Rock Band Unwrapped

Ever wanted to know what the inside of a wireless Harmonix Rock Band 2 fender stratocaster guitar looked like? Yeah me to, so when I got my hands on a broken one, I went to work. I was surprised to find that all you needed was a simple Phillips head screw driver. Below in order is what I found. Enjoy.

I decided to attack the front plate first.

I quickly discovered a small dilemma. The tiny cone shaped feedback controller was holding the face plate on the front of the guitar. I decided to turn my attention to the back of the guitar.

Only 14 screws held the guitar together. After removing those screws, you were forced to pull a few glued wires for the inside of the case. At this point the guitar could still be put back together and used. If it actually worked.

And the back view.

After the main case was dismantled, I turned my attention to what would be the most difficult part to dissect. The long neck of the guitar had only 6 visible screws to simple undo.
Hidden in the head of the neck was this little sheet metal connector. It provided a very sturdy support system. At this point, I still believe I could put the guitar back together.
After I popped that sucker out, the neck still wouldn't come apart. Something was keeping it together and there was very little give in the plastic.
In the picture below you can see a broken screw. It was hidden under the blue or red neck key. I probably should have looked, but I finally had a point of no return. I was now obligated to finish the dismantling of the guitar. At this point the guitar is broken and can not be put back together.

Here is an before shot of the remaining wires and gizmo's still attached to the plastic.

A few more twists of the screwdriver and presto. A empty case.
Here are the final pictures of the process. A pretty big mess.

A final overall view of the remaining plastic. All screws will be recycled. Plastics will be disposed of properly.

Special thanks to AlmostFamous24 for providing the guitar. Stay tuned for an upcoming sequel......20 Gig hard drive unwrapped?

Thanks for reading.

Viking: Battle for Asgard

Viking: Battle for Asgard

Rating: 6/10

Achievements: 9/10
If you are looking to boost your gamerscore I would suggest throwing Viking: Battle for Asgard in the Xbox. In the first three hours you should be able to earn approximately 350 G’s. Going forward the achievement’s are unlocked at a slower pace, but still come quickly enough. The majority of the achievements are unlocked simply by playing through the story. If you complete the story on the normal difficulty go back and complete it again on hard for a few more G’s.

Review:
What a mindless game and that’s no knock on Viking as this is a hack & slash title in its purest form. The story is serviceable enough to keep you interested and willing to pay attention to the cut scenes. We are introduced to the game with an army of demon warriors, led by the Goddess of Death Hel, attacking the Viking territory of Asgard. We initially see our main character, Skarin, crawl from the battlefield with fatal wounds, but is later resurrected by the Goddess of Light Freya, to free the Viking homeland and build an army large enough to take on Hel herself.There are three land masses that are unlocked as the story progresses, but all of the quests are basically the same. Free the lumber mill and rescue the prisoners. Repeat at the farm and the distillery, etc. There are a couple of side quests inserted along the way to lighten the monotony, but it is all pretty much the same for each region. Interesting enough for a game where you basically hack and slash all the enemies to death there are a couple of missions that stealth is stressed. I originally tried the stealth route, but bumbling Skarin always blew his cover, so I ended up just killing everybody in sight. I’m not going to lie; it was fun.

So now that we have the story down let’s get into the actual game play. The graphics are decent, but nothing special. However, when battling an enemy there is a finishing move that slows the action down and we see the bloodshed more clearly. During battle you can hit A for a weak quick attack, X for a strong slow attack. Each stage has a Battle Arena where you can unlock combination attacks; go there early an often. You can also press the Y button to dodge an attack, but you will most likely only need to take evasive action when fighting a Demon Champion or Giant, which is surprisingly rare. Oh, and that finishing move that I mentioned earlier…it’s the X button. Don’t worry; the controls aren’t as confusing as they sound. I hope you are picking up on the sarcasm. I almost forgot about the charged attack that can be used once you upgrade your sword. I forgot, because this option could have been much more exciting to use since it had some flaws. You have the choice between upgrading your sword by infusing it with lighting, fire & ice powers. As you massacre demon warriors some will leave red orbs that you can collect and charge a special attack meter. Once the desired amount of orbs have been collected the special attack can be initiated by hitting the right bumper (RB) and then either X, Y, or B. Again, real complicated, but here is where the special attack came up short. Once the special attack is initiated you can not turn it off until your attack meter runs dry even if all the enemies are now nothing but discarded limbs. Also, it takes longer to charge the meter than it should. My advice is to save the special attack until the final battle on each stage and once initiated your special attack will also power up your allies in battle as well. It was enjoyable & beneficial to use, but just couldn't be used enough.

