Wrapped up my first playthrough of Venetica.
I had a great time, and only yelled at the game a couple of times.
I'll play through it a couple more times, I'm sure, but for now I'll move on to something else.
I would like to correct my last post, however.
During the final stages, I saw a tip on a loading screen informing me that there is, in fact, an option to have "dynamic shortcuts". Once I turned that on, I was able to pick four skills/powers to assign to each weapon type (and a fifth, always assigned to the B button stayed constant). So that helped a lot.
Still could have used a separate magic wheel, though. I think there are four sills to learn for each weapon... that would have allowed them to be automatically assigned and still grant full access to each power, plus have a quick-use button for a consumable item.
But I digress...
Tuesday, January 18, 2011
Monday, January 17, 2011
Gaming Goals 2011 - Stepping out of the DCU
Well, DC Universe Online turned out to not be the total distraction that I thought it might be.
It's kind of sad, actually. I spent more time installing it than playing it.
The gameplay pretty much epitomizes everything I think of when I think of MMORPGs. You get a fancy, well produced, high quality opening cutscene, and then... lame gameplay. Go beat up 10 of these constantly respawning enemies over there, then go hold down the "O" button over here. No creativity to the missions, no alternative ways to do missions, and your powers don't really matter, because they don't have any bearing on your objectives whatsoever.
It's really disappointing because the created characters you make are really well done, and well animated (though the power skill tree abilities are mostly lame). This could have been an incredible single player game, if they put effort into mission structure, and animations and perhaps even lipsyncing the mouth movements to the horrible voice acting (instead of the Beaker Muppet-mouth-flap. That's one way to make Superman look ridiculous, good job guys.).
DC Universe Online is an example of why these type of games are horrible outdated. Had they made it a 4-player online co-op game, such as Crackdown 2, it could have been great.
Oh, and the trophies are terrible, too. Really first-year developer stuff.
There is one trophy for winning a race with a platinum time. The only race I did, to beat it I needed about 1:30. Platinum time was 1:00. I did it in about 37 seconds, and it wasn't even a great run. There's a trophy for me.
All other trophies are grinding out levels, and replaying the game over and over. Seriously.
Trophies for hitting level 30 with each of the six trainers. There's six playthroughs right there. As long as you diversify your characters, you can get the other half dozen trophies as you grind your way up to that.
And that's it. 14 total trophies. Good thing I'm not resolving to increase my Trophy... score? Collection? I'm not even sure how it's referred to on the PS3. Oh well. Maybe next year.
I just have to figure out how to cancel my DCU subscription so I'm not charged $15 bucks for another month of this.
Back on the Xbox, I had a great week of gaming.
My gamerscore now stands at 74,290.
That's up over 1500 from last week. More than doubled the 100-a-day average that I'm trying to achieve.
And, perhaps more importantly, I finished 5 games last week!
I'm counting Harm's Way as finished. There's not much to that game. Just a three race set and you're done. I did the races as a gunner, because I didn't care for the driving all that much. And I just played single player. My friends played through it months ago, so I'm behind and didn't have people to play it with anyway.
I also finished Splatterhouse, Split/Second, Battlefield Bad Company and Saint's Row.
Did you know Saint's Row has no achievement for finishing the whole storyline? Might as well stop doing missions after you wipe out the rival games. But I was only one escort mission away from completing all the Activities, so I finished that and got plenty of points that way.
Splatterhouse was a new game I started after I began tracking my goal. The ironic thing is, being a new game, it threw off my total score goal, but I earned much more achievement points by game's end than I did with Split/Second or Bad Company.
I ended Split/Second with exactly 35% of its gamerscore, and Bad Company only gave me 30%.
I also started playing Venetica. I'm really enjoying it. It's a $40 title, so I came into it with lowered expectations, but I've already spent 20 hours in it and I like it quite a bit. It's like a budget Fable. It just doesn't set itself up with such lofty goals, and settles for a normal experience.
The worst thing about this game is everything to do with the dialogue! A lot of lines are bad. Subtitles often don't match the line read. Ambient dialogue will be louder than your conversation. The wrong audio will play during a conversation. Characters emoting will change from line to line as if the performance was cobbled together from greatly varying takes, sometimes seeming like they had different voice actors doing the lines.
The only other really bothersome thing (although the inventory is a bit cumbersome, and your quest list isn't good about updating what you've done... but remember: budget title.) is your shortcuts: how you use your skills and powers. You can have 30 or more powers/abilities, but you only have 5 shortcut slots to assign them for use. If you want to use a variety, you'll be playing in the menu a lot during battles. A power wheel, like in Mass Effect, would have been a great benefit here.
You have 4 types of weapons: Sword, Spear, Hammer (or Axe... apparently they're the same "blunt" class) and your magical Moonblade. You have to learn abilities for each of these separately... including block. And then you have to have the correct block ability assigned to a shortcut for the weapon you're using! There's one dodge button, why couldn't they have made a universal block button?
What they really needed to do was make four separate loadouts, one assigned to each weapon type, so as soon as you switch to a different weapon (switching is made easy, with a button to cycle through them or you can assign the control pad for weapon selection) you'd have usable skills ready to go.
But despite all of its flaws, I really like the game. It has sort of a Beyond Good and Evil vibe.
And I'm over the 35% mark with the achievements already!
I have fallen behind on writing reviews, though. Whoops. I'll catch up after I finish Venetica. I'll just have to write 8 reviews this week while I'm playing LittleBigPlanet2.
It's kind of sad, actually. I spent more time installing it than playing it.
The gameplay pretty much epitomizes everything I think of when I think of MMORPGs. You get a fancy, well produced, high quality opening cutscene, and then... lame gameplay. Go beat up 10 of these constantly respawning enemies over there, then go hold down the "O" button over here. No creativity to the missions, no alternative ways to do missions, and your powers don't really matter, because they don't have any bearing on your objectives whatsoever.
It's really disappointing because the created characters you make are really well done, and well animated (though the power skill tree abilities are mostly lame). This could have been an incredible single player game, if they put effort into mission structure, and animations and perhaps even lipsyncing the mouth movements to the horrible voice acting (instead of the Beaker Muppet-mouth-flap. That's one way to make Superman look ridiculous, good job guys.).
DC Universe Online is an example of why these type of games are horrible outdated. Had they made it a 4-player online co-op game, such as Crackdown 2, it could have been great.
Oh, and the trophies are terrible, too. Really first-year developer stuff.
There is one trophy for winning a race with a platinum time. The only race I did, to beat it I needed about 1:30. Platinum time was 1:00. I did it in about 37 seconds, and it wasn't even a great run. There's a trophy for me.
All other trophies are grinding out levels, and replaying the game over and over. Seriously.
Trophies for hitting level 30 with each of the six trainers. There's six playthroughs right there. As long as you diversify your characters, you can get the other half dozen trophies as you grind your way up to that.
And that's it. 14 total trophies. Good thing I'm not resolving to increase my Trophy... score? Collection? I'm not even sure how it's referred to on the PS3. Oh well. Maybe next year.
I just have to figure out how to cancel my DCU subscription so I'm not charged $15 bucks for another month of this.
Back on the Xbox, I had a great week of gaming.
My gamerscore now stands at 74,290.
That's up over 1500 from last week. More than doubled the 100-a-day average that I'm trying to achieve.
And, perhaps more importantly, I finished 5 games last week!
I'm counting Harm's Way as finished. There's not much to that game. Just a three race set and you're done. I did the races as a gunner, because I didn't care for the driving all that much. And I just played single player. My friends played through it months ago, so I'm behind and didn't have people to play it with anyway.
I also finished Splatterhouse, Split/Second, Battlefield Bad Company and Saint's Row.
Did you know Saint's Row has no achievement for finishing the whole storyline? Might as well stop doing missions after you wipe out the rival games. But I was only one escort mission away from completing all the Activities, so I finished that and got plenty of points that way.
Splatterhouse was a new game I started after I began tracking my goal. The ironic thing is, being a new game, it threw off my total score goal, but I earned much more achievement points by game's end than I did with Split/Second or Bad Company.
I ended Split/Second with exactly 35% of its gamerscore, and Bad Company only gave me 30%.
I also started playing Venetica. I'm really enjoying it. It's a $40 title, so I came into it with lowered expectations, but I've already spent 20 hours in it and I like it quite a bit. It's like a budget Fable. It just doesn't set itself up with such lofty goals, and settles for a normal experience.
