Rock Band 2

It's finally here! Rock Band 2 came out this past Sunday, and I grabbed it later that night. I also had my ION Drum Rocker set show up on Friday, and was able to set it up and a play a song or two on Sunday night before going to bed.

Alright, it's pretty much the same as Rock Band so far. There are some new game modes to play around with, but as far different colored bars scrolling down the screen telling you which buttong to hit, it's not much different.

I haven't had time to try everything out, but it looks like I'll have to unlock all the songs to make them available in free play mode. I love that I was able to transfer over the songs from the original (minus three), and I pretty much bought all the DLC that I wanted, which isn't nearly all of it.

The Drum Rocker set is great. It's taking some getting used to as I set it up a little differently than the old Rock Band set. The best thing is how much room you have to customize where each pad is. I basically set it up as close to a real drum set as I could.

I moved the red pad (snare) to where a snare drum would be in front the two toms and not so far off to the side. I moved the yellow cymbal (hi-hat) to the right of the snare and above. I really want to actually learn to play drums from this, and I figure setting it up this way will make it that much more realistic.

Another cool thing is while the cymbals and drums are the same colors, playing them in free mode they put out the correct sound. The green cymbal is a crash, but the green pad is a floor tom. I'm not sure how they did it, but it's a subtle addition that makes the game that much better.

Right now I think Rock Band really has the edge in the market for these games. The definitely have the superior software and song selection. Guitar Hero had the better hardware, but now that Harmonix is letting third-party manufacturers make official hardware as well, I think they will take that edge away.

I will be getting Guitar Hero: World Tour when it comes out regardless, but it's really just for the songs, I don't expect it to be superior in any way. Sure you can make your own songs, but I don't see that being a major draw for too many people with how much time it probably takes to do that.

Right now I'm having a lot of fun, and looking forward to unlocking all the songs so I can play them whenever I want.

DRM this

Spore was released earlier this week, and I was really anticipating going out and picking it up. The idea behind it is really cool: you evolve a species through various stages and end up traveling around the galaxy visiting (or attacking) other civilizations. There's more to it than that, but I don't want to get into that.

What I was unaware of, until seeing the angry reviews on Amazon, is that the game uses a very strict and invasive DRM (Digital Rights Management) system. The reason the system is put in place is obvious: they don't want people pirating the game. The problem is that it not only doesn't do it's job, as the game has already been pirated, but it also causes many more problems for people who actually buy it legitimately.

First off, it needs to login to the servers and verify every 10 days, which means anyone out there who bought the game to play single player and doesn't have an internet connection won't be able to play.

Second, it is limited to 3 installs, and if you want to make any installs after that you have to call and plead with them to let you do it. I don't know about you, but between hard drive failures, upgraded computers, and failing hard drives, I'd have to call in for a new install after a year, and according to them you are guilty until proven innocent, and that's how you will be treated.

This also creates the problem of how you're going to play this game years down the road. What if EA goes out of business, or they stop providing support for this game? How are any of us supposed to play it anymore? I just started playing Warcraft II again, and that game is over 10 years old. Many people like to go back and play old games, and this DRM system basically makes that impossible in the future.

Lastly, on top of the DRM it also installs SecuROM, which is basically malware, and is pretty much impossible to uninstall without reformatting. The problem is this software doesn't seem to be made for all hardware configurations and will can go so far as to disable your software if it finds something it doesn't like. That's a little scary for those of us with custom built PCs.

The biggest problem is all these rules had to be discovered by consumers. EA never explained how the DRM works, they just included it in the game and let everyone who bought it find out what they can and can't do. That's pretty ridiculous, and even if it is one of the most innovative games to date, I can't support something like that.

I by no means think protecting the games your company produces against pirating is a bad thing, but they way they have done it with this, as well as Mass Effect, is the wrong way to go about it. Make security measures that let legitimate customers play without being restricted and make it hard on the hackers. What they have done is pretty much the exact opposite, and until they fix it I won't buy this game.

Apple disappointment

All I wanted to see was a higher capacity iPod Touch. That's it. I have a lot of music, my iPod was stolen from my car a few weeks ago, and I decided to wait to buy a new one in hopes the iPod Touch would have it's capacity upgrade to bring it up to par with what I need.

No dice.

They made them thinner, and lowered the price. Well that's cool and all, but it's not what I was looking for. If they could put the same capacity in a smaller package, why not leave it the same and increase the capacity? I suppose most people don't have enough music to fill 32 gigs, so why bother adding more?

I might end up getting one anyway. I could get a classic, but then I don't get the touch screen, wi-fi, applications, and games. The touch has so many more features that it's almost worth losing the capacity, I'm just going to have to pick and choose what to put on it.

Decisions, decisions. I'm not sure what I want to do at this point.

RTS phase

One of my favorite videogame genres is the RTS (real-time strategy) games. Namely Warcraft, Starcraft, and Command & Conquer, and all the ones that continue those franchises.

It all started when my uncle brought over a free demo of Warcraft II he had gotten. Not sure if it was from work, came with some other game, or he just happened to see it in a store, but it included the first few levels of each campaign, and it was awesome. I knew I needed the full game at that point.

