Wilkins_III's Blog Posts

This post relates to: Guitar Hero World Tour, Rock Band, Rock Band 2

There's a battle right now between the Guitar Hero and Rock Band franchises with Guitar Hero: World Tour and Rock Band 2. Those who swear by Rock Band usually call Guitar Hero "overcharted" and World Tour a "copycat", and while part of me openly says stuff like that, it's only because I've shelled out so much on Rock Band's downloadable content that I have to stick by them. I'm not interested in investing in another music game's DLC.

But Guitar Hero's been selling better than Rock Band. That's probably not much of a surprise--Guitar Hero is an established series and a lot cheaper--but EA and Harmonix don't seem to be trying to turn that around. How do they respond to Guitar Hero: World Tour's worldwide release later this year? Let's start with Australia. Oh, that's right, they're getting Rock Band 1 early November. Rock Band 1 peripherals, Rock Band 1 disc, Rock Band 1 everything. While Americans are playing Rock Band 2. If I were living in Australia, I'd feel uneasy buying that package knowing that the sequel is out there and that higher-quality instruments are out there. Why couldn't Rock Bands 1 and 2 be bundled together and shipped with Rock Band 2 instruments? Maybe not as feasible, but I'm sure the Aussies would have forgiven EA for neglecting them for so damn long. A knockdown price (way, way cheaper than in Europe) probably isn't much comfort. And when Guitar Hero: World Tour's around the corner--a 2008 and more modern game--it's more than tempting to go for that instead.

Europe's been whining and whining (myself included) about hearing nothing about Rock Band 2's release over there. Sure, they have a Rock Band to play with, but the moaning is unavoidable, given that the game will always be compared to its rivals--in this case, Guitar Hero: World Tour. Not only will Activision be releasing it in timely fashion, but oh yeah, in the UK they're giving away a free bass guitar worth £50 if you pre-order the bundle (which includes the game, guitar, drums, and mic) from any retailer. The bundle itself is worth £150. They're calling it the "biggest pre-order incentive the industry has ever seen", and you know what, I think they're right. A free flippin' guitar! Remember Rock Band? Their bundle with the game was £180 (edit: recently dropped to £160), and that's without the free guitar. Anyone who's undecided between the two of them is more likely to go for Guitar Hero. Heck, that deal is even tempting me. If only I had money to spend and room to spare.

I make that Activision 2, EA 0. If you aren't American and love Rock Band, it truly sucks to be you (and me).

So, I've done an appalling job at, you know, blogging. That doesn't mean I'm inactive, in fact far from it. I still read blogs (even if I don't post much), and I enjoy reading and watching Giant Bomb's content. Anyway, to break this drought, I'm going to blog a bit about what I've been listening to and what I'm planning to get in bullet points. Later this month when the television season gets rolling again, I'll post a television special with a bunch of my thoughts on how this year's shaping up. Oh, and Andy Murray reached his first Grand Slam final in the US Open, and has now risen to fourth in the rankings. Congrats, man. Keep it up, and you'll catch up with Djokovic in no time.

Music I've Been Listening To

• Rilo Kiley: I now possess all four of their studio albums. What's insane is that I got them in reverse-chronological order, from Under the Blacklight all the way back to Take Offs and Landings. Obligatory comparison: Execution of All Things > More Adventurous > Take Offs and Landings > Under the Blacklight. Take Offs and Landings is a bit inconsistent, but has one of my favourite tracks of theirs, "Science vs. Romance".
• Shout Out Louds: I eventually got around to getting their first album, Howl Howl Gaff Gaff. And it's good. Very good. Their follow-up (Our Ills Wills) is better, but they still impressed me a great deal with this one.
• Explosions in the Sky: After Psychomode's recommendation a trillion years ago, I finally checked them out. The reason why I held out for so long was because I didn't expect to like instrumental tracks too much. The long song lengths were a bit off-putting, too. But after liking Mogwai recently, I went ahead with The Earth Is Not a Cold Dead Place, and I liked it. Liked it enough to buy the follow-up, All of a Sudden I Miss Everyone. And that was also a fine album.
• Okkervil River: I only got one of their albums earlier this week (The Stage Names), but I've been enjoying it a great deal.