The worst thing about this game is everything to do with the dialogue! A lot of lines are bad. Subtitles often don't match the line read. Ambient dialogue will be louder than your conversation. The wrong audio will play during a conversation. Characters emoting will change from line to line as if the performance was cobbled together from greatly varying takes, sometimes seeming like they had different voice actors doing the lines.
The only other really bothersome thing (although the inventory is a bit cumbersome, and your quest list isn't good about updating what you've done... but remember: budget title.) is your shortcuts: how you use your skills and powers. You can have 30 or more powers/abilities, but you only have 5 shortcut slots to assign them for use. If you want to use a variety, you'll be playing in the menu a lot during battles. A power wheel, like in Mass Effect, would have been a great benefit here.
You have 4 types of weapons: Sword, Spear, Hammer (or Axe... apparently they're the same "blunt" class) and your magical Moonblade. You have to learn abilities for each of these separately... including block. And then you have to have the correct block ability assigned to a shortcut for the weapon you're using! There's one dodge button, why couldn't they have made a universal block button?
What they really needed to do was make four separate loadouts, one assigned to each weapon type, so as soon as you switch to a different weapon (switching is made easy, with a button to cycle through them or you can assign the control pad for weapon selection) you'd have usable skills ready to go.
But despite all of its flaws, I really like the game. It has sort of a Beyond Good and Evil vibe.
And I'm over the 35% mark with the achievements already!
I have fallen behind on writing reviews, though. Whoops. I'll catch up after I finish Venetica. I'll just have to write 8 reviews this week while I'm playing LittleBigPlanet2.
Tuesday, January 11, 2011
DC Universe Online - So Far
My copy of DC Universe showed up this afternoon, and I eagerly put it my PS3 to get what I knew would be a massive download installed.
I sure didn't think it would take four hours to download two gigs.
It's been four hours!
And it's only 70% complete.
Good thing this game came with the first month free, because it needs it just to install the game!
The entire time, there is a single image on the screen. No music or anything entertaining during these hours. Would it have killed them to have made a slideshow of tips and instructions for you to read while you waited and waited and waited for this time to install?
And I had to delete about 10 GB of stuff off my hard drive to fit this thing. Nearly a quarter of my 80GB hard drive is being used up by this game. And that's if it doesn't ask for even more space later (it already made me add more space three separate times).
I'd like to take this opportunity to point out that I dislike the menu system for the PS3 when it comes to deleting files. I have to go all over to find things. In order to find the file size of each individual item, I have to select options and then information. Then I have to back out of that and then reopen the option menu to select delete.
I don't know what the bulk of my hard drive is filled with, because there is no central memory allotment table to show me how much is being used for what. So I have to pick and choose game saves and data from games I guess I just won't play until I get a bigger hard drive. And unless I writing down these files sizes, I still don't know how much I've freed up, because it doesn't just tell me how much unused space I have. Why is user-friendly so complicated a concept for Sony to grasp?
Also, I don't think my PS3 has been on this long before. And I watched a movie on it right before this mess of an install process began. 9 straight hours. Even when I play long gaming sessions, I'll turn it off my console for an hour or so every five or six hours to get something to eat.
Please don't melt, Playstation. You were expensive.
I sure didn't think it would take four hours to download two gigs.
It's been four hours!
And it's only 70% complete.
Good thing this game came with the first month free, because it needs it just to install the game!
The entire time, there is a single image on the screen. No music or anything entertaining during these hours. Would it have killed them to have made a slideshow of tips and instructions for you to read while you waited and waited and waited for this time to install?
And I had to delete about 10 GB of stuff off my hard drive to fit this thing. Nearly a quarter of my 80GB hard drive is being used up by this game. And that's if it doesn't ask for even more space later (it already made me add more space three separate times).
I'd like to take this opportunity to point out that I dislike the menu system for the PS3 when it comes to deleting files. I have to go all over to find things. In order to find the file size of each individual item, I have to select options and then information. Then I have to back out of that and then reopen the option menu to select delete.
I don't know what the bulk of my hard drive is filled with, because there is no central memory allotment table to show me how much is being used for what. So I have to pick and choose game saves and data from games I guess I just won't play until I get a bigger hard drive. And unless I writing down these files sizes, I still don't know how much I've freed up, because it doesn't just tell me how much unused space I have. Why is user-friendly so complicated a concept for Sony to grasp?
