...But Activision just announced that they're taking the fight to MTV and Harmonix with Guitar Hero World Tour.
Activision Inc (ATVI.O) is adding drums, bass guitar, and microphone to its popular "Guitar Hero" video game, a move aimed at winning away fans of MTV's rival musical title "Rock Band."
"Guitar Hero World Tour" will include the ability for two groups of four people each to compete online, as well as let players compose and play their own music.
That's just super-duper, and I love that they've done that. Okay, so it's derivative, and they remain in the shadow of Harmonix and their incredible innovations, but it's the only logical move they could make. Of course, this means nothing unless the music choices are incredible.
The game will feature songs from bands such as Van Halen, The Eagles, Linkin Park and Sublime...
Bollocks.
Actually, that is something that can change over time, though I really do hope the song packs come down in price. I resented having to spend literally billions of Microsoft Points (this is a lie) to buy three songs in the fourth Guitar Hero II pack when all I wanted was I Wanna Be Sedated by The Ramones (and OMG, I got 100% on it third time I played it on Medium setting, which makes it the first song I've got 100% on! Bless you, you three-chord-playing heroes). Still, there could well be some great finds on there. I've been enjoying playing the bonus tracks Mr. Fix-It by The Amazing Crowns, Soy Bomb by Honest Bob and the Factory-to-Dealer Incentives, and Thunderhorse by Dethklok, though worryingly they were all on Guitar Hero II (i.e. the Harmonix game). Guitar Hero III's bonus tracks are nowhere near as interesting, but then I was less impressed with the track listing on that game already.
What I really want from Activision is to make robust peripherals that don't cost the earth, thus crushing MTV Games and forcing them to bring the price of the game down so I can get that too. This is the dream, anyway. I have more faith in Harmonix and their skills, and suspect I would prefer Rock Band (especially as you can buy single songs instead of packs full of boring songs you don't want), but what do I know? I can't afford Rock Band. Because it is horribly overpriced. And I'm still pissed about it.
Even if Santa ignores my pleas and the price war doesn't materialise, Guitar Hero World Tour does a bunch of stuff I really like the sound of. Not only does the drum kit look awesome, it does cool things too.
In addition to a newly designed more responsive guitar controller and microphone, Guitar Hero World Tour will deliver the most realistic drum experience ever in a video game with an authentic electronic drum kit. Featuring three drum pads, two raised cymbals and a bass kick pedal, the drum controller combines larger and quieter, velocity-sensitive drum heads with soft rubber construction to deliver authentic bounce back and is easy to set up, move, break down and store.
Even better than that, Activision have responded to one of the pissiest complaints about Guitar Hero and Rock Band; that playing the game is a pale imitation of genuine creation, that mimicking the playing of music is no substitute for making something yourself. I don't think Guitar Hero and Rock Band stop people from branching out and doing that on their own, and in fact think it would inspire people to try playing instruments themselves (I've said this before; please forgive me). Anyway, it's slightly more moot now.
The game's innovative new Music Studio lets players express their musical creativity by giving them access to a full compliment [sic] of tools to create digital music from scratch, utilizing all of the instruments, and then play their compositions in the game. Music creators will also be able to share their recordings with their friends online through GHTunes where other gamers can download their unique compositions and play them.
I'm outrageously excited about that, even though I expect any compositions would be pretty unadventurous just because of the limitations of the soft/hardware, but it still appeals to me.
It links in to something I've been planning on blogging about for a while now, which touches on Be Kind Rewind, Video Sniffing, Rocky III, and Lewis Hyde's The Gift (a frustrating book that killed my enthusiasm 20 pages in, but still applies). In time I will, I'm sure. Before that, we hope to have a look at the various season finales that have been piling up over the last couple of weeks, if we can ever get this goddamn laptop to work long enough to write anything substantial. Apologies for any future Blog Slowdowns.
...All while being worshipped by his loyal fanbase comprising Daffy Duck, Hugo the Hippo, Remy the Rat, Gandalf the Grey, and Theoden, son of Thengel, First Marshall of the Mark, and King of Rohan.
Yes, we got back from our jaunt and bought another bit of pointless kit for the 360, but how could we not? I wager the 360 feels especially loved lately; after buying it I didn't use it for a few months as I never had time. Call of Duty 3, Dead Rising, and Viva Pinata sit unfinished either in a drawer or in a totally different house. Now the machine is on most of the time.