Music I Have, But Not Listened To Extensively Yet (But Not For Long!)

• Jenny Lewis: Well, the leak of her new album, Acid Tongue.
• Mogwai: Well, the leak of their new album, The Hawk Is Howling. I also have Happy Songs for Happy People from late last month, which hasn't received the right amount of attention yet. I'm not heartless. If the leaks turn out to be awesome, I'll buy the proper albums once they're out.
• Okkervil River: Same situation as the leaks, really. I downloaded an "advance" (whatever that means) version of their latest album, and do actually intend to buy it (if I like it) when it's out in the UK. I think it was released earlier this week over in the States.
• Feist: A few months ago, when I fell in love with The Reminder, I didn't hesitate to get its predecessor, Let It Die. I've forgotten that I had it until I started this list. Oops!
• Ladytron: Someone recommended them to me a while back. Today, I've been listening to them a lot. They're pretty good. I dig their stuff.
• Sonic Youth: Another person insisted I give them a chance after I jokingly mocked them (admittedly without actually giving them a chance). He sent me Rather Ripped.

Music I Haven't, But May Be Rectified Soon

• The Long Blondes: Around the same time I discovered Feist, I found these lot. I've been itching to hear this year's sophomore record, Couples, ever since I enjoyed their debut.
• Okkervil River: If I like them enough, I might bother looking into the three albums I missed pre-2007.
• Explosions in the Sky: It's not a high priority right now, but I'm considering one of their earlier two albums.

Other Bits And Pieces That May Or May Not Be Music-Related

• It's pretty funny that now, the majority of my money is spent on music--either records or Rock Band downloadable content. I don't play many games anymore besides Rock Band and Arcade stuff (Castle Crashers and Braid are awesome). Oh, and the occasional Top Spin 3 match whenever I'm in a tennis mood, like during the US Open. Too bad the toughest difficulty isn't that much of a challenge... I have to resort to creating new, weakened players to have a challenge against the AI.
• I'm seeing The Subways on the 20-something of September. It's also my first proper concert, and by "proper", I don't mean paying three quid to see a bunch of nobodies with my mates. I guess I've always been put off by expensive ticket prices in the past.

His first ATP Masters title.

Because I'm lazy, I'm going to summarise this past week in bullet points.

• Go Andy Murray! Believe it or not, he won the Cincinnati Masters, beating Novak Djokovic for the second time in straight sets in as many weeks on the last day. He wasted five Championship points, but we can forgive him--he looked nervous when trying to serve out for the win. This result means he moves up to number six in the world, leapfrogging James Blake, David Nalbandian, and Andy Roddick.
• Roger Federer, however, got knocked out early against Ivo Karlovic, and because Rafael Nadal reached the semis, he will overtake Federer on August 18 (since Federer is set to lose far more ranking points than Nadal will).
• Predictions for the US Open? I reckon Djokovic will be hard to beat. He's obviously talented on hard courts. You obviously can't discount Nadal or Federer, but I can't see Nadal take it. He's still notably a little weaker on hard than on clay and grass, and as Djokovic proved by a 6-1 7-5 straight sets win over him in the semis, he's beatable on this surface. Murray has an outside chance--winning Cincinnati proves he has the game, but the big question is whether he can last two weeks playing five-set matches or not.
• I got Geometry Wars 2 this week, and it's awesome. I've not played it as much as I'd like to, but thanks to this post, you can be sure I'll be making time from now on.
• I also hit 1,000 wiki points. Just to clarify, I wasn't doing it for the 'race'. I was editing a few pages, and I was pretty annoyed by the long submission times, so hitting that target was more to gain the privilege of live edits than anything else.
• If you're wondering what I've done to get that many points, let me introduce you to my babies. I've single-handedly done everything on Captain Novolin and Powershot Pinball, and I've contributed heavily (including full articles) on A Sound of Thunder, Sherlock Holmes: The Awakened, and Super Tennis. It's pretty disappointing that writing doesn't net you more points, and that the majority of mine came from linking related pages and uploading images.
• I sneakily gave a mention to my review on The Awakened under the Reception section.
• Speaking of A Sound of Thunder, the results of the HonestGamers contest have not been announced yet. Apparently, they'll be up later today.
• Music-wise, I'm still listening to Rilo Kiley's "More Adventurous", and given that I enjoyed the Subways' debut so much, I went ahead and got follow-up "All or Nothing". It's pretty good, too. It has more stand-out tracks ("Turnaround" is my favourite), but maybe it isn't quite as consistent. I'm also checking out Mogwai (more specifically, "Mr. Beast"), and I've re-found my love for Les Savy Fav. "The Equestrian" is their best song by quite a bit--not because it's about submission and sex.
• The past week, I also decided on my favourite Muse song. That would be the epic "Butterflies & Hurricanes".
• ...And I'm off. Back to some more Geometry Wars!