Also, I don't think my PS3 has been on this long before. And I watched a movie on it right before this mess of an install process began. 9 straight hours. Even when I play long gaming sessions, I'll turn it off my console for an hour or so every five or six hours to get something to eat.
Please don't melt, Playstation. You were expensive.
Monday, January 10, 2011
Gaming Goals 2011 - Week Two
It's been a pretty good week in terms of productivity on my Xbox gaming goals. Since my last update, I've completed Limbo and Mass Effect 2 (the latter was just finished about 15 minutes ago.). I racked up 87% of the achievement points for ME2, and 90% for Limbo, which goes a long way towards bringing up my overall gamerscore to a 35% average.
My gamerscore currently stands at 72,755.
I'll have a review coming for Mass Effect 2, but there were some choices made by the developers that were kind of awkward for players who played the first game. They don't affect the review, because they were story choices and didn't affect the gameplay, as they could have easily replaced entire cast from first game and not had any problem. But the lack of interaction between the returning crew members was unfortunate. That's not to say there wasn't any... Garrus and Tali had a hilarious conversation, reminiscing about the elevators from the first game, as I wandered around the (totally redesigned and much much smaller) citadel level. I went out of my way to bring the two of them on missions together, but there just wasn't much acknowledgement of each other.
And what was with Liara's character? A shy, withdrawn archaeologist has suddenly become a intimidating badass (for the most part) information broker? I just didn't buy that at all. They should have written something into the first one that could have evolved into this, but as it is...
And finally, this is a problem I have with most squad-based RPGs. It does not make sense for most missions to only go in a group of 3. Sure, there are a couple of stealthy, infiltration type of missions and the smaller the group the better. But when an assault team is needed, the bigger the better. And only being able to fit 3 people in the transport isn't an excuse, because at one part of the story, all of your characters are loaded into the shuttlecraft, so they'll conveniently be away when the ship comes under attack.
The final mission does a good job of explaining the need to split up into squads to accomplish different task, always leaving you with a group of three... which they didn't bother explaining why you couldn't have a bigger group since a couple new crew members were added via DLC.
I would love it if Mass Effect 3, and other games for that matter, would come up with a good solution to the group-of-three ridiculousness. Maybe a bigger squad, and during points in a mission you'll get separated from part of your team, leaving you with randomly assigned squad members. I like randomness, makes replays more fun and interesting.
DC Universe Online releases tomorrow, and if the snow doesn't stop the UPS guy, I hope to have the game by the evening hours. Next week, I'll report on how well this new game captures my attention, and how much my Xbox gets ignored because of it.
My gamerscore currently stands at 72,755.
I'll have a review coming for Mass Effect 2, but there were some choices made by the developers that were kind of awkward for players who played the first game. They don't affect the review, because they were story choices and didn't affect the gameplay, as they could have easily replaced entire cast from first game and not had any problem. But the lack of interaction between the returning crew members was unfortunate. That's not to say there wasn't any... Garrus and Tali had a hilarious conversation, reminiscing about the elevators from the first game, as I wandered around the (totally redesigned and much much smaller) citadel level. I went out of my way to bring the two of them on missions together, but there just wasn't much acknowledgement of each other.
And what was with Liara's character? A shy, withdrawn archaeologist has suddenly become a intimidating badass (for the most part) information broker? I just didn't buy that at all. They should have written something into the first one that could have evolved into this, but as it is...
And finally, this is a problem I have with most squad-based RPGs. It does not make sense for most missions to only go in a group of 3. Sure, there are a couple of stealthy, infiltration type of missions and the smaller the group the better. But when an assault team is needed, the bigger the better. And only being able to fit 3 people in the transport isn't an excuse, because at one part of the story, all of your characters are loaded into the shuttlecraft, so they'll conveniently be away when the ship comes under attack.
The final mission does a good job of explaining the need to split up into squads to accomplish different task, always leaving you with a group of three... which they didn't bother explaining why you couldn't have a bigger group since a couple new crew members were added via DLC.