Canyon and her "band" Wall of Crazy are currently getting 100% on Cream's Sunshine of Your Love using her favourite guitar-playing avatar Lars Umlaut, and it's yet another song I'd begun to take for granted but which is now re-revealed through the illusion of interaction to be an astonishing work of art. That's another terrific side-effect of playing these games; while they're pretty much nothing more than a really well-designed rhythm attack game with a brilliant interface, they also make you appreciate music in a new way. I say that as someone with no musical training; I'm sure to musicians that doesn't apply, but to the skill-less bag of fingerless ears that is myself, I now have a different response to songs I know too well. Even Flow, School's Out, Anarchy In The UK, Sweet Child O' Mine and Misirlou from the previous game; I love them all over again, and in a new and deeper way.
That said, I'm still a bigger fan of Guitar Hero II over the new one. The band graphics might be more advanced in this, but the screen was livelier in the second, though they seems to be increasing in intensity as the game progresses. Also, even though the new game has some amazing songs (Holiday in Cambodia! Thank you thank you thank you!!!), the choices are often a little more obvious. It's a no-brainer to add Paranoid by Black Sabbath, or Rock and Roll All Nite by Kiss, but then it's ultimate funness to play them, so it seems churlish to complain.
Guitar Hero II had some real oddities; Laid to Rest, Psychobilly Freakout by the incomparable Reverend Horton Heat, Who Was In My Room Last Night?, Tattooed Love Boys, and many more. The new game seems to have less "finds", but as my knowledge of rock (and certainly more recent stuff) is not perfect, I'm still coming across new favourite songs. After playing When We Were Young and My Name is Jonas, I now want to get into these musical chaps The Killers and Weezer. Oy vey, I am an old fart. And hey, who are Priestess? Their song Lay Down has a very appealing lolloping bass line. My avatar Axel Steel agrees.
There are other things I've noticed:
Choosing to include The Seeker by The Who over their more famous songs is a nice touch, though the CSI fan in me is a little annoyed.
While a lot of the regular songs seem longer than the previous game, there don't seem to be any marathons like The Allman Brothers Band's Jessica, a personal favourite. How great it would have been to follow the Slash boss battle with November Rain instead of Welcome to the Jungle? Having everything around the same length is less interesting than the variation of the other game, but it's not a deal breaker (so far, none of my little complaints are. For God's sake, they've got Kool Thing by Sonic Youth on there! Woooord up!).
The co-op career mode is great, but I think we're already on our way to completing it on Easy. I get that it only really works well with a fraction of the songs, but even so, if half an hour gets us to the final level, then it's a real shame.
The Star Power phrases are generally much longer, which would probably piss off the first-time player but is good news for addicts as it rewards the higher skillset.
I love the predominance of master material over cover versions, but often the song has a bad mix (Paint It Black) or seems too muted (Cherub Rock).
Canyon hates Black Magic Woman by Santana, apparently. She's still got 100% on it, though.
As psyched as I am that Tenacious D's The Metal is included, part of me weeps that the Godlike face-melter Master Exploder isn't included. There's a custom version out there, but God knows how to get hold of that.
While playing the co-op career section (our joint name: Professor XS), Canyon chose Xavier Stone as an avatar and I swapped to Midori, the J-Popster. As I spent most of the mode playing bass, I was thrilled to see that Midori is programmed to dance just like Tina Weymouth from Talking Heads. It was like watching a Japanese remake of Stop Making Sense.
Where's the surf guitar??!?!?!
For that matter, where's the blues? The Stevie Ray Vaughan song is a fantastic inclusion, but some BB King or Robert Johnson would have gone down a treat, especially seeing as how the story arc of the game involves a deal with the Devil. There's a real gap in the game ready to be filled by other guitar genres. What about some Tito Larriva for a start? Hopefully some future download packs will deal with that.
Actually, this version is weighted more towards the more recent songs, but then the previous versions did a lot of the old standards, so it's to be expected. It's just a shame that an opportunity to edumacate those dang youngsters shouldn't be passed up, is all.
Easy is not as Easy as Guitar Hero II's Easy, not by a long shot. I heard people complaining about the difficulty of Barracuda, and thought it was the final song, but it's in the second level. I would have scoffed, but when we played it we realised it was way harder than anything in the corresponding spot in the previous game. As a beginner it would have really pissed us off.