Eventually I got it, probably as a birthday gift or something, proceeded to play it non-stop. At that point I didn't have many cool computer games, so this one got my undivided attention. I was pretty young though, and the computer I was using wasn't all that great, so between my limited concept of strategy and the lag my computer caused, I found the game pretty difficult.

That didn't stop me from playing though, and I managed to get pretty far in the campaign before I hit a difficult level I just couldn't get past.

Then came Command & Conquer: Red Alert. Still running on a very outdated computer, I managed to become pretty good at this game. It had a lot more options for defending your base, and not having to worry so much about defense I could concentrate on building up an army and taking it to the enemy. I tried the campaigns, but this game really had me hooked on skirmishes and just seeing if I could beat the computer.

Starcraft came next, and I got this pretty late, after the expansion had already been released. I finally had a computer that could handle it, and the fact that it had three factions just made it so much better. Plus they were very different from each other, and that meant you couldn't just win by having more units. I don't even want to think about how many hours I spent on that game, lets just say it was more than enough.

It was a while before I thought about playing another RTS game. Sure more came out, but I had a lot of other games to concentrate on and just sort of forgot about the genre.

That is, until Warcraft III came out. I managed to download it and beat the entire campaign within a couple weeks of its release. The only problem was I didn't have a valid CD-key to play online, so after beating it I sort of lost interest.

In the past couple years I decided I wanted to go back to those older games and go through the campaigns. The problem is, with all the new Windows versions, my old DOS games no longer run on my computer. Luckily Warcraft II: Battle.net Edition was released, solving my problem there, and also allowing online play. Along with finding a downloadable copy of Warcraft: Orcs and Humans, and a DOS emulator, I can play through the original wars, all the stuff I see mentioned in WoW but I never got to see.

Even more recently Command & Conquer: The First Decade was release, which included every game from the franchise that had been released up until that point. I managed to scoop that up and now I have a whole lot of games to get through before I'll be satisfied, although I'll probably burn out on it before I finish.

Right now I am looking at checking out the latest Command & Conquer 3, which has been out for a couple years, but still looks cool. I've heard some bad reviews about it, but I might get it anyway.

At the moment I am working my way through the campaign of the Warcraft II expansion and it's great. I love the simplicity, and I think as I progress through the games and the increasing level of complexity it won't come as such a shock as it would if I had just started with one of the new ones.

If you've never played any of these games you really should. They pretty much set the standard for RTS games, and are so much fun to play you'll get hooked even if you aren't that good.

The new Microsoft Ad

I think most geeks out there can agree that Seinfeld is one of the greatest sitcoms ever. Now he's doing commercials for Microsoft, and strange commercials at that. What does buying discount shoes have to do with a software company? Well lets look a little deeper.

The commercial basically revolves around Jerry Seinfeld seeing Bill Gates buying shoes at a discount shoe store. After some dialogue about churros, Gates decides on a pair of shoes, and how they become very comfortable as you break them in, even if they do fit tight at first.

Meanwhile a Mexican family sees the transaction and notes that they are the same shoes they wear. It ends with Jerry and Bill walking to their cars and Gates hinting at a computer made of cake.

What does it all mean? Well from what I can see, Microsoft is trying to market to everyone. Using the shoes as a metaphor for Vista, saying that it takes some getting used to before you become comfortable with it, just like a new pair of shoes.

Having the Mexican family comment on the shoes makes Microsoft (Gates) seem like just a normal person, who buys discount shoes just like the rest of us. They're trying to play off of Apple's ads that make Macs look like something cool people buy, and instead making Microsoft look like the way to go because they are good and affordable for everyone.

The computers made of cake thing is just hinting that Microsoft is still working on some cool stuff. I'm pretty sure making computers out of cake wouldn't be a good idea.

The only problem with this commercial is that Vista is still terrible. It doesn't take years to break in shoes, it takes a few weeks at most. I've had Vista for over a year now on my laptop and not only is it the probable cause for my hard drive dying, but it crashes pretty much daily.

My girlfriend wanted to use the laptop the other day, but she was sitting too far away for the power cord to reach. She asked me to unplug it, and I said it would probably be better if she just moved closer since it freezes half the time when I unplug it. Well she didn't wanna move, so I let her unplug it and sure enough, it froze up.

Did Service Pack 1 correct this problem? Nope. Has it corrected any of the other problems I've been having? Not really. I'm still trying to figure out how the company that made Windows XP, which runs so smoothly, managed to come out with such a troublesome operating system on their next attempt.

Will I get a Mac for my next computer? At this point it's looking like a yes. I don't base my choice of computers on commercials and what they tell me, I base it on performance, and right now Mac is in the lead. Of course an operating system made specifically to run on certain hardware is going to have less problems, but XP proved a conglomeration of parts can still run a good OS just fine.

Unless Microsoft manages to fix Vista, I'm gonna have to go with a Mac for my next computer. Now if only I had an extra $2000 to blow on a new computer...