Archive for the 'My Gripes' Category

14
Jul

My Faves/My Gripes: Six Best, Worst Rock Band 2 Tracks

By Russ Crandall 0 Comments
Categories: Games, Music, My Faves, My Gripes and News
Tags: , , ,


Okay, so the whole on-disc tracklist for Rock Band 2 came out today. There are a total of 84 tracks - some good, some bad. Here are the six I’m looking forward to the most, and the six I’m dreading the most:

My Faves
Beck - “E-Pro”
Fleetwood Mac - “Go Your Own Way”
Foo Fighters - “Everlong”
Modest Mouse - “Float On”
Nirvana - “Drain You” (Wait, does this mean it’s not coming as DLC?)
Soundgarden - “Spoonman” (ALL MY FRIENDS ARE INDIANS!!!)

My Gripes
Disturbed - “Down with the Sickness”
Dream Theater - “Panic Attack”
Guns N’ Roses - “Shackler’s Revenge”
Linkin Park - “One Step Closer”
Panic at the Disco - “Nine in the Afternoon”
Steely Dan - “Bodhitsattva”
…plus all of the “Bonus Songs”

Keep reading for the full list:

Continue reading ‘My Faves/My Gripes: Six Best, Worst Rock Band 2 Tracks’

30
Jun

Potential My Gripe or My Fave: Rock Band DLC Song Transfers (Updated)

By Russ Crandall 0 Comments
Categories: Games, Music, My Faves and My Gripes
Tags: , ,


Update: YESSS! Rock Band 2 was just announced, and that “all the current and future DLC will be compatible with both versions of Rock Band, as well as the same instrument controllers” - so put this in the “my faves” grouping.

I have to hand it to Rock Band-developers Harmonix - they’ve always done right by me. Whereas I feel gypped by the monster that is Activision and Guitar Hero III, Harmonix has always seemed to give us what we want (but sometimes not when we want it). Their DLC songs are cheaper (and usually better than the crappola offered by GHIII), and the full-album DLC idea is just about awesome.

But we’re at a crossroads, folks, and I bet you didn’t even know it. What happens to all my DLC content when Rock Band 2 comes out? I have at least 30 songs downloaded so far, and I’m sure there’ll be more to come. Considering that the average song costs $2, that’s $60 in DLC investment alone. It would be awesome if I can play the songs that I already paid for in Rock Band 2 (maybe even with whatever new features the RB2 will have?). I don’t want to have to pop the old Rock Band back into my Xbox 360 just to play some old songs - I want them to follow me to my new profile. Let me build a DLC library!

26
Jun

My Gripes: Assassin’s Annoyances Pt. 2

By Mark Hill 1 Comment
Categories: Editorials, Games and My Gripes
Tags: ,

You may remember Russ’ first My Gripes about Assassin’s Creed. Well, I’m back with another. I’ve been playing it again for the last few days, and while I still love it, there are a few things I really need to gripe about, relating specifically to what I’m doing in the game.

There are a total of 420 flags that need collectin’, and 60 Templars that need killin’, but without a very tedious and anti-fun system of checking and re-checking, there is no way that you (or more importantly, me) are going to find all those hidden little nuggets on your own. I’ve been using some really good online guides to help hunt the Templars, but without keeping track externally, I don’t know which ones I have or have not done yet.

Assassin’s Creed really needs to have some kind of in-game map support to find these things. Maybe as an unlockable after you beat the game, or hell, I would even pay upwards of 200 MS points just for some downloadable support. Did you hear that, Micro/Ubisoft? Free money! Just for putting some little red dots on a map! Sounds like a killer deal to me.

13
Jun

Review / My Faves / My Gripes: Rock Band’s Album Selection

By Tyler Miller 7 Comments
Categories: My Faves, My Gripes and Reviews
Tags: , ,

When news first hit way back in July 07 at E3 that Rock Band would provide full length albums as DLC, all of our heads were bedazzled with thoughts of getting to play whole LPs like Weezer’s “Blue Album” and Ini Kamoze’s self-titled debut, featuring the record shattering hit “Hot Stepper”.

Sadly, the first album released was Judas Priest’s “Screaming For Vengence”… Not a good start. I think I and every other literate, halfway intelligent non-mouthbreathing person on the Earth collectively sighed and did a slow, Three Stooges-esque face wipe in disbelief. My hopes of playing either classic rock anthems or late 90’s punk/alt/rock were dashed by patent leather and studded bracelets. I hate when people go for the low hanging fruit of track selection that is Heavy Metal. Prime example: KISS. I hate KISS. You know why? Because everyone knows who they are, but no one knows their songs. People think KISS and they think make up and costumes, not classic rock. Name me two KISS songs. “I Wanna Rock and Roll All Night (And Party Every Day)”, and…? What? That’s right, nothing. Because they suck. Now, name me one Judas Priest song. “Breaking the Law”? Good job, you must have watched Beavis and Butthead when you were younger. The same goes for The Grateful Dead and Pink Floyd to a certain extent.