I would love it if Mass Effect 3, and other games for that matter, would come up with a good solution to the group-of-three ridiculousness. Maybe a bigger squad, and during points in a mission you'll get separated from part of your team, leaving you with randomly assigned squad members. I like randomness, makes replays more fun and interesting.
DC Universe Online releases tomorrow, and if the snow doesn't stop the UPS guy, I hope to have the game by the evening hours. Next week, I'll report on how well this new game captures my attention, and how much my Xbox gets ignored because of it.
Wednesday, January 5, 2011
Gaming Goals 2011 - First Week
Steady progress is the name of the game so far.
For me to achieve my goal of raising my Achievement percentage to 35% by year's end, I'll have to average about 100 gamer points a day. I have increased my score by 990 in 9 days, so I am right on track. This was greatly helped out by gathering the last 400 or so points in Lego Batman. Lego games can be a bit of a grind, but achievements start freeflowing when you near 100% completion.
Of course, my target goal increases considering I started two new games (Splatterhouse and Limbo) so I will have to be careful and consistently finish these new games as I go.
I haven't actually finished any game since Lego Rock Band just over a week ago. So that goal hasn't been kept up to pace necessary so far. I'll need at least one completed game a week, plus a few extra to hit that 150 game mark by 2012. But I know there are a few games that I'm pretty close to finishing, such as Fallout 3. I just want to complete more side-missions before wrapping up the main quest. And I know Limbo is a short game overall, but I'm deliberately taking it slow to allow initial impressions of the game not heavily influence my review.
I finally started Mass Effect 2. I was waiting to get all the achievements from the first game, which I finally did last week. I am enjoying the new game quite a bit, even though it's differences in gameplay are a bit jarring. I sure don't like suddenly having to rely on limited ammunition. But I'm getting used to it.
As for Splatterhouse... it is what it is. I got the game most looking forward to unlocking the classic games, which I don't think I ever played but I sure remember the comic book ads for the Turbo-Graphix 16 versions. So far, the game is fun in short bursts.
Looking forward to the rest of January... there seems to be a lot of distractions on the horizon, all of them involving the Playstation 3. I plan to get Littlebigplanet 2, DC Universe Online, and Dead Space 2 for the PS3. The good news is that since they're on the PS3, I don't have to worry about them messing up my gamerscore average, but they will draw a lot of time away from my Xbox and my march towards a decent score.
I'm not sure how much I'll actually play Littlebigplanet 2. Surprise, surprise: I never finished the first one. I was only playing that with my friends when we gathered for game night, and when our game night stopped existing, so did progress on that game. This one I'll try for a while by myself, and see how it goes. I might try my hand at designing a level based on my comics and see if I can get anything to resemble something familiar.
I never played an actual MMO, so I eagerly look forward to DCU. I own Final Fantasy XI for the 360, but I haven't felt the desire to put so much time in that old of a game... are the servers even still active for it? I plan to get as much use out of the free month of DC Universe, and then probably move on to other stuff. Don't want to pay a monthly subscription if I'm not going to be active. We'll see what type of new content they can entice players with to keep them coming back.
And I know Dead Space 2 is a multiplatform game. And even though I have the first one on the 360 (you guessed it, unfinished), I want to get the PS3 collector's edition for the inclusion of the port of the Wii rail-based shooter Dead Space Extraction. So, technically I supposed that makes 4 new games I'll be playing on the PS3 this month. Five if I pre-order soon enough to get a code for the PSN Dead Space game.
So it looks like I have my work cut out for me to keep up the pace while cheating with the Playstation. Fun work, though!
For me to achieve my goal of raising my Achievement percentage to 35% by year's end, I'll have to average about 100 gamer points a day. I have increased my score by 990 in 9 days, so I am right on track. This was greatly helped out by gathering the last 400 or so points in Lego Batman. Lego games can be a bit of a grind, but achievements start freeflowing when you near 100% completion.
Of course, my target goal increases considering I started two new games (Splatterhouse and Limbo) so I will have to be careful and consistently finish these new games as I go.
I haven't actually finished any game since Lego Rock Band just over a week ago. So that goal hasn't been kept up to pace necessary so far. I'll need at least one completed game a week, plus a few extra to hit that 150 game mark by 2012. But I know there are a few games that I'm pretty close to finishing, such as Fallout 3. I just want to complete more side-missions before wrapping up the main quest. And I know Limbo is a short game overall, but I'm deliberately taking it slow to allow initial impressions of the game not heavily influence my review.