What is with Heart? In the previous game their Crazy On You drove me to Bruce-Lee-style knuckle-cracking distraction. I had thought they were nothing more than a ballady bland-rock band but by Crom, their arrangements are hellishly complicated and asynchronous.
I'm not too sure about the boss battles just yet, but then that might be just because I don't really enjoy listening to Tom Morello's screechy gimmicky feedback nonsense, and never have.
An aside: we just watched him appraising air guitar as a judge at a contest in the mostly annoying but occasionally sweet documentary Air Guitar Nation, and it's hard to take him seriously now. And yes, I realise how ridiculous it is to compare an air-guitar-appreciating Tom Morello to a digitised boss-battle-having Tom Morello, but that's what the world has offered up to me, and I must make lemonade with it. It reminds me that the reflexively mean-spirited nodules posting on the Holy Moly talkbacks were complaining recently about Guitar Hero fans being useless for not trying to get a guitar of their own and learning to play it so that they can become creative instead of slavishly following notes on a screen. Firstly, at least we're not just playing air guitar in Finland (seriously, I got so angry at the absurdity of that frigging movie, even though it was nothing to get steamed about and the documentary itself was not bad), which is a good thing. Secondly, I can't hate on Holy Moly too much because another poster brings his angry typing guns to bear on those frigging Picture loan adverts that pollute TV like so much elephant poop.
Thirdly, Guitar Hero players are at least learning skills that might eventually translate into an artistic ability. Salon's Farhad Manjoo wrote an entertaining post recently claiming that it was an accidental teaching aid.
I've interviewed several guitar teachers about the game, and some speak of it as the most revolutionary thing to hit the world of guitar since Jack White learned his first scale. "Guitar Hero" is introducing millions of young people to the possibility of playing the instrument, and it's also teaching them important skills they'll need to play... I discussed "Guitar Hero" with a half-dozen guitar teachers across the nation; all said they'd never played the game, but many had heard of it from their students. "Personally I've made hundreds or maybe even a couple thousand dollars on it, just because kids see the game and they want to go do the real thing," says Rob Caviness, who teaches at Backbeat Music, a studio he co-founded just outside of Denver. "I think a lot of kids listen to music and they don't know what it is -- the game lets you pick out one particular instrument and it says, 'Hey, this is what you can do with it.'"
I also agree wholeheartedly with this:
Red Octane's Ted Lange argues that "Guitar Hero" instills two important guitar-playing fundamentals: sensitivity to rhythm as well as mastery over "independent hand usage -- the fact that you have to do something different with each hand."
I'm the least ambidextrous person in the world, and I've noticed Guitar Hero has changed that. I'm much better at that confounded rub-the-belly-pat-the-head thing, which is surely the official test for ambidexterity. And yes, I walked past a musical instrument shop the other day and stared longingly at a guitar for the first time in my life. I know it's hard because I've tried it before and sucked at it, and I don't expect to be able to play like Hendrix just because I played along with a game, but I honestly think that now, after months of using training frets, I can make another attempt at the real thing. Whether I do or not is another thing, partially because of the cost of guitars, and partially because I always figured I'd be better at keyboards. Where's Air Keyboard Nation? Or Air Drumming Nation, which would be right up my street?
In short, please buy the forthcoming debut album by Carusonic: Get Behind Me, Thewlis, featuring a 20-minute jazz version of The Future's So Bright, I've Gotta Wear (Crime-Fighting) Shades, with Ornette Coleman on sax and, in a gamble on my part, non-jazz player Philip Glass on keys. It will either be A Love Supreme for the 21st Century, or Jazz Odyssey all over again.
In a few hours Canyon and I will be travelling to the tropical paradise of Newark to drink mojitos and eat Twinkies, during which time there will be less of us going on about our phones, bad TV shows, and internet favourite Moon Bloodgood. We might pop in occasionally, but I felt it important to stress that this is not the end of the blog, nosirree! We're just going to be busy. Until then, some lazy YouTube reposting. While watching Current TV this afternoon, not only did I find out a lot about coffee beans and hot Google searches (number one search at 4:00 this afternoon; Sarah Matravers!), I also saw this.