Who knows if this will last, but I've decided to blog a little differently on Giant Bomb. Once a week, most likely Sunday or Monday, I'll post a summary of the past seven days. I'm hoping to cover a broad range of topics, and that might include albums I checked out, tennis matches I've been watching, and television episodes I want to praise. There are a couple of reasons for this, but the primary one is that at the end of the day, just like GameSpot, this is a community that is strongly passionate about videogames, and I just don't share that passion anymore. At the same time, I want this blog to be accessible to everyone I've kept in touch with, and to make a lot of entries television-centric wouldn't bode well, I imagine. Hopefully, there will be something each week that is relevant or interesting to all of you guys. And yeah, this is a Giant Bomb exclusive. One final note. Chances are that my blog won't be limited to just these weekly entries. If there's something on my mind and I can't wait five days or however long, I'll post independently of the weekly stuff. So now that I've got everything out of the way, let's have a crack at this...

Television

With the 2007-08 season over, the startling amount of free time has given me ample opportunity to play catch up. A few weeks ago, I got around to watching the post-strike episodes of Reaper (enjoyable, but a shame that the finale was rather lacklustre), and just last week, I went through Season 4 of Desperate Housewives. As someone who has never seen the first three seasons, I can't believe I missed out for so long. I just assumed it was a lame soapy comedy, and I was wrong to think that. It's far from being among the cream of the crop in today's television, and Grey's Anatomy does the whole "dramedy" thing more effectively, but Desperate Housewives is great fun and is now officially my favourite guilty pleasure. Next on my list is Season 2 of Weeds. Season 4 is currently airing and will continue to do so over the summer, but I've only just discovered this witty comedy about a single mother of two who has to cope with her kids while supporting them by dealing weed. Like most cable shows, Weeds isn't immediately accessible, but I found the first season a breath of fresh air, and I hope it continues that way.

Of course, all of that is probably overshadowed by the announcement of this year's Emmy nominees. I won't go through each category (you can see all the major Primetime nominees here), but I'll quickly give some of my thoughts. Firstly, it's great to find out that Lost has been nominated for Outstanding Series, Drama (along with Dexter) after its fantastic season. Though I'm not surprised to see House nominated, too, especially after the amazing two-part finale, I can't help but think it doesn't deserve to win after an awkward transition with House's new team. However, I have no problem backing Hugh Laurie to win Outstanding Actor, Drama. Neil Patrick Harris of How I Met Your Mother and Kristin Chenoweth of Pushing Daisies more than deserve their Outstanding Supporting Actor/Actress, Comedy, and I really hope they come out on top (though Entourage's Jeremy Piven is just as awesome, too).

