Monday, March 30, 2009

Endurance: Viewtiful Joe 2, Guitar Hero Metallica + RocaFuerte news

Sorry about the long gap between posts. It's tough living my life and having relevant things to post. This blog ain't exactly about my personal life, you know!

Recently, I finished Viewtiful Joe 2, a tough, exciting and cute beat 'em up on Nintendo Gamecube. This game starts out manageable and fun. As the player gets further into the game, the difficulty ramps up and some pretty lofty challenges are presented. Below is a set of three videos comprising about 25 minutes of the final challenge before the end boss to the game. It's just the pinnacle of Clover Studios' (the developer) expectations of the player. I am not sure I've seen such a massive requirement to finish a stage in a while, and I've been playing some very difficult games! The content provided in the 3 videos below must all be completed in one set of lives and you start out with three; if you lose a life you will have to start at the beginning of the section, which equates to the beginning of the video. At the end, the game clocks me in as taking 12 minutes to finish the level, but you will see for yourself how long it took based on these videos. I assume it took 12 minutes outside of traveling between challenges and the ratings but I'm not sure.





Yesterday I purchased (via pre-order) Guitar Hero: Metallica. Being that this is the band that takes half of the credit for me playing guitar in the first place (and 100% of the credit for me being a lead guitarist), I was incredibly interested in this game. There are 25 songs from the band, spanning all the albums. The offerings are a bit uneven between albums, but wisely chosen. The game is touted as being very hard for people who aren't experienced in the world of Guitar Hero, and for them I must agree. I did manage to finish the career mode after having completed 23% of the songs in the list. The songs open up based on how many stars you get, as opposed to how many songs are completed. It's safe to say that I got 5 stars in most of the songs I've played so far. I did play some of the higher tiered stuff, including one of my favorite songs, "Dyer's Eve." The first song I failed in my play through, this is a beast wanting to be tamed. It took me several tries to finish it and I scraped by with 3 stars. Below is a video of me playing it on Expert. I was so happy that I finished the song that I started singing along near the end. Pardon my being off-pitch; this song is very tiring!



I'm disappointed in two things with this game; the first is that the final song in the game is not a difficult one, but it is preceded by some of the toughest songs in the game, including "Dyer's Eve." It did fit with the venue where I performed it, which opened up solely for the final song. The other disappointment is that the Rock Band drum set does not support the double bass functionality. I honestly think it's a software related thing (Activision hatin') since all the hardware connects properly. I'll have to purchase the Guitar Hero World Tour kit on a deal some time in the future, as I just don't have a Benjamin to pony up for extra equipment I won't be using all the time. Anyone wanna donate to the cause? j/k

Finally, some RocaFuerte news: the songs in our demo have been complete for some time, but my singer finally e-mailed them to me in their final form. Enjoy!

1 - Terminara (3:58)
2 - Vuelo Letal (3:50)

We're also working on a new progressive-type song to go with our heavier tunes. I'm pretty excited about what we're working with and hope we come up with an amazing song. More info later!

We have a Facebook page up in addition to our mySpace page. If you've got a Facebook account, search for RocaFuerte and become a fan! We should be playing some gigs soon so if you're in the NYMA come out and see us.