly hard and surviving his attacks had left me in a rather weakened state which resulted in my failure. (not even by his hand!) Seems like on Hard that may be your best bet. Just resist the urge to hit him right away and then double or triple strike later. I'll be trying that again when I get home. (on the work computer right now)

OK, seriously, Raining Blood. Who thought it would be a good idea to put this in the game? Took me 15 damned tries just to get through that one "Downpour" or whatever it's called section. The bit with all the crazy fast -----------o---------o-------- ----o----o----o----o---------- ---o---o----o-----o----------- --o---o----o-----o------------ -o--------o------------------- parts. Once I made it through that, the rest of the song was easy as hell. So was the intro. It's not even a good solo, it's so messy and imprecise. Oh well, beat it now, never looking back. Also, battle mode is kind of a bitch. The Devil Went Down To Georgia is surprising me with how much sense the note charts are making, and nothing feels out of place. I'm pretty much able to go on instinct and get a capable score on it. Problem is, I can't do this when they force lefty flip on me or any of the other numerous battle mode bullshit. Can't I just play the song? It would be such a perfect end to a game that, for me, has only had one song that's stand-out bad. But no, I have to have my groove constantly interrupted by weird things being thrown at me which means I've now attempted it something like 10 times unsuccessfully. Is there any battle mode strategy I'm missing here?

Easy enough if you make it so it can only be bought with a credit card or something of the like. Can't get one unless you're 18. Problem solved. (ish, I'm assuming that if the parent gives their child their card to make that purchase, they're aware of it.) It's like someone said over on the TF2 beta thread when the game launched. Awaiting and dreading the flood of minors who didn't get in the beta because you had to preorder by credit card.

How could you feel bad killing that but not feel bad

As did I. I never realized how handy an iPod could be until I hunted through the hidden files on the thing and recovered all my old music to my new PC. Granted, the names of the files are all QCUE.mp3, etc now but iTunes seems to be able to tell what each one actually is, so I'm ok for it. Sorry for your loss man.

Joined up. How do I register my game on that site? I'm pretty sure I could boost us up right quick if it could see my scores. EDIT: Never mind, figured it out. I'll do that as soon as I get back from walking my dog, then back to the quest through career mode. Yeah, so just started playing my copy a couple of hours ago. Started working my way through Expert right off the bat (or course) and just finished tier 6. Only song I couldn't 5-star on the first try so far was Pride and Joy which kills me a bit because of how awesome that song is. I'm really digging the ratio of old songs to new ones. The Stones, Stevie Ray Vaughn, Dead Kennedys, Cream, and Santana all in the same place makes me a bit giddy. 'course, all I can see of tier 7 so far is 4 songs the oldest of which is from 2004, so I guess the game make make me eat that optimism yet. My plan right now is to get up to the devil duel tonight, but not try it until after I've worked my way through the other 3 difficulties for achievements and high scores over the next week or so. That way I will technically be beating expert mode last, even though I'd played it first. Then come the bonus songs. Ahhh... feels good to be working my way through a new playlist again. Also, regarding achievements, there's one on there about getting 200,000 on Cult of Personality without any star power. Just tried for it. 198,000. Fuck. I can't just leave it at that. Still, 5 stars on the 6th last song with no star power, so go me I guess.

It's not even in practice mode? Damn that sucks. Oh well. At least he can't kick up the difficulty when I'm already on expert.

So the game happened right in the middle of my shift. Two questions: 1) How'd it go? 2) When's round two and will I be able to practice a bit beforehand?

Yay? I'm kinda pissed off with Activision about this one, but if the content that should've been there ends up being free I may forgive them. I don't even have GHIII yet and it's already been a bit of a hassel. Ordered a copy from Best Buy which read "preordered" until the game released. It then promptly changed to "backordered" so I cancelled my order and spent a week bumbling from shop to shop until I finally managed to track down a copy. Well, not me. My mom's boyfriend knew I was on the hunt and when he spotted a copy at the drug store (guitar and all, woo!) he grabbed it for me and sent me a text message. Now I have the full thing and am good to play, I just need to meet up with the guy sometime. All good, except that about two hours ago I get an email from Best Buy telling me my order (the one that's been canceled for days) has been shipped. Now I get to take it back to them as soon as it arrives. I LOVE RETAIL! YAY! :( At least my Rock Band is preordered from EB. They've never fucked me over in the past on anything I've ordered with them, so my hopes are undashed for some good rocking in a little over two weeks.