Considering Don't Fear The Reaper will be featured as a song on Rock Band, I think it would be nice of Harmonix to include a cowbell peripheral. And finally, because it can never be seen enough times, the sketch that started it all, with thanks to VodPod.
1. Michael Clayton opened in the US last Friday, and box office pundits are shocked and horrified to find that it failed to secure the number one spot. IMDb said:
Michael Clayton, which had been the odds-on favorite among movie pundits to win the weekend box-office crown, not only didn't finish in first place -- it didn't even make third place, as studio estimates had initially indicated. Clayton, it turns out, earned $10.37 million, putting it slightly behind the crime drama We Own the Night, which took in $10.83 million. Equally surprising to some writers was that the film that did top the box office charts was the low-budget Why Did I Get Married, from writer-producer-director Tyler Perry. The film raked in $21.35 million, about twice the earnings of The Game Plan, which placed second with $11.04 million.
Really? This is surprising? I'm psyched that Gorgeous George is committed to making challenging, intelligent, adulty films (not counting Danny Ocean's European Vacation and Danny Ocean and the Amazing Xeroxed Plot From Two Films Ago), and grateful to him for having that ambition, even when it doesn't quite work out: Good Night, and Good Luck was a terrific hour of cinema with an extra pointless 20 minutes bolted onto it. Wow, making even the mildest criticism of Clooney makes me feel like I'm kicking a handsome and debonair puppy. I'm sorry, George! Good Night looked beautiful! And it was really well cast! Please don't hate me! Anyway, Syriana was good enough for two films, so it evens up.
Sadly, his smart, liberal, humanist movies tend to make very little money, and even taking into account the often limited release, the audience for these films is large enough to make the odd small profit, but not big enough to make waves in the turbulent box office waters. Solaris only made $14,973,382 in the domestic market, and $30,002,758 overall. It would have to sell a shitload of DVDs to make up the rest of the budget. Syriana did a lot better, with a worldwide gross of $93,974,620, but it had an opening weekend of $11,737,143. Not earth-shattering. That said, it only opened on about 1500 screens, and Michael Clayton opened on 1000 screens more, but the fallacy is that the relative, small-scale success of his smart movies can be expanded when released on a larger scale remains.
I remember noticing this error years ago, when big and successful action movies (usually those produced by Joel Silver), would often gross around £100-120m, domestic box office. No matter what the budget, the final figure was often the same (and significantly less for the failures). No-brainer jokey action movies would often top out at the same number, but budgets were busted chasing a finite audience. Sure, there were variations from that; Lethal Weapon 2, 3 and 4 could top that (by about $30m), as could the Die Hard movies, and Terminator 2 broke that barrier and then some, but they had a wider appeal. Bog-standard action movies had a fixed audience, and trying to get bigger box office by spending more money was foolish.
You had to appeal to people outside that box to do it. It wasn't just spectacle that made Terminator 2 such a hit; it was the message of hope within it (and the CGI, which drew oohs and ahhs of amazement from the audience when I saw it. Ah, the 90s!). In today's money, the same holds true; Bad Boys II and The Rock, for example, both stopped at about $140m, and Con Air and Gone In Sixty Seconds made $100m each. In the end they're profitable, but the larger the budget, the smaller that profit. It's science. Or maths. Whatever.
So yeah, putting Michael Clayton on more screens and pushing it with more publicity was not going to work. SmartClooney has a fanbase, and they came out this weekend, probably grateful for the release of something meatier than family comedies starring a wasted The Rock. But that's the ceiling for these movies. So why did pundits miss this? And why the hell did they think the new Tyler Perry movie would make less money?
I know very very very little about these things, but right now that guy guarantees boffo box office (yeah, I went there). His films cost a few cents and make around $50-60m each time out. His opening weekends are between $20-30m. His last film opened bigger than this one, in fact, so why would this one not be a big hit? Did they really think the Tyler Perry bubble had burst? He's not going anywhere any time soon. So anyway, I have learnt that box office pundits can often make terrible gaffes, and I have also learnt that the international gross of Diary of a Mad Black Woman was $19,104. I doubt the new film will be appearing in our local Vue any time soon. I'm sure the studio would love to up their take by releasing his films internationally, but I get the feeling they have no idea what the hell Perry's appeal is, so how would they be able to market it? Best to just let it make the modest money it is, rather than admit his unusual shtick perplexes them. (Almost all of the figures here are from Box Office Mojo.)