The music is about as exciting as the controls, so you may want to turn on some background noise. Maybe a stereo, baseball game, or even a washer & dryer would work out well. Who says people who play video games aren’t productive? There were portions of Viking where I was roaming the countryside with no music at all and the sound effects of Skarin thumping through the grassy plains made me want to grab a pint of the delicious mead that Skarin would find while traversing the Viking lands. Oh wait; I wouldn’t know how the mead tasted, because our hero never got to drink any of it. We would find the stuff and then sell it to the local inn, but whenever we wanted some the Inn Keeper was conveniently sold out. Isn’t that a kick in the stones…

Even though the game did not require much brain power or have complex & exciting controls I still enjoyed myself. After I learned enough combination moves I even started talking trash to some of the demon warriors as I decapitated them, or chopped both their arms off. That may say something about me, but I am not going to dwell on it. Viking is a fairly short game, but it took me a bit longer than a rental period to beat the game, but what’s a dollar restocking fee for returning it late anyway? I also have seen this game at a local retailer that has a target for marketing purposes (figure it out) priced at $29.99. Both options are a fair price and worth checking out.

Blue Dragon

Blue Dragon

Rating: 6/10 (plus or minus 1…I’ll explain)

Achievements: 1/10
Why did I spend so much time on a measly 165 gamerpoints? You read that correctly, only 165 G’s were unlocked during my 50+ hours of game play. There is no rhyme or reason for what is considered an achievement in Blue Dragon. There are many bosses that you will encounter on your long journey, but no achievements will be gained by defeating the bosses, including the final boss. I am getting frustrated just thinking about the fact that I didn’t get any G’s for completing the game. However, I did earn 30 G’s for killing the rare Golden Poo Snake…that’s right Poo…I’ll explain. Let’s just move on; if you’re looking for achievements, don’t play this game.

Review:
I always seem to navigate towards RPG’s, whether it’s a turn based title such as Blue Dragon & Lost Odyssey, or what I guess are being called American RPG’s like Fallout 3 & Mass Effect. Blue Dragon was recommended to me (see previous post: Do You Have a Gamestop Story, 03/16/09), so I thought I would give it a shot.

If you are not familiar with the turn based RPG genre you may already be confused by what you are reading. These types of games are very technical and you have to be very diligent in managing your party. Usually there is a group of people who stay with the main character and everybody has a specific role, such as providing white magic for healing, black magic for powerful attacks and others who don’t utilize much magic, but have very powerful melee attacks. Each character needs to be equipped with different accessories that you find throughout the game, which should increase some aspect of their role like attack, magic, defense, etc. The battles may also take a little while to get used to, since each character attacks or heals in a designated order. This is a far departure from a hack & slash title where you just press a button and hope for the best; very numbers oriented.

This quick explanation was given, because if the above description sounds interesting to a person who has never played a turn based RPG then this game may be a good title to get introduced to the genre. Blue Dragon introduced new areas & controls slowly, giving a detailed description. At no point did I ever feel overwhelmed with the controls or menu options. The one item that was not explained very well was the different skill types each character could develop. I realized too late that the ‘generalist’ skill was the most powerful and versatile; suggest having the character Maromaru designated as the Generalist.

I have to believe that the developers created Blue Dragon with the intention of luring a new audience to RPG’s with the detailed tutorials. However, the story was very childish and would appeal to an audience who would be too young to play this type of game. An enemy that is encountered many times throughout the game is a Poo Snake, which is basically a snake that looks like a pile of poo. Besides the fecal matter the majority of the enemies fought throughout the game look like something you would see in a Japanese version of Toy Story, consisting of many windup robots. I guess the maturity of the story & its characters should have been expected as the main character is a young boy accompanied by his friends who are all trying to harness a magical power and in doing so the kids take on Nene, a powerful sorcerer who is trying to rule the world with ancient magical robots. Really...a robot that looks like a tin soldier? Come on…now Mega Maid, that was a real evil machine.

Completing the main story is fairly easy and straightforward, if you are willing to spend the time on it, but there are a few optional side quests, which have bosses of their own. Besides the terrible story the optional bosses frustrated me the most. It’s understood that these bosses are optional, but there is no reason that any enemy in a game should be more powerful than the final boss. In my saved game I beat the final boss with my main character at a level 80 out of a possible 99 levels and I am still not able to beat any of the five optional dragons that are hidden throughout the game. This set of dragons really doesn’t even have a purpose in the game and if they do it’s so insignificant that I have already forgotten. That may seem strange with the name being Blue Dragon.

Anyway, my original rating of this game was a 6, plus or minus 1. If you are a young child who has a desire to get into RPG’s this game & story may be perfect for you. However, if your reading this than you are probably too old for the game. Either way you look at it you should be able to find this game new or used for $10.00 – 20.00, so you will surely get your money worth with the amount of time needed to complete it.

Marvel or DC...which one are you?

No we are not talking comic books, not in this post at least. ComicCon 09 brings us a release date for Marvel Ultimate Alliance 2. UA2 is scheduled to hit the streets September 15th. Which puts the release only 2 weeks after Batman : Arkham Asylum. BAA is scheduled to be released August 25th. So this begs the question readers, are you going Marvel or DC? Batman offers a more single player experience, while UA2 offers a more team building effort.