I finally started Mass Effect 2. I was waiting to get all the achievements from the first game, which I finally did last week. I am enjoying the new game quite a bit, even though it's differences in gameplay are a bit jarring. I sure don't like suddenly having to rely on limited ammunition. But I'm getting used to it.
As for Splatterhouse... it is what it is. I got the game most looking forward to unlocking the classic games, which I don't think I ever played but I sure remember the comic book ads for the Turbo-Graphix 16 versions. So far, the game is fun in short bursts.
Looking forward to the rest of January... there seems to be a lot of distractions on the horizon, all of them involving the Playstation 3. I plan to get Littlebigplanet 2, DC Universe Online, and Dead Space 2 for the PS3. The good news is that since they're on the PS3, I don't have to worry about them messing up my gamerscore average, but they will draw a lot of time away from my Xbox and my march towards a decent score.
I'm not sure how much I'll actually play Littlebigplanet 2. Surprise, surprise: I never finished the first one. I was only playing that with my friends when we gathered for game night, and when our game night stopped existing, so did progress on that game. This one I'll try for a while by myself, and see how it goes. I might try my hand at designing a level based on my comics and see if I can get anything to resemble something familiar.
I never played an actual MMO, so I eagerly look forward to DCU. I own Final Fantasy XI for the 360, but I haven't felt the desire to put so much time in that old of a game... are the servers even still active for it? I plan to get as much use out of the free month of DC Universe, and then probably move on to other stuff. Don't want to pay a monthly subscription if I'm not going to be active. We'll see what type of new content they can entice players with to keep them coming back.
And I know Dead Space 2 is a multiplatform game. And even though I have the first one on the 360 (you guessed it, unfinished), I want to get the PS3 collector's edition for the inclusion of the port of the Wii rail-based shooter Dead Space Extraction. So, technically I supposed that makes 4 new games I'll be playing on the PS3 this month. Five if I pre-order soon enough to get a code for the PSN Dead Space game.
So it looks like I have my work cut out for me to keep up the pace while cheating with the Playstation. Fun work, though!
Monday, January 3, 2011
Lego Rock Band Review
Lego Rock Band - 2 out of 4 Stars
It's a shame when two big franchises come together, only to produce a product that fails to reach the height of either individual property.
At its core, Lego Rock Band performs as a solid Rock Band product. All the fundamentals are there, and aside from the art direction, the game is essentially a large Rock Band 2 track pack. However, there are a few new additions to the familiar gameplay.
Most notably, as you progress through Career mode, your band is given a series of special Rock Power Challenges along the way. During these events, you do not get the benefit of your "overdrive" meter. Performing well arbitrarily lets you meet some sort of goal, such as defeating a giant octopus, or demolishing a building. But the effort put into programming these spectacles are all but wasted, as you are concentrating too much on the stream of notes watch the action directly. It's like games that hide big flashy CGI sequences behind Quick-Time Events. Seeing things in your peripheral vision doesn't cut it.
The game designers tried to fix this in co-op mode, by having only some band members play at a time during these challenges, while others are given a break… to watch the action I guess? But this feels quite awkward, especially if you're singing. And you'll probably be too busy watching for your cue to rejoin to actually enjoy the scene on display.
Also new to the gameplay, is the chance to save yourself from failing out of a song. If you miss too many notes, instead of stopping the song, you get a "stud recovery" chance which allows you to re-enter the game if you are able to play a small section with a high enough accuracy. It's a nice feature, that might encourage newer players not to give up on the game.
Lego Rock Band also introduces cutscenes to career mode. Guitar Hero games have had brief cartoony scenes, but LRB actually uses your created characters (customizable band members and road crew) in scenes about goofing around or living the Rock Star life. Some of these are really enjoyable, but made me wish they were instead in a proper Rock Band game with more realistic and expressive characters (which finally happened in Rock Band 3, though to a lesser extent).
Which brings me to what I find as the biggest fault of the game: the limitation of the Lego characters. Especially early on, the options for character creation are terribly light. It seems designed for you to want to have weird abominations as your rock avatars. You can't even change color of clothes or skin tone to match properly. You're often stuck with using pre-created characters because it's a bother to find a good torso that matches the skin color of your chosen head.