2. I may love Institutionalised by Suicidal Tendencies (which I first heard on the stunning Repo Man soundtrack many years ago), but playing that shit on a plastic guitar while sleep-deprived like I did this morning can actually cause you to get so addled you might actually end up actually literally instititutionalised, for realsies. It may have snapped my brain right down the middle. Now all I can see when I close my eyes are the coloured dots of Guitar Hero II, relentlessly descending, forever falling, like day-glo blobs of concentrated hand-cramp juice dropping into my eyes. It's a miracle I can type anything other than "Bzzzzt", because of all the rhythm-game induced mind-static. But I cannot stop until I better my score. Is crack this addictive? I doubt it's as entertaining.
3. Two reports on immigration were published yesterday, and while the left wingpress focussed on the positive, the right wing press, predictably, concentrated onthe negative. This is, of course, nothing new, but yesterday I found out that the reason the paper prints such skewed garbage is that Paul Dacre and his vile minions know for a fact that the core readership of the Mail is obsessed with Anti-Logic. This letter is, I promise you, absolutely real.
I have it on good authority that the majority of letters sent to the Mail offices are even more insane than the ones that make it into the paper, but this one must have slipped through. Oddly, there is no evidence of this mountain of work on the internet. Someone should tell this guy that he can publish his staggering, world-changing work on the internet, where it will be lauded and coveted for the rest of time. I mean, what did Einstein ever do for us, other than pull that funny face they keep putting on posters? Screw you, Einstein. Go back to the patent office and shuffle your papers. Did you ever make all of life's intrinsic paradoxes perfectly rational? No, you made them worse! Overrated big-haired jerk.
4. ZOMG NEW LOST PHOTO!!!
What's going on? What does it mean? Is that the cockpit of Oceanic 815? Desmond has resurfaced? How did they get so far into the island since the season 3 finale? Where's Hurley and Jin? Is that writing above the windows of the plane? Why does the clapperboard guy look so pissed? Is he working for The Dharma Initiative? If not, why doesn't he realise he's a lucky son of a bitch to be working on the best show currently on TV, even though it's not actually on TV right now? And what's going to happen with new cast member Andrea "Rescue Me" Roth? She's just been hired to play a therapist, according to TV Guide. I guess she's situated off-island. If she was on the island she'd have been dealing with multiple daddy issues, which would be even less fun than being repeatedly slammed into the ground by Ol' Smokey.
Mortensen plays a mobster working for a Russian gang in London, and to hone his portrayal he travelled to Moscow, St Petersburg and the mountain villages of the Urals.
He refused to take an interpreter, relying on gestures and his own facility for languages - he speaks Danish and Spanish fluently and can get by in four other languages.
“I know everyone was a little bit worried because I disappeared for two weeks,” he said. “They said I should have someone go with me into the underworld, but the whole point was not to get a filtered version of what Russians do and what they’re like.
“I just wanted to draw my own conclusions. I met a lot of people and talked to them. I met people who had experiences in prisons and understood more about street slang. They helped me tweak some of the dialogue.
“Then I found someone who had a car and he took me into the countryside and to these villages. There I saw how these mobsters looked at each other and how they lived. I also drank a lot of vodka.”
It was not until the last day of his trip that his cover was blown. “A little boy started staring at me, then he pointed and whispered, ‘Aragorn?’”
All this and his Amazing Flying Balls of Doom. Counting the days until it comes out.
6. The cook in the canteen where I work is the worst cook in the world. I ended up with a piece of peri-peri chicken that oozed blood when cut into, and after taking it back and having it cooked for a while longer (15 minutes), it had brown skin but pink flesh. I'm amazed I'm not doubled over in agony right now. A colleague bought some scrambled eggs, and they were off. Yesterday this guy made baguette halves with oily, droopy roast vegetables and nuclear-orange cheese. Just thinking about it is making me woozy. Time to start bringing sandwiches in again.
