I’m a Johnny-come-lately to this whole world of ‘virtual guitars.’ I finally picked up Guitar Hero 3 a couple of weeks ago, and today Rock Band arrived. I’d found it really confusing, trying to decide which one to get. So in the end I got both. Great economics, huh? I thought I might capture my impressions in a series of posts, in case anyone else is trying to pick one of the two.

These posts are based on the PS3 versions of the games. I’m not going to go into a whole big thing about console preference. I have a PS3, an XBox 360 and a Wii, and my personal preference is for the PS3 over the XBox 360, mostly because its a lot quieter when its running, and because I don’t care about online multiplayer.

Guitar Hero III w/Guitar Controller will run you about $100. The Rock Band bundle is $170 and comes with a guitar controller, drum set controller, and a microphone. Right there, you have a compelling reason to go with Rock Band if you’re living in a multi-gamer household.

On the PS3, the controllers are not interchangeable at this time, though as of this writing there are heavy rumors of a patch that will let you use the GH 3 guitar controller with Rock Band. My understanding is that on the 360, the GH 3 controller will work with Rock Band, but not vice versa.

Let’s compare the two guitar controllers. This is a definite ‘out of the box’ comparison. I haven’t actually played Rock Band as of the time of this writing. 🙂 But the differences just struck me so I wanted to capture them right away.
Continue reading “Rock Band vs Guitar Hero 3: The Guitars”

I picked up Enchanted Arms for the XBox 360 today. Put about an hour into it. What follows are my initial ‘gut level’ reactions. Warning: some spoilers for the very early parts of the game:

OK here’s my 1 Hour Review of Enchanted Arms.

First, let’s get this out of the way. You start with 3 classmates. Atsuma is the protagonist, and he’s kind of a slacker type. Toya is the smart, suave one. And Makota is the fretful one. Makota is also gay and totally in love with Toya. It isn’t clear if Toya returns the feeling yet. With the English voices on, I found Makota *extremely* annoying. He has a really over-blown ‘queen’ accent, if you know what I mean. Like a sleazy stand-up comic doing a gay guy. I quickly switched to the Japanese voices (with English subtitles) and find them much better. The English Atsuma played the character pretty ‘serious’, and the Japanese Atsuma is pretty over-the-top and crazy. Odd that I can say that, not knowing a word of Japanese, but you really pick up on it.

The game has a pretty slow start. If you talk to everyone, and you enjoy anime, then you’ll have fun. If you just do what you need to do, it’ll just seem weird. You start in class. Then you have to go to the cafeteria. Then you have to buy your lunch. Then you have to go feed your dog. Then you need to get out of the school. Dull. But add talking to people and you’ll meet the diet girl who is in despair over whether she should buy the cheap fattening lunch, or the expensive healthy lunch, given her low funds. You’ll meet girls in love with Toya and get to hear Makota try to defend his turf. You’ll meet a club (The Anti-Atsuma Alliance, or 3A’s) devoted to keeping tabs on Atsuma to protect the rest of the school from his slackerly ways, and so forth. I found this all amusing, and since I was reading the english subtitles I could click through it all really fast.
Continue reading “Enchanted Arms 1 Hour Review”

Warrior Woman is an interesting read over at Primotech. A young gamer decided to introduce his 53 year old mom to his XBox 360 to try and test Peter Moore’s assertion that “even your mom will be playing games here.”

What really makes the article is that the test subject is an articulate and thoughtful woman, and that she was willing to take the topic seriously. She didn’t play these games for half an hour…she spent a few weeks playing them. Anyway, well worth a read.