Tommy Gun

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Posts posted by Tommy Gun

  1. Posted

    More C&C!:tup: (cover:tdown:)

    Week of Jan. 22: Oasis Pack (440 MS points/ $5.50)

    Don't Look Back in Anger (160 MS points/ $2)

    Live Forever (160 MS points/ $2)

    Wonderwall (160 MS Points / $2)

    Week of Jan. 29: Progressive Pack (440 MS points/ $5.50)

    Siva - Smashing Pumpkins (160 MS points/ $2)

    Working Man - Rush *Cover* (160 MS points/ $2)

    Ten Speed (Of God's Blood and Burial) - Coheed and Cambria *Cover* (160 MS Points / $2)

  2. Posted

    I beat Blackened (expert drums)! :clap::woohoo: It was actually only my fourth try, but after my first time trying it, I really doubted being able to get through it at all. There's a really fast part, with lots of bass, that's repeated a bunch of times throughout the song.

    [see

    if you haven't seen it. The part right after is still fast, but it's really easy to play.]

    It's hard because the notes are so close together they're difficult to read. Luckily I was able to get Overdrive in the first fast part, which saved me. The rest of the song isn't too hard, so I always had overdrive ready. I ended with 4.5ish stars because I saved all my overdrive. 93%.

  3. Posted

    drum rolls kill me.

    Try rolling lighter. You shouldn't have to, but the drums register better if you don't hit as hard. When I beat "Run to the Hills," I had to do the whole thing playing lightly.

    EDIT: Wow. I gotta say, given all the crap people are talking about Rock Band breakage, no one has said anything about the painlessness of EA's replacement system.

    People have mentioned that on the RB forums.

  4. Posted

    I'm sure this difficulty curve makes as much sense on Expert as the guitar does, but on Hard, everything seems disproportionate.

    Well, not exactly. On my [currently suspended] site, I mentioned what songs gave me some trouble, and they're kind of all over the place. "Dead on Arrival" is pretty low, but I did terrible on it. People have trouble with different things, so it isn't possible to have a universal difficulty order. Some people die on off-beat bass notes, some have trouble doing simple patterns fast, and so on. There's a drummania song that's listed at 74 that I could "S" (that's good) when I was normally playing level 40 songs. But whomever created that chart thought something in it was fairly difficult, and I just happened to be good at whatever that was. I'm sure there are *some* issues with the order, but it can never be perfect.

    Why is it that I can only barely sweat and curse my way to a 3 star rating on the New Pornographers' Electric Version but the very next song (the Killers' When You Were Young) I get 5 stars and 97% notes hit?

    Electric Version is pretty fast, which might be what gave you trouble. It could even be that you're playing it correctly, but your drums aren't registering the faster notes. *shrug* They may have felt that When You Were Young is more complex (I can't remember the charts off the top of my head), so that's why it's "harder."

  5. Posted

    3 was the best, but Revenge was fun. 2 was only good for Crash mode (IMO), which was the most "puzzle-y" (no aftertouch), but 3's Crash mode was my favorite.

    All the previews I've seen/read say that Paradise is crazy fun, and way better than the demo. So...we'll see. But no Crash mode. :tdown: :tdown: :tdown:yeah some people like the new version of it

  6. Posted

    Heh, well for drums, okay. But:

    1) We don't have any GH on 360.

    2) I rarely play guitar in Rock Band, and when I did we had the calibration way off, so my scores are *terrible* and should not be used for anything. I'm so sick of the songs at this point, that if I play anything it would be solo drums, or BWT since we haven't beaten everything yet.

  8. Posted

    And everytime I show the game to someone, he or she plays the tutorial and I have to hear that voice again. Soon it will haunt me in my dreams.

    Why let them play the tutorial? I've introduced GH to everyone I know (even my mom, uncle, etc.), and I just explain it to them quickly. I will admit I got *really* sick of hearing "I love Rock and Roll" for a while, though.

  9. Posted

    Saying that, I enjoy seeing enthusiasm in people, even if I don't necessarily 'get' their particular love.