The allure of the Lego games, for the most part, is seeing famous people and characters in Lego form. Other than a few rock star recreations, that doesn't happen here. You're not even given enough pieces to build yourself with any accuracy. You can simply rearrange a small number of features from unlocked character models.
And the physical limitation of the Lego movements sap the enjoyment out of watching them perform. While it can be charming to see their pivoting dance moves, it grows old quick. And there is never a point in the game where you have direct control over them, unlike in the other Lego games where you can just enjoy playing with their animations.
Another negative aspect of this game is the hinderance of its E10 rating. Any song you've downloaded from the Rock Band Music Store that carries a more mature rating will not show up in Lego Rock Band's song selection. I can appreciate the developers wanting to keep this game as kid-friendly as possible, but I would have preferred that they found a way to use the console's parental controls to restrict the track list of underage players rather than deny everyone access to their songs.
Overall, it is a decent, but limiting game with a big soundtrack. It's best used simply as a track pack for other Rock Band games.
Recommended for: Rock Band enthusiasts wanting to extend their track library.
It's a shame when two big franchises come together, only to produce a product that fails to reach the height of either individual property.
At its core, Lego Rock Band performs as a solid Rock Band product. All the fundamentals are there, and aside from the art direction, the game is essentially a large Rock Band 2 track pack. However, there are a few new additions to the familiar gameplay.
Most notably, as you progress through Career mode, your band is given a series of special Rock Power Challenges along the way. During these events, you do not get the benefit of your "overdrive" meter. Performing well arbitrarily lets you meet some sort of goal, such as defeating a giant octopus, or demolishing a building. But the effort put into programming these spectacles are all but wasted, as you are concentrating too much on the stream of notes watch the action directly. It's like games that hide big flashy CGI sequences behind Quick-Time Events. Seeing things in your peripheral vision doesn't cut it.
The game designers tried to fix this in co-op mode, by having only some band members play at a time during these challenges, while others are given a break… to watch the action I guess? But this feels quite awkward, especially if you're singing. And you'll probably be too busy watching for your cue to rejoin to actually enjoy the scene on display.
Also new to the gameplay, is the chance to save yourself from failing out of a song. If you miss too many notes, instead of stopping the song, you get a "stud recovery" chance which allows you to re-enter the game if you are able to play a small section with a high enough accuracy. It's a nice feature, that might encourage newer players not to give up on the game.
Lego Rock Band also introduces cutscenes to career mode. Guitar Hero games have had brief cartoony scenes, but LRB actually uses your created characters (customizable band members and road crew) in scenes about goofing around or living the Rock Star life. Some of these are really enjoyable, but made me wish they were instead in a proper Rock Band game with more realistic and expressive characters (which finally happened in Rock Band 3, though to a lesser extent).
Which brings me to what I find as the biggest fault of the game: the limitation of the Lego characters. Especially early on, the options for character creation are terribly light. It seems designed for you to want to have weird abominations as your rock avatars. You can't even change color of clothes or skin tone to match properly. You're often stuck with using pre-created characters because it's a bother to find a good torso that matches the skin color of your chosen head.
The allure of the Lego games, for the most part, is seeing famous people and characters in Lego form. Other than a few rock star recreations, that doesn't happen here. You're not even given enough pieces to build yourself with any accuracy. You can simply rearrange a small number of features from unlocked character models.
And the physical limitation of the Lego movements sap the enjoyment out of watching them perform. While it can be charming to see their pivoting dance moves, it grows old quick. And there is never a point in the game where you have direct control over them, unlike in the other Lego games where you can just enjoy playing with their animations.
Another negative aspect of this game is the hinderance of its E10 rating. Any song you've downloaded from the Rock Band Music Store that carries a more mature rating will not show up in Lego Rock Band's song selection. I can appreciate the developers wanting to keep this game as kid-friendly as possible, but I would have preferred that they found a way to use the console's parental controls to restrict the track list of underage players rather than deny everyone access to their songs.
Overall, it is a decent, but limiting game with a big soundtrack. It's best used simply as a track pack for other Rock Band games.
Recommended for: Rock Band enthusiasts wanting to extend their track library.
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