As usual, though, there are snubs I'm not particularly happy about. I would have loved to see Pushing Daisies being up for Outstanding Series, Comedy, and I think it's shocking that Henry Ian Cusick, after his absolutely phenomenal performance in "The Constant", didn't make the cut for Outstanding Supporting Actor, Drama (I have nothing against his Lost co-star Michael Emerson, but Cusick deserved it way more than he did). And where is the Friday Night Lights love? Granted, they had a slightly weaker sophomore season, but it's still disappointing that they missed out again.

Tennis

Rafael Nadal is now just 300 points behind Roger Federer in the ATP Rankings after he won the Toronto Masters. Federer lost in the second round (he had a bye in the first) to rising French star Gilles Simon. But the highlight of the week as far as tennis is concerned is seeing how much Andy Murray has improved. To put it bluntly, he was shit against Nadal at Wimbledon. Yet, in his quarter-final match against Novak Djokovic, Murray played some of the best tennis I've seen him play. His stubborn defensive play--thanks to some great footwork--made it tough for the world number three to hit winners, and helped him win in straight sets. With his confidence high, Murray also gave Nadal a run for his money in the semis, which resulted in both players hitting some brilliant winners (and Nadal saved a break point with a really, really outrageous and daring drop shot from the baseline). I don't think I've seen Murray play so well before, and it was a shame that he couldn't win the big points. Let's see if he can maintain that form going into the Cincinnati Masters this week.

Video Games

It's common knowledge by now, but I wrote my first review in a while last week: A Sound of Thunder for the GBA. It's for a reviewing competition at HonestGamers, the twist being the judges actually assign what game you had to play and review. I thank everyone who gave me feedback back on my GameSpot blog. It was much appreciated, and I feel my review improved as a result. Anyway, the deadline has passed now, so we should see how well I do sometime this week. I also started playing Rock Band again for the leagues in the Rock Heroes Union, again on GameSpot. I'm pretty sure I didn't win any of the songs this week. If no one's bluffing, Timma has most likely won Highway Star and Mississippi Queen, and Verdugo on Creep. I know I only played the songs two or three times each (due to how sweaty and hot England has been recently), but I'm surprised and glad that everyone around me is improving. Yes, even you, Skrutop.

Music

Ever since I used music as motivation during my summer exams a couple of months ago, I've become a little bit addicted to it. I guess something has to fill in the television void. I even have my own Last.fm profile. I don't claim to be a music expert (I'll leave that to Psychomode, while I stick to television), but I enjoy it enough to talk about it. This week, I got myself a few new albums. The first two, at the start of the week, were the Subways' "Young for Eternity" and Charlotte Hatherley's "Grey Will Fade" (the latter courtesy of Psychomode). I've not really had the chance to listen to Hatherley much, partly because I've been enjoying the Subways. At around the same time, I also re-discovered the Go! Team. I had some of their stuff a while back, but I never got into it. Then, I hear "Huddle Formation" on Top Spin 3, and all of a sudden, I love them. Strange how that works. Probably not coincedentally, "Huddle Formation" was also my most played track last week.

A couple of days ago, I also checked out Rilo Kiley's "More Adventurous". I had "Under the Blacklight", their most recent album, for a while now, but the band's shoutbox was filled with hate for it. And to be honest, I didn't get where it was all coming from until I listened to "More Adventurous" for the first time. To put it simply, it is miles superior, and the direction they've gone since--they now sport a more mainstream poppy sound--has been for the worse. "Does He Love Me?" is such an epic and amazing song, and totally shits on everything on "Under the Blacklight". The build-up throughout it is awesome and climaxes in a glorious string instrumental. Speaking of awesome songs, I've been listening to "Impossible" by Shout Out Louds quite a bit recently. It surprised me how a song like this can evoke such powerful emotions. The first five or six minutes are pretty gloomy, but by the time you're into the final, seventh minute, the tone dramatically shifts and becomes optimistic and even a little cheery. Did I mention that the track is all sorts of awesome?