Guitar Hero II

I never played the original Guitar Hero, but I heard good things. Then my younger brother went to a birthday party and played the second installment, and the next day asked me to swing him out to the local electronics store to buy the game. I was a little skeptical, but I see now that he was right on.

The whole package of the PlayStation 2 version of the game and the guitar is a little pricey at $79.99, but apparently the new guitar is compatible with the original game, so if you decide to buy both games, you only need to buy one guitar. The game is also playable with a normal PS2 controller, but really, if you're playing with the controller, you're missing the point.

When we brought home the game, my brother immediately set it up and created our band, "Silica," so named for the gel packets that came in the plastic wrap with the guitar. (On Saturday, Mark, Mike and I created the band "Cold Knee" after I placed my milkshake on Mark's knee). We hopped right in and started to play a few songs on "Easy" difficulty.

It was fun, but you don't get the sensation of actually playing the song when you play on Easy. It's sort of like in Perfect Dark, if you set the bots' AI to very low, and they'd shoot one bullet every five seconds, and half the time would be shooting it straight up into the air. It's fun to win and kill things, but you don't really feel like a secret agent.

We bumped up the difficulty to Medium, and it was definitely more gratifying. More challenging as well, but that makes it all the more sweet when you complete a song. As a member of "Cold Knee," we began to play through the Hard difficulty level, and I'll tell you, there's a definite jump. But getting the hang of things and playing Woman by Wolfmother and Monkeywrench by Foo Fighters was a real thrill. My wrist ached this morning, but I don't regret the rockin'. What I do regret were those last four wings. Oooh.......

Tony Hawk 4

I bought the Xbox version of Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 4 the other day, for a cool $4.99. I've been pretty satisfied with my purchase, it's exactly what I expected it to be.

However, it's almost too close to what I expected. Maybe I didn't get far enough into the third Tony Hawk, but does anybody else think this is like the same damn game? Same levels, same interface. The graphics are probably better, but I don't know that for sure. It's just a testament to the fact that video game producers don't have to blow the doors off once they've got a franchise people like. EA Sports has been rolling in money because of their sports franchises, specifically Madden. Sure, they add features every year, but I wonder how much they really have to do to generate the new game.

Not like I care, though. I'm not one of the guys who buys every subsequent copy of a franchise. I pick one, roll with it for a few years, then occasionally buy a new one. And I even more rarely buy new games. My instinct for saving money leads me to eBay or the used game section of EB Games more often than not. Why pay $50 for a new game when you can get 4 games for the same amount, giving you a better chance of buying a game you really enjoy? Maybe I'm behind the times, but I don't play video games to see the latest technologies. I play to entertain myself. As long as I'm having fun, I don't care if the game is new.

So if you'll excuse me, I'm off to play some Contra.

FIFA 2006

I've played FIFA '07. I've watched it played. I appreciate that the graphics are very impressive. It's got a lot of nice features, and I'm sure it's enjoyable for those who've decided to make the switch, or for whom the 2007 version is their first soccer game.

But for me, it comes up short in enough key areas to prevent me from spending the money to get the new version. The manager mode offers far fewer teams and leagues to choose from, when part of the fun of '06 was being able to join all sorts of obscure leagues and bring the very worst teams to international dominance. Since when is it a good idea to reduce the complexity of a game in its next iteration? Also in the manager mode, the roster limitations aren't designated graphically. So when you're deciding whether to pursue someone in the transfer market or putting a player out there for transfer, you are held to some obscure number of required active players (which by the way seems to change depending on your league), not represented anywhere in the game that I can find. Thanks a lot, EA.

So you can take your FIFA '07. I'm riding '06 into the grave, me and 1 FC Saarbrucken. Me and Hadji and El Idrissi.

Chip, you were right the whole time. FIFA '06! FIFA '06! FIFA '06!