No commentary on this just yet. It’s just a teaser, and there’s no real information that I managed to absorb to say what they intend to do with the conclusion to what is probably one of the best sci-fi series in a long, long time.
On the weekend, I invited a bunch of people over for a Rock Band party. While the main aim of the event was to have fun and play the game as a group, I was also interested to see how it would all perform in a group of mixed skill levels, musical taste, and musical ability.
Overall, it was a pretty good success. Everybody had some form of experience with either musical performance or rhythm games or both (well, almost everybody). That meant we were all able to jump in straight away and play the songs we wanted to.
Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you’ll know that Microsoft released a major update to its dashboard system yesterday.
While some people are experiencing some hiccups, my experience last night with it was generally quite good. I’m not going to do a blow-by-blow because plenty of other sites have previewed it. I did have one issue: it refused to ask me to upgrade on my account, but the minute we switched over to Flip’s, it presented us with the familiar upgrade dialog.
Anyway, once we got through that, we spent at least an hour making our new avatars and taking photos of them. We’re having trouble getting Lego Indiana Jones to play properly, so we installed that to the hard drive, and it works a treat.
One thing I did notice that may give you a shock the first time you encounter it is that it won’t play movies that use the additional codec pack. A quick trip to the Marketplace to re-download the pack sorts the problem out though.
One thing that I find disappointing is that Microsoft hasn’t found a local partner to do video rentals, like they have with Netflix in the US. While I wouldn’t use it that often, I might consider it more seriously if it were available.
So what do you guys think of the New Xbox Experience? Any horror stories yet?
I’ve been waiting to see how this scene would be handled by Darths and Droids.
It actually speaks to an issue that Flip and I encountered with Trail of Cthulhu. Unlike most other game systems, there are no dice rolls for investigation. While there is an element of resource management in the game, it boils down to automatic success for any form of information gathering, and is pretty light on for failure in other parts of the system as well.
Now, I can understand that people don’t like to play characters who suck, but without risk of failure, there is no greatness.
Take, for example, Rolemaster. While it has a reputation for stupefying amounts of arithmetic, and rules to cover even the most obscure situations to the most miniscule detail, the best feature of the game is its critical tables. And the reason for this is that this table can be applied both to player characters and their enemies alike. The amazing level of detail leads to much more dramatic and memorable events.
Every person I know who has played Rolemaster can give an example of amazing things happening while trying to keep their grip on a mechanical gryphon, choking to death while invisible so they can’t be rescued, or watching their enemies die with an astonished expression as their spell backfired and their head popped off.
I bet you can’t find me a Trail of Cthulhu player who can honestly tell you how excited they were when they emerged from the sorcerer’s study having found the spell book, map of the Dreamlands, time and location of the next opening of the Gate of Deeper Slumber, and sample of Shoggoth ooze.
So, after over a year of chomping at the bit, the wait for Rock Band is over. I picked the full instrument pack up last night and gave it all a bit of whirl. I’m not going to review the game because it’s ancient, and there are plenty of reviews on the net. Besides, the sequel is out in North America.
Still, my first experience with each of the instruments has been interesting, and has reflections on the talent (or lack thereof) that I have for each instrument.