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“I’m not great at it,” he said. “And a lot of that has to do with the fact that it’s hard for me to get rid of 30 years — whatever it is — 20-some-odd years of playing in a certain way and then all of the sudden become accustomed to pressing some buttons and stuff. I have these little things that I’m so used to doing that when I’m playing ‘Guitar Hero’ it sort of screws me up.”
In my GameFile column at MTVNews.com today, Harmonix associate producer Helen McWilliams talks about writing text for “Rock Band“:
“A lot of it is making sure the voice is pretty true to the spirit of rock and roll,” she said. “You realize as you start looking at it that there are words that are acceptable in the rock universe and words that are totally unacceptable. It tends to be a lot of me going through and saying we are not saying ‘groove’ and we are not saying ‘jam.’ ”
For more of that and other news about the two biggest rhythm games still to be released this year, check out GameFile, linked (twice!) above.
The set-up: I was not satisfied with the E3 demo Nintendo prepared for the press to demonstrate “Wii Fit.” It appeared to hide a damaging flaw.
The mini-games Nintendo showed for the exercise program mainly involved standing on the board and doing activities that seemed to require a bit of the honors system. How would the board know, for example, that a “Fit” player was moving his or her arms in the proper aerobic swings demonstrated on screen? One of the primary habits of the gamer is to find shortcuts: skip the instruction manual; use the same guaranteed-touchdown plays in “Madden,” not really read out loud in the reading-out-loud part of “Brain Age,” run “Sim City” overnight to build up tax revenue, etc. So I started to wonder how short-cut-proof “Wii Fit” is.
Could someone buy “Wii Fit” with all the best intentions but be seduced into using easier methods to cheat the system? I asked my E3 Nintendo rep if I could conduct an experiment:
When I told N’Gai Croal at Newsweek about my experiment, he said it’s proof that Nintendo could make a good luge game. He had some other comments too, but, really, make your own jokes.
The recently released Xbox Live Arcade gameBomberman LIVE is a homecoming of sorts for this long-loved franchise. Fans of the series have been dropping bombs for almost 25 years now, and the newest version appears to be the first one in a long time that is a worthy update to the franchise.
At the NECA booth (makers of the Resident Evil toys and who recently signed a deal with Epic Games to make Gears of War collectibles), I spotted these amazing Castlevania figures. Pictured here are Dracula and Alucard, and after the jump are Simon Belmont and a (censored) Succubus. These figures are part of series one and are slated to come out next month.
There’s never a lack of interesting costumes on any day of Comic Con. From walking Assassin’s Creed advertisements to the last Spartan of 300, we saw it all.
The booth for the King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters featured classic Donkey Kong arcade machines so that attendees could play and record their high score. The winner would then be crowned the “King of Kong” (of the Komic Kon). If you’re not familiar with King of Kong, it’s an upcoming documentary film about two legendary arcade gamers, Billy Mitchell and Steve Wiebe, who competed against each other to beat the high score in Donkey Kong. Billy, who we recently interviewed at the Pac-Man World Championships, is a hot sauce mogul while Steve is a middle school science teacher. See King of Kong in theaters on August 17th and make the jump to view the trailer.
One place that was crowded every day at the Con was the Square Enix booth. Why? Because they had sweet figures for their popular RPG franchises Final Fantasy and Kingdom Hearts. Not everything was for sale yet, but you can see which figures you like and keep checking back at the Square Enix store for future release dates.
Walking around near Ray Harryhausen’s booth we spotted legendary horror filmmaker Clive Barker. In addition to being a director, artist and novelist, Barker was also here to promote his new video game Jericho. In the supernatural horror-themed first-person shooter, you’re the leader of a seven-man Special Forces team that protects U.S. interests against paranormal threats. The members of the team are experts in military combat, but also have special para-psychological disciplines that help them along the way. The game hits stores September 3rd.
In my GameFile column at MTVNews.com today, Slash talks “Guitar Hero“:
