COOP DOES GUITAR HERO
Despite being a certifiable friend of Boing Boing (having designed, if you recall, the excellent Jackhammer Jill t-shirt earlier this year), we’re just as surprised as everyone to learn that he’s quietly snuck four de-luxe aluminum Guitar Hero faceplates into his online store, which is giving us all kinds of wicked ideas about further artist-edition plates.
Products | Guitar Hero Faceplates | Coopstuff
See more posts about: Offworld Originals, Xbox 360
WE CAN FIX THAT WITH DATA
Terminally obsessed with player statistics — and with good reason, it being one of the top contributors to making their games as balanced and smart as they are — Valve have published current total Achievement percentages for the first week of Left 4 Dead sessions.
What do they show? That Smokers really aren’t all that bad, apparently, that it really is sort of every-Survivor-for-themselves, with only some 15 percent doing the majority of healing and pill giving (though we’re happy to see that 25 percent that have healed others when they’ve been on the outs themselves), and that it’s really quite hard to stay away from that Boomer vomit.
Left 4 Dead – Achievements [and thanks to the best-named-games-blog-on-the-internet for the entry title]
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GUITAR CENTER SURVEY SHOWS GUITAR GAME PLAYERS BUYING REAL GUITARS
Guitar Hero and Rock Band creators Harmonix were founded on the hopes that they could inspire a league of new musicians through software, so presumably they’ll be happy to hear the results of a new Guitar Center survey which showed the following:
· Of the Guitar Hero and Rock Band players that do not currently play a musical instrument, two-thirds (67%) indicated that they are likely to begin playing a real instrument in the next two years.
· Nearly three out of four (72%) musicians who play games like Guitar Hero and Rock Band have spent more time playing their real instrument(s) since they began playing these games.
· Eight out of 10 (81%) of the Guitar Hero and Rock Band players that have been inspired to play an instrument because of the games would like to receive a musical instrument as a gift this winter holiday season.
· Sales of gear for first-timers at Guitar Center has surged along with the peak in sales for Guitar Hero and Rock Band. In the holiday selling season in the last quarter of 2007, Guitar Center saw a +20.7% jump in comparable store sales for beginner-level electric guitar & amplifiers. This surge grew even stronger through the first nine months of 2008, when Guitar Center’s cumulative comparable store sales for the category increased +26.9%.
arealguitar [Guitar Center]
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THE SUPER STREET FIGHTER II TURBO HD REMIX CHAMPION HYPER PLUS REMIXES
Our favorite part of Capcom’s HD enhanced and remade Super Street Fighter II Turbo Remix release about to go live on the PlayStation Network today? In keeping with its recent track record of solid bonus material for its retro revivals (speaking here mainly of Mega Man 9‘s faux-NES cart CD case), Capcom’s put together a very well curated mix of hip-hop/DJ artists doing Street Fighter based songs, which it will be releasing for free alongside the game.
Particularly, the appearance of DJ Qbert (whom you can preview via the project’s MySpace page) doing the scratch-happy comic book cut-up narratives that are his trademark does us proud.
See more posts about: Offworld Originals, Xbox 360
THE WASTELAND GETS A LITTLE WIDER
The most devastating part of reaching the level 20 cap in Fallout 3 is losing that Paper Planes-like cash register ka-ching that punctuates each kill and discovery, but there’s always been something alluring about the way your Pip-boy experience meter continues on to 21 that lets you know that you’re not quite done just yet.
Which is true: Bethesda have announced the first round of downloadable content for the 360 and PC games, which will be spread throughout the first three months of next year, starting with “Operation: Anchorage” in January, which will let you “enter a military simulation and fight in one of the greatest battles of the Fallout universe – the liberation of Anchorage, Alaska from its Chinese Communist invaders.”
Next will come “The Pitt,” a “journey to the industrial raider town called The Pitt, located in the remains of Pittsburgh,” and finally, the first round of content that will extend the main quest, “Broken Steel,” in March, in which you’ll “join the ranks of the Brotherhood of Steel and rid the Capital Wasteland of the Enclave remnants once and for all.”
December will also see the release of the G.E.C.K., the “official editor for Fallout 3,” which will open up the game to the modding community, which I believe means I’m going to have to start the game anew there to reap the rewards, and I’m honestly not sure I mind.
Fallout 3 [Bethesda, photo courtesy Duncan Harris’s postcard-pretty set of images]
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PREVIEW THE NXE’S PREMIUM THEMES
Now that nearly everyone has signed on for Microsoft’s New Xbox Experience dashboard update, the community has been putting itself to good use. Above and beyond simple background pictures, the NXE allows developers to create their own premium themes that also decorate the spaces occupied by your now avatar-ized friends, the hitch being that you can’t preview a theme before you purchase.
The members of the otherwise raucous NeoGAF forum, though, have solved that with good (or, in some cases, you know, good enough) photos of each, letting me see that why, yes, I think I do want The Behemoth’s Castle Crashers theme.
The Official NXE PREMIUM THEME SHOWCASE [NeoGAF]
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GRAND THEFT AUTO GETS LOST
With October and November’s dogpile of blockbusters, it’s easy to forget that the year started off with a proper bang with Grand Theft Auto IV. As the release of PC version of the game draws nearer, Rockstar has started to show off the extensive power of that version’s exclusive video editor and video sharing — and we’re genuinely excited for the wave of machinima to follow, if only because we’re secretly hopeful for more Philip Glass-scored video and more footage of the everyday/mundane side of Liberty City.
But for Xbox 360 owners, today brings first official word via USAToday on the subject and release date of the first downloadable episode, which this time will focus only marginally on Niko, instead giving players the vantage point of one of the original game’s cameo stars:
This new episode, available Feb. 17 via download exclusively for those who own the Xbox 360 version (no price yet), stars Johnny Klebitz, a member of Liberty City biker gang The Lost.
“Johnny is a very different character than Niko, with a very different background,” says Dan Houser, vice president of creative development for Rockstar Games. “I can’t go into too much detail on the story, because we try not to give away too much plot before the game is released. But I can say that the story will show you a different side of Liberty City.”
Grand Theft Auto IV [Rockstar]
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WEAPON OF CHOICE, THE GAME THAT CRASH-LANDED FROM 1992
While there hasn’t been nearly enough time since the New Xbox Experience update landed to fully dig into all of the new community games it has also brought with it, one game has jumped out ahead of the pack both in terms of sales (it’s currently, according to the new dashboard’s sorting options, the most popular community title) and in wider recognition over the past few days.
That game is Weapon of Choice, which seems to exemplify precisely what Microsoft’s community games campaign was set up to do: giving passionate one-person teams their platform for indie success. Industry news site Gamasutra talked with that one person, Nathan Fouts (who recently gave up his position at Resistance: Fall of Man creator Insomniac to form his startup, Mommy’s Best Games) where he admitted that his game wasn’t up to snuff to be accepted into the Xbox Live Arcade program proper, but perfectly fit the community game mantra.
Weapon of Choice is, at heart, a game you’ve played before — again and again and again, especially if you had your roots in early computer games — a bombastic and testosterone-drenched side-scrolling shooter with a ludicrous sci-fi storyline, blaring guitar riffs and multiple-screen-filling bosses. It’s so filled with the vitality of a singular vision, though — Fouts pulled in help with music and scriptwriting, but otherwise took the reins on all its art, programming and sound effects — that it’s hard to escape its auteur, throwback charm.
That’s not to say that it hasn’t brought anything new to the table: apart from handling as fluidly as a 16-bit shooter should on modern hardware, Fouts packed a few very smart gameplay aces up his sleeve. The first is ‘death brushing,’ a ubiquitous ‘bullet-time’ trick that zooms in on and slows down the action when you’re very near death (as you will be, often — Choice‘s screens are chaotic with over and undersized alien enemies all squelching and squeezing various fluids and particles from themselves at any given moment), allowing you to make narrow and stylish escapes.
For those moments where death brushing hadn’t worked out as well as you’d hoped, once you’ve died the game calls up a ‘vengeance missile,’ which, before you’ve called your next character into play, gives you a one shot first-person-bullseye-targeted chance to eliminate whatever it was that’d brought you down before.
Finally, the game gives you the chance to rescue that downed character that you’ve just replaced by slinging them — or other downed operatives you’ve find on the field — over your shoulder and carrying them to end-of-level safety, bringing about tough choices about who you decide to leave behind. It’s not until you’ve depleted your stock of rescued characters that the game is truly over.
It’s no surprise that, according to the interview with Fouts, his recently rediscovered teenage game design sketches share an uncanny similarity to game he’s just created: Weapon of Choice is that game that the disaffected youth of the Psygnosis/Factor 5/Epic MegaGames/Apogee shareware era had always dreamed of making, and all the more glorious for it.
Weapon of Choice [Mommy’s Best Games, YouTube trailer]
See more posts about: Offworld Originals, Xbox 360
THE PROMISE LIPS HOLDS
Inspired by the latest trailer for the game, we’ve got to admit, we’re frankly a bit worried for Microsoft’s soon to be released karaoke game Lips: it’s got a lot to prove, being released into this post-Rock Band, post-SingStar environment — despite the promise of both its motion sensitive performance based play and letting you use your own music collection for an essentially limitless song selection.
But there’s good reason to have some hope: developer iNiS is one of rhythm gaming’s underdogs worth rooting for. The acoustic serenade in their sweetly ridiculous PlayStation 2 (and later PSP) game Gitaroo Man is a sappy but affecting, heart-tugging genre moment leagues away from the usual rawk-out star fantasy that music games (including the rest of Gitaroo itself) normally and happily provide. It’s also a moment that has yet to be matched — the closest anyone has come since is iNiS themselves, with various suddenly emotional scenes spread across their similarly over-the-top DS Elite Beat Agents/Ouendan franchise.
Essentially, iNiS gets that personal connection between music and the listener, and especially between the serenader and the serenaded. That feeling seemed to come through in Lips‘ debut commercial (once that initial shock of — Hey! Peter Bjorn and John! They are a somewhat obscure band whom I also have in my iTunes! — wore off), though we’re still and forever devastated that the girl passed the mic and wandered away, leaving someone to hijack The Moment with their Zune and devolve the budding romance into a generic house party.
Lips is due out this week, and we’ll update you with full details of what it ultimately has or hasn’t brought to the genre — and of any hard-won affections gained in the course of play — at a later date.
See more posts about: inis, Offworld Originals, Xbox 360
WOULD YOU LIKE TO PLAY A GAME? LEFT 4 DEAD EDITION
Boing Boing Gadgets had originally opened up the floor to doing community gaming sessions well before Offworld had launched, but now that it has, I’d like to kick off an official regular weekend group-play feature. Seeing as how it’s just dropped and is by all means terribly smart and perfect for actually gaming together, this week’s Would You Like To Play A Game?.. err, game will be Valve’s Left 4 Dead.
Here’s how to play:
Steam: Join the Boing Boing Steam Group to play with us or other Boing Boing readers.
Xbox Live: While we work on getting Xbox Live Gamertags linked off of Boing Boing profile pages, you can leave your own via the comments below. Mine is brandonnn (as with Steam), and the 360 is likely where I’ll actually be fighting back the zombie onslaught. BBG’s Joel is Joelev, and BBG’s Rob and John still may not have fully joined the console era yet. In the meantime, you can check that earlier post for other community IDs.
Just please remember, what we’re trying to do is not startle the Witch.
See more posts about: Offworld Originals, Xbox 360