NOTE: Snail Face = Bad

Screaming for Vengeance gets 5/5 Snail Faces

Continue reading ‘Review / My Faves / My Gripes: Rock Band’s Album Selection’

03
Jun

My Gripes: 5 Worst Franchise Reboots

By Russ Crandall 4 Comments
Categories: Editorials, Games and My Gripes
Tags: , , , , , ,

This week I’m publishing a three-part series concerning franchise reboots (you know, when a series gets “reinvigorated”/”reinvented” rather than work on a new IP). Below are what I consider the five worst reboots, followed by the five best reboots, and finally five games that could use a sequel.

Franchise reboots are nothing new to popular culture - just look at this summer’s movie release listing. Video games in particular have had a huge amount of franchise reboots (not to mention video games based on movie franchise reboots, too). For the most part, they do an okay job, but sometimes they fail miserably.

There are some franchises I don’t even want to get into, like the Frogger, Pac-Man, Mortal Kombat and Sonic games, which have just become progressively worse to the point of joke status.

Continue reading ‘My Gripes: 5 Worst Franchise Reboots’

01
Jun

My Gripes: Lack of Wii Fit Daily Training

By Mark Hill 6 Comments
Categories: Editorials, Games and My Gripes

Every time I do a My Gripes, I’m always afraid that I’m actually missing something in the game that would fix what I’m complaining about. This one is no different, so if you know something that I don’t (highly unlikely), please chime in.

I really don’t like that there is no game-generated daily training routine in Wii Fit. Remember how Brain Age would have some daily training for you which was a combination of all the different activities available within? Well, Wii Fit makes you pick what you want to do from the menu. Naturally, we’re going end up picking the easiest activities, and skipping the ones that would help us the most.

That’s the point, Wii Fit, I’m lazy. If I knew what I wanted to do, I wouldn’t have bought you. I need you to pick out activities for me every day. A combination of yoga, strength, balance, and cardio to round out my fitness routine and bring me from the soft American that I am, to the hardened ninja warrior that I want to be.

01
Jun

My Gripes: Rock Band “Complete My Album”

By Russ Crandall 0 Comments
Categories: Apple, Games, Music and My Gripes
Tags: , , , ,


The other day I purchased The Cars’ “Just What I Needed” for Rock Band, to the tune of $2. And then, after much deliberation, previewing and soul-searching, I decided that I would buy the whole album, which is available for $15. But it also comes with “Just What I Needed”, and doesn’t give me any discount on my already-purchased track.

So, I paid $17 for the same album that everyone else gets. Although that’s still cheaper than buying each track individually ($18), I feel like I was ripped off a little bit.

Apple has a feature where if you buy a track from them, you have 180 days to “complete the album” for a discounted price. Couldn’t Harmonix do the same?

29
May

My Gripes: The Metal Gear Solid Series

By Russ Crandall 6 Comments
Categories: Games and My Gripes
Tags: , ,


To say that I’m a fan of the Metal Gear Solid series is an understatement. I played the first MGS on my newly-purchased PSOne in 2001 (yeah, I was way behind the times for a while) and thought it was awesome, like “playing a movie”. I bought a PS2 and MGS2 on the day that MGS2 launched. I didn’t play MGS3 until this past week just because I have been intimidated by it, and I’m about half through right now. During this latest playthrough, some of the elements that annoyed me in the first two games became so apparent to me that I was compelled to write this latest My Gripes.

Continue reading ‘My Gripes: The Metal Gear Solid Series’

20
May

My Gripes: Alphabet Soup

By Russ Crandall 0 Comments
Categories: Games and My Gripes
Tags: ,


GTA. GH. COD. DMC. RE. WoW. MGS. NES. SNES. PS1/2/3. GoW. SMB. SSBB. FF. Etc.

Honestly, we have way too many acronyms thrown around in the gaming world. And that’s because our game names are just too long. Howzabout you spend some time coming up with a unique name? Bioshock, Ico, Okami? Why do I have to waste brainpower memorizing some stupid, long-ass name that isn’t evocative at all?

Well, okay, two-letter words are still pretty good, I’m just annoyed by anything beyond that.

27
Apr

My Gripes: Video Game “Art”

By Russ Crandall 2 Comments
Categories: Games and My Gripes
Tags: , , ,


Today’s gripe has to do with art. Not all art, but art that has a video game theme.

Take the above picture. If it wasn’t Samus from the Metroid series as a zombie, it’d be just another zombie. However, because it is Samus from the Metroid series, the picture has been floating around all sorts of video game sites for the past couple days. I guess we fall into that category now.

What annoys me is that I sometimes feel like artists are getting undue attention just because they’re nerdy enough to include a video game reference. Sweet, your mediocre art is getting more attention than it deserves because nerds are perpetuating your product. Oh yeah, if you show some boobage, you’ll get twice the hits. Get on it!