I just PMed him something to the same effect.

Just out of curiosity, why isn't this article linked on the main page? Seems like now that there's new content you'd want to flaunt it.

Better be free DLC if the songs are already in game...

Actually, it's kind of weird. I managed to do the islands out of order, not realizing that I could and did the third island second. Whups. Hope that helps.

If I'm not mistaken, there are only 3 songs that force battle mode, one for each unlockable guitarist. This means Tom Morrello, (with RATM's "Bulls on Parade") Slash, (with GnR's "Welcome to the Jungle," which would be really nice to have in other modes) and that guy who's name I can't remember they have covering "Devil Went Down To Georgia." Two of those three songs I was really happy to see in the game, and the news that you can only play them in battle mode is a major downside to the game for me. Still, there are a lot of other good songs in the tracklist, but why have those at all if you're so limited in how you can play them?

Man, the thumb may not provide you with much content, but what it does give is of great quality. Unfortunately, after reading an article, you're just left wanting more. If this site had lasted a bit longer, the score would undoubtedly be much higher. As it is though, I'm left having to mark it down a tad for just not delivering enough for your $20. 8/10 Irony aside, it's great to see a new article up. Well, three articles really. Ben's response especially was an introduction and a conclusion from working as a standalone. I always find myself liking short games a lot more. I can count the number of 20+ hour games I've finished on one hand, but as the hour number falls, the completion rate grows. I now take the "doesn't last as long as I wanted it to" mark as a recommendation when reading a review. To me it says "Hey! Here's a game you may actually be able to finish while keeping up with the rest of your life!" I had a moment of clarity for this a while back in EB. I was looking at the box for Neverwinter Nights Diamond. I'd never played NWN and I thought it'd be a good chance to give it a shot. Then I saw the blurb on the back of the box that read "Over 120 hours of gameplay!" and put it back. My thoughts? "I don't have time for that, what the hell am I doing even thinking of buying this?"

Well, as I just ordered (should be here in 2 days) a computer that should actually be able to capably run TF2, I'd be in for a game or two. Maybe we should run a few of these though, considering that: a) I've never played TF (any) before and will be a complete retard as I find my feet in the game. I very much doubt there'd be any one time that would work for everyone. For instance, the game you've scheduled I would be at work during. That said, why not set up some kind of "Thumb league" we could all work our way through? Use the Steam events thing to post games every few days and see who goes in. I don't know how many other Thumbs have their schedules as in flux as mine, but if I see a game I can make on the list, I'd always boot in for it. Just sayin' is all...

I would love to play "The Devil Went Down To Georgia" by itself, which was why I asked in the first place. Damn, that's disheartening. A friend brought over his copy tonight and we went through the first 4 tiers of the co-op career together (what excited me most about the game) and it seems pretty solid. This boss battle news is pretty disappointing, but I'm still eagerly awaiting the game. Just a bit less now. In other news, only 20 days to Rock Band! (Which I've preordered from the store and will be getting on release day!) EDIT: Awww... Thanks Noyb. I'm flattered. Probably sounds insincire typed, but true.

I had to mail order my copy for 360 because EB wasn't taking pre-orders by the time I went round to get it. I am wondering a bit about the boss battles, as all I know of GHIII so far is the demo. What sort of play does it require? Is it really jarring to move into a battle after playing normal songs for so long? Finally, I read somewhere that you can't play the boss battle songs outside of boss battles. Is this true? If so, what the fuck were they thinking?

Fun times abound. Last night my desktop (and oddly enough, only computer) suddenly stopped recognizing that it had an HDD. This means that at the moment I am entirely without computer. Luckily for me, this happens a week after the Wii got keyboard support for it's internet browser (which is what I'm using as I type this) so I'm not completely SOL for internet access. I do however have essays coming due soon and living sans computer is completely infeasible at this point so the time for a new purchase has come. This is the motivation for me to finally get off my ass and buy that laptop I've been wanting for a while. I'm not very well-versed in the ways of the lappy though, so I'm putting the question to you guys. Remembering that I'm on a pretty constricted budget, what do you recommend for a new laptop purchase that will probably become my primary computer? First question: Macbook or PC? Second question, which type of either? I'm leaning towards a reasonably (read: $1,000 - $1500 range) priced Acer laptop right now, but I'm definitely in the market for advice. Thanks all. (P.S. - The thumb looks really weird on my TV... )