Drop us a note in the comments to let us know how you swing, web or batwire?

Top 6 games from the first 6 months of 2009

Here are what I believe to be the top 6 games by release month of 2009. I did not included DLC or XBLA games in this list. Strictly XBOX 360 retail games were considered. Website review scores, number of sales to date, and my personal feeling for the games are what I took into account for judging these as the "top" games. So lets start it off with January, typically a great month to stay indoors and play all those great holiday release titles. Well a few did not make it in time. A very few.

January :
Top Game : Skate 2 runs away with this month. The only real competition was from Afro Samurai. High reviews and the months highest selling game made Skate 2 the top game of January. Personally have not played, but I know someone that has...does that count?

February :

Top Game : Street Fighter IV hands down. Amazing reviews and over a million units sold, make this fighter February's top game. February had some competition with the release of Sonic's Ultimate Genesis Collection and Fear 2. The sales and reviews were just slightly lower for those 2 titles.

March :

Top game : Legends of WrestleMania. March was the first tough month. A group of very good games were released. Resident Evil 5 was the blockbuster game with mega sales of over 2 million. MLB2K9, TC Hawx, GH: Metallica, and Trivial pursuit were all highly reviewed. I played WWE and loved it. I also played RE5 and hated it. Seriously you still can't move AND shoot. I had to give it to WWE.

April :

Top Game: The Chronicles of Riddick, Assault on Dark Athena. Yet another top game of the month I have yet to play. This title was highly reviewed, but suffered from poor sales. The really only other title to consider was Godfather 2. It got poor reviews and its sales were not much better than CRADA. Velvet Assassin and Ninja Blade round out the bottom of the list of April releases.

May :

Top Game : May was a surprise for me. UFC 2009 Undisputed was this months clear winner. Very high reviews and over a million units sold put yet another fighting game over the top. This month was heavy with Movie tie in titles such as Wolverine and Terminator. While Wolverine was a solid game and Terminator was a joke, they both lacked sales. Bionic Commando and Battlestations Pacific round out this month's releases. A pretty good month overall.

June :

Top Game : Ghostbusters The Video Game takes June. June had fair share of highly reviewed big selling games. Ghostbusters, received middle of the road reviews and sales numbers. The top selling games were simply this years editions. Tiger Woods 10, Overlord 2, Virtua Tennis, Red Faction, and Fight Night are all new editions. I felt Ghostbusters brought some originality to the table and that is why it got the top spot of June. The previously mentioned games are all solid titles, that sold really well, but for a new experience try Ghostbusters. Call of Juarez, Prototype, and Fuel round out Junes releases.

So there you have the top 6 games so far this year. I have yet to play a lot of them, and this list will help decide the rest of my summer plans. Reviews were taken from the following sites : Teamxbox.com, Gamezone.com, and Xbox360achievements.org. Sales data was pulled from VGchartz.com.

Thanks for reading.

Game Diary.......finale...

Well here it is the series finale for the semi-daily game diary. The year long streak is complete. 360voice.com updated today and now officially shows 365 straight days. A year straight of powering on the xbox 360 night after night. So lets give a nod to Microsoft for sending me a pretty good quality refurbished machine after my first one got the red rings of death. Comcast also gets a thank you for providing me a high speed Internet connection for a year straight. Finally it all could not have been possible for 360voice.com and of course my friends.

The streak was celebrated with a late Friday night playing of 1 vs. 100. A sprinkle of drunken Rock Band 2 was also attempted. Saturday and Sunday both had me playing NBA2K9 and Fallout 3. I felt they got me this far, the least I could do was play them today.



This brings to a close the diary. The blog will return to it's normally unscheduled posts as usual. There might be a new feature up our sleeves. Stay tuned.. and as always thanks for reading.

Game Diary, Thursday's game play

Streak is sitting at 363 straight days. I extended tonight with a heavy dose of Arkadian Warriors. Actually Darth Slagus and myself finished the game and score ourselves 75 G's!! Arkadian warriors ranks up there with one of the best values for a XBLA game. I put a ton of hours into the game. Something like 10 different levels, but it felt like more. A huge selection of magic and weapons. A story line that is cheezy enough to make you laugh, but serious enough to make you want to finish it. Just a great game.

I also played some more Bully and 1 vs. 100. Starting this weekend, prizes will begin to roll out of 1 vs. 1oo. Yes I know they are still in Beta, but it clearly says Beta : Now with prizes, on the dashboard.

A year straight is now within my grasp, I still can't believe it. It sure doesn't feel like a year straight. I wonder what I have missed in the last year? Check back the next 2 days to see what I play to finish out my year. I am not going to lie to you...there will be some Fallout3 being played.

Thanks for reading