7. Studio 60 just arrived on UK terrestrial Channel 4, and I see that the oleaginous praise has continued. As we've said before, it's not so much the praise that bothers us (everyone is, of course, entitled to their own opinion) [Hold on there -- the praise definitely bothers me, and if you like the show, your opinion is wrong -- Canyon], it's the relentless carping that it failed because the audience (i.e. everyone who watches TV who isn't a fan of the show) killed it. They mean you, if you're not watching it. And if you are watching it, you're not watching it enough! You should be transformed by it like someone rising from their wheelchair at Lourdes, and then you should badger all of your friends and families into watching it. If you're not walking down the high street wearing a sandwich board showing a picture of Danny and Matt treating their womenfolk like teeny tiny toy people who should just damn well shut up and worship their glorious alpha male genitalia, then you are scum! SCUM!!! Much to our amusement/horror, we saw that Andrew Mueller was up to his old tricks at the weekend:
West Wing auteur Aaron Sorkin's series set in the milieu of a late-night chat show is possibly the greatest example of a show out-clevering itself. As well as being a superior soap opera, an intelligent comedy and a brilliantly acted ensemble piece, Studio 60 functions as an insidious critique of a televisual culture in which anything intelligent is hunted down and killed by the agents of mediocrity - as Studio 60 indeed was, cancelled by its network inside its debut season. These first two episodes, which have finally landed on terrestrial, are a tantalizing hint of what's to come.
If he thinks TV is so bad now, how about this 70s gem, from The Laurence Welk Show:
In comparison, I think we're doing okay nowadays. Yes, there is a lot of crap on TV now, and networks are run by craven cowards with no understanding of counter-cultural ideas. We get that. However, there's good stuff too. Someone please hand Mueller (and several other UK TV critics) a few boxsets. Veronica Mars, Friday Night Lights, Arrested Development, everything by Whedon. Then you have the shows on cable: Battlestar Galactica; The Daily Show; The Colbert Report; all of the shows on the HBO roster. There is a point to be made that there isn't enough biting satire on US (or UK) TV, or enough investigative journalism, but it's not like there is no important, worthy work on TV, and besides, Sorkin making obvious points in his risible Studio 60 sketches is part of the problem, not part of the solution. Plus, it was often as emptily jingoistic as a Fox News broadcast, which was either Sorkin speaking from the heart or an attempt to placate his network masters in order to get more "subversive" stuff into the show. Like Crazy Christians. So much for Sorkin's supposed moral courage.
Mueller and his ilk are right; the medium that is TV has an enormous hole in it, and Studio 60 tried to fill it. We will always need intelligent daring comedy and brave satire. But Studio 60 was. not. that. show. Which is why it was such a painful, frustrating, upsetting failure. Dear God, I have to let this go or I'll go crazy. It never seems to end!
ETA: I can't stop watching that Laurence Welk clip. Flap those arms in the xenon-rich air like you and your robot helper just don't care! Then kick, Bobby and Cissy! Kick! Kick! Spin! Flap! Kick! Interpretive brilliance. Why was Spielberg so eager to get an Oscar for all those years when this superb tribute was out there? That's just ungrateful.
Is Guitar Hero II the most entertaining thing ever invented? Right now it's up there with Bendis and Bagley's run on Ultimate Spider-Man, the third season of Buffy, the fifth season of Angel, bungee jumping, curry-induced endorphin rushes, and making fun of Neil LaBute's misogyny-thon The Wicker Man. Not only is it more addictive than Nazi-Crank redesigned for maximum effect by Stephen Hawking, Craig Venter, and evil 45th century time-travelling pharmacists, it made me nostalgic for those teenage days spent listening (against my will) to Cherry Pie by Warrant. Warrant, for God's sake! Is this game capable of miracles? It certainly changed my brain in a short space of time, and has tempted me to buy Van Halen, Heaven Tonight, and Wolfmother. God help my ears.
I can't thank Canyon enough for this most awesome of presents. [You're welcome. It is insanely addictive. Right now my "fret" hand is curled into an immobile claw, and yet I STILL MUST PLAY. -- Canyon]
ETA: The best thing about it is that it really does make you think you're contributing to the song being played via the console, mostly by making everything fall horribly apart if you miss a note. Or 18 notes in a row, if you're me. It really reinforces how much your playing is holding the song together. I'm amazed at how embarrassed I feel when the crowd starts booing. The opposite is also true; when I get the Star Power going well, the crowd is happy because of me! For a few minutes there, I was Jerry Cantrell playing Them Bones. Words cannot describe how satisfying that was.