    Well I've

    . :clap: I totally agree with you though. My new favorite quote is that "geek is the new cool." Do you know anyone who isn't into movies? Maybe not at the same level as others, but still. Music? Technology? iPods are everywhere, cell phones, computers, it's all "cool" now, at least for our generation. It's sad that some people care so much about what others think of them.

  10. Posted

    I see in your review you were into the 30 Seconds to Mars song. I'll admit that I don't know any of the songs that were released on Christmas, so I didn't download any of them. I'll give that one a look. Any other recommendations from that group of songs? After all, they're only a dollar.

    I was more referring to the $1 price being cool, but I do like 30StM (there are two songs available). Some people (my sister) absolutely hate them, so definitely watch the videos on youtube first. Joystiq has been linking to YT vids for each DLC update. Here are the $1:

    Attack - 30 Seconds To Mars (80 MS points/ $1)

    The Kill - 30 Seconds To Mars (80 MS points/ $1)

    Dirty Little Secret - All-American Rejects (80 MS points/ $1)

    Move Along - All-American Rejects (80 MS points/ $1)

    Song With A Mission - The Sounds (80 MS points/ $1)

    We didn't get any of the others. I'm sure I could play AAR a few times and it would be okay (we're really sick of the stock songs by now), but if they kept forcing us to play them in random sets, I'd go crazy.

    I think it's Activision and Harmonix, but I'm not sure. I read somewhere that Activision are claiming that Harmonix need to pay a price to order to let Rock Band's guitars work on Guitar Hero... Annoying!

    That's right, for the PS3, Harmonix made a patch that will let GH controllers work with Rock Band, but Sony won't release it. It's pretty clear now that Activision just wants money:

    Activision: "We believe we should be compensated for the use of our technology."

  11. Posted

    Tommy: Your website is down again, so I can't read your article :(

    :frusty:

    Wrestle: Did we ever discover if that journalist was fired for writing an honest review? I'd forgotten about that, I probably shouldn't have linked to that evil, (potentially) untrustworthy site.

    I've read/listened to a bunch of stuff about it, and from what we know, no, it was a case of REALLY bad timing (on their part). It was bullshit that he got fired, but it doesn't seem like it was advertiser pressure that did it. They didn't change the review score, they only modified some parts of the text (which actually added more criticisms). We'll likely never know for sure, though.

  14. Posted

    Um... your site seems broken at the moment. From the name of the url, I'm guessing you got the Expert achievement, but what's up with the pedal?

    Ah, yes, server is being dumb again. :tdown: I'll be switching servers in Feb.

    Yes, I got the achievement finally. The pedal is a crappy plastic kill-your-leg pedal, that's all. A real bass pedal is MUCH easier to sustain rapid beats with. That's what made me fail the final song a few times.

  17. Posted

    and the most annoying thing, which really sums up Neversofts complete lack of understanding of humour

    The first thing I noticed when playing GH3 was that almost every single loading screen was completely unfunny and stupid. To the point of me getting angry at the game. :frusty:

  19. Posted

    I'm sure you'll do fine, but prepare yourself for the bass pedal! It was really funny to see people commenting about how they were easily playing drums on Expert at Walmart (many store demos had auto-bass on) -- then they bought the game and posted that they were getting killed on Medium with the bass. :)

    I'm sure Rock Band does a great job of easing you into everything though. When I started out with Drummania, I only had a few songs that were easy enough for me to play (since most players who write the files play on Extreme). So that was pretty rough for a while. I will say, it's really satisfying to be able to breeze through a song that you felt was impossible a few months (or years) earlier. Off-beat bass notes used to be so frustrating, now it's almost boring without them.

  20. Posted

    Another night of Rock Band down and I'm seriously considering spending the extra $70 it would cost me to get it off eBay a month early so I could play me some drums.

    Have you played drums before (in any capacity, with a bass pedal)?

    I don't regret getting it, but just know that your drums WILL break. So you might want to wait until they fix it, or just deal with modding it yourself.