The above print isn’t that bad, by the way.

21
Apr

my gripes: alien capitalization

By Mark Hill 3 Comments
Categories: Editorials, Games and My Gripes
Tags: ,

I’m not even sure if I’m correct in griping about this, but because I’ve been playing a lot of Mass Effect lately, it’s something that’s been bugging me.

In the game, many different alien races are referred to, but none of their names are capitalized in the on-screen text. For example, there are the asari, the krogans, the rachni, and so on. According to cmu.edu, race should be capitalized, e.g. Martians, or Mexicans. I’m not sure why the aliens of the ME universe are all lower case, but then again, I’m not an English (or Salarian) major.

15
Apr

My Gripes: Caffeine And The Apple Community

By Russ Crandall 0 Comments
Categories: Apple, Editorials and My Gripes
Tags:


Here’s the deal: Lighthead Software released a new feature for their Mac application Caffeine. Basically, Caffeine puts a little icon at the top of your screen, and when you click it, your screen won’t go into sleep or screensaver mode. It’s an application I use every day, especially since I have very conservative energy settings configured for my MacBook.

But.

But this new feature is a little ridiculous. It allows you to set your Caffeine for certain time limits. For instance, you can turn Caffeine on for 15 minutes while you show your friend a 12-minute video. To me, that seems a tad more work than just clicking it “on” when you start the video, and clicking it “off” when you’re done. I like my Mac because of its simplicity and intuitiveness, and this feature seems to be a step in the wrong direction.

Basically, I read about the new upgrade and decided to forgo it for the time being. End of story. But my gripe is that tuaw.com, one of my favorite Apple sites, posted this blog about Caffeine and its new trick, touting the time-limited activation as a useful feature. It’s bad enough that this useless feature is being announced by the developers at all, but the fact that it is making waves in the Apple community is a little much.

Is it just me, or do Applesters go a little overboard when it comes to the tiniest of things?

06
Apr

My Gripes: Battlestar Galactica

By Russ Crandall 4 Comments
Categories: My Gripes and Television
Tags:


I just finished watching the season 4 premiere of Battlestar Galactica, and though it was pretty awesome, I was reminded of some of the “my gripes-able” characteristics of the show:

1. That damn intro. Actually, there are two. There’s always a real quick one in the beginning, then about five minutes of show, and then another intro. It’s that second intro I hate, because it does a real quick recap of the episode you’re about to watch! Thanks but no thanks, I don’t want to see spoilers as I’m watching the damn show. I turn my head away every time.

2. Katie Sackhoff (she plays Kara “Starbuck” Thrace). What a horrible actress. She’s gotten better, but she still makes my skin crawl sometimes; and for me, she brings the every scene down a notch.

3. Dr. Gaius Baltar. Can’t this guy die already? He’s such a scuzz-bucket, I’ve never empathized with him. I think it’s the pure selfishness of his character that really bothers me.

11
Mar

my gripes: call of duty 4 multiplayer scoring

By Mark Hill 4 Comments
Categories: Editorials, Games and My Gripes
Tags: ,

Perks
I have two quick gripes regarding Call of Duty 4 multiplayer. The first has to do with the way that a winner is determined in deathmatches. Currently, it is solely based off of who got the most kills. I think this is a bit unfair, because even though a player got 15 kills, dying 27 times certainly didn’t help his team out any. And in free-for-all deathmatches, who do you think had the better round? The skilled player that barely lost with 24 kills and only 5 deaths, or the bullet sponge that won with 25 kills and 20 deaths?

I think that next to the final standings at the end of each match, there should also be a numerical kill-to-death ratio. The guy with the 24 kills and 5 deaths would have 4.80 ratio, and the other guy would only have a 1.04 kill-per-death total (p.s. I came up with those figures in my head, I’m a mathematical genius).

Here’s one more gripe that some may, and some may not agree with: I believe martyrdom kills should count toward a kill streak. If I’m in the midst of a four kill streak, I die, and my martyrdom kills someone, that should count as a five kill streak and should respawn with an airstike. I feel that the most fair thing to do would be to count all kills up until the point of respawning. Last stand kills count toward a streak, so why can’t martyrdom, just because your heart hasn’t completely stopped yet? That hardly seems fair to me. But who am I?

09
Mar

My Gripes: Assassin’s Annoyances

By Russ Crandall 1 Comment
Categories: Games and My Gripes
Tags: ,


I’ve been playing this a lot lately, I may even beat it tonight or tomorrow. A few gripes:

1. The combat in the game was probably made with simplicity in mind - the problem is, it’s so simple that it gets really annoying. And boring.

2. Why can’t a highly-trained assassin touch water? One foot into that wet stuff and I’m dead.

3. Riding through the countryside from one place to another on a horse while everyone wants to kill you is no fun. It was kinda cool at first.

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