    I'm currently ranked two hundred eighty something on the career leaderboards for guitar. I know you've been pretty exceptional in Guitar Hero as well, Tommy. I can't compete on drums yet, but how am I for guitar?

    Honestly, I don't know -- you're probably way better than me. I played through GH3, with only "Raining Blood" left, and quit. I don't play GH much anymore, ever since realizing drumming is more fun, and "real," so I choose to practice that more. I only play GH when people are over, and now with Rock Band, I almost never touch the guitar (especially because no one else here can drum). I haven't completed the guitar solo tour yet. Also, I realized yesterday that we really should have calibrated the game, because it was about 60ish ms off! Add the semi-broken guitar, and so far my scores are pretty terrible. Once you do get the DLC, get Joker and the Thief! The beginning has some really fun HOPOs, and the song is great.

    Also, while playing in world tour, I should start taking on Bass so I can get that perfect bass achievement. The one for getting 100% on a song on expert using all up-strums. Sounds like fun.

    The funny thing about that is that most people's downstrum has broken, so they can ONLY upstrum anyway.

    Speaking of achievements, in BWT, I got the 100% Expert guitar achievement for some song, but because of the "band leader" thing I was using my roommate's profile! So now he has it, despite mostly playing medium! Weak!

  21. Posted

    The one that weirded me out was Sabotage, which is entirely spoken. I said every word, and I said it in time. Why only 3 stars? Bah, I say.

    Yeah, it's weird for me too. If you really look, there IS a lag though, so people recommend singing slightly early--the arrow doesn't appear right away. There doesn't really seem to be a way to fix it yet.

    A real mic will be a lot of fun, and honestly the whole reason I'm buying this game is for the drums so playing it without seemed a bit hollow. Guitar is still great, but damn do I need to play me some skins.

    Thank you for the perfect segue into what I just posted on my site! *ahem* SPEAKING OF drums...

    I got two of the highest Expert drum scores IN THE WORLD*!

    Also: leaderboards question, Rock Band vs. Drummania.

    bang-a-gong-leader.jpg

    I haven't posted my review yet, I'm going to do a lot of smaller posts, since this game is MASSIVE!

  22. Posted

    It appears that anyone who ordered a replacement guitar (maybe drums too) is getting a FREE GAME from EA. The holidays (well, that's their excuse) caused the shipments to take forever, so many people don't have their replacements yet. Emails were sent out informing people that they could have a free game from EA (The Simpsons Game was the only one mentioned, not sure what's available).

    So...go request a replacement now if you want a free game, you probably have a broken guitar anyway. I don't know how long this deal will last, maybe it's already over.

    Miffy: they've said the headset quality is really bad, so playing above Medium is very difficult. Definitely wait for a real mic.

  24. Posted

    There actually seems to be *three* versions of everything. I've been playing constantly for the past week. Our strum bar seems to be...weird. Not totally broken, but I miss a lot of notes when I shouldn't be. We don't have a GH controller for the 360. The drums aren't responsive enough, but I did the tape-mod, and they're WAY better now. I still want to replace them, though.

    The controllers are *designed* really well, they're just not *made* well. Someone opened their drums and the pad sensor has a bunch of melted plastic around it, which explains the unresponsive rolls.

    I have a big review I've been writing, I'll link it when it's up. Really awesome game, despite the bad controllers.

  25. Posted

    thylus.jpg

    Here's a quick breakdown:

    GOOD

    + Comes with a case that you can stick to your DS if you want

    + Shouldn't scratch your screen

    + Works really well for games like Viewtiful Joe where you need to use the buttons AND the touch screen, because you can keep it lower down on your thumb <-- This is the reason you want this.

    + Has a pointed tip, good precision

    BAD

    - Not easily re-adjustable, and requires cutting (easy to do, but if you mess up....)

    You can buy them on their site for $6 + $2 shipping (no extra shipping for up to three): http://thylus.com

    You can read a full review that I wrote on CRG if you want more info. It's probably 1,000 words longer than is needed for a stylus review, but hey!