In Third Person

A personal look into video games, the video game industry and video game culture.


Image from IGN

After buying a whole new Rock Band 2 set just to replace my 5th broken drum set and my always-janky Rock Band 1 guitar, I am once again faced with another instrument setback.

My less-than-two-month-old guitar is broken. The strum bar has ceased to work.

Ugh. I've already gone through the process of RMA-ing it, but nevertheless I'm still extremely frustrated. I love the entire Rock Band series of games and actually prefer the feel of the Rock Band instruments over the Guitar Hero instruments. However, I don't want to put up with these hardware issues anymore. Do I go back to Rock Band instruments and hope someday they'll work properly or should I just try something else?

Image from Joystiq

Over the last few hours, the video game blogosphere has been going insane over the inclusion of the word "sambo" in Scribblenauts.

Joystiq and Kotaku, just to name two outlets, have covered this topic, and I think blew it way out of proportion.

Kotaku in particular, went into a whole piece connecting the word "sambo" with the racist connotations while completely glossing over the other meanings of the word, even when they use the developers explanation in their own story.
Slaczka said that the word was included in Scribblenauts because it is an ingredient of the Ecuadorian dish Fanesca, which is listed, on Wikipedia, as including a "figleaf gourd," or "sambo".
- Kotaku

What they didn't do until hours later and until a user brought it up, was include an image of what that definition of "sambo" is. Take a look:

Image from Kotaku commenter DwarfP

I'll be damned if that doesn't look like a watermelon to me.
From Joystiq:
As for the watermelon-like appearance? "We reuse art," he said. "Fig leaf gourd looks a lot like a watermelon. It's just an alternative name in a giant list of tens of thousands of names."
I'm not ignorant to the racial connotations to the term. But I'm very disappointed in many of these blogs and news outlets that completely gloss over the reason the developers actually put "sambo" in the game. I don't think 5th Cell is wrong for putting "sambo" in the game if they intended it as the local term for fig leaf gourd. The problem is people looking for racism that isn't really there.


Image from Ohgizmo

As a music game enthusiast, there may not be a bigger day than 09-09-09, when The Beatles: Rock Band hits store shelves. A game based around the biggest musical act in the history of music made by the guys who make my preferred rock music game of choice is guaranteed to be "full of win". There isn't really much to be said other than it's Rock Band but with Beatles music.

As a Beatles "fan", my journey towards this game makes for a far more interesting story. Sure, I know all the hits, and I grew up in a house where I was taught from a very young age that the Beatles were the best band in the world. I never questioned it growing up.

But now I feel like I want to know more before I plunge into this game. I'm sure the game will do a decent job of starting off a person's quest into learning about the band, but I really wanted to form my own opinion about their music. So, I raided my dad's Beatles stash and ripped every album onto my computer. I've been trying to listen to albums front-to-back to try and get a sense of the full album experience.

It's really interesting to listen to this music and read the history behind each album to see where it was coming from. It's also really cool to see how they evolved musically. I'm not done my "vision quest" just yet, but my favourite album I've listened to front to back so far is Revolver. With the exception of "Love You Too", I thought every song on there was great, and does a great job of capturing the transition the group made from pop hits to more experimental and rock stuff.

Worst album? This one is easy for me. I think Beatles For Sale is awful. After reading about the making of that album, I could see why. They only had 2 weeks to record it, and almost half the songs on there are covers, and not necessarily great ones. With the exception of "Eight Days A Week", this album left a really bad taste in my mouth.

Image from Beatles.com

I feel really good being able to enlighten myself about the Beatles and form my own opinions about their music and to a point, their legacy. It's good to find great album music that never got any play on the radio. It's also a good feeling that I'm not going into this video game cold. 9-9-9 is only a few days away!

Image from Game Spy

So much for not buying Batman: Arkham Asylum like I said I would. I'm glad I changed my mind at the last minute.

If critical acclaim couldn't make me buy the game, what did? Thanks to Wal-Mart, many retailers in my country were selling the game at launch for just over half price. For most people, Arkham Asylum is a fine purchase at full price. At half price? It's a steal.

A lot of my concerns about the game that popped into my head during the demo were quelled when playing the final game. It didn't get repetitive. I didn't get crazy lost. It wasn't a crappy licensed game. The experience didn't drag on too long, and only got better with time.

Take out Batman from this game and it's still awesome. I played it from front-to-back in a 3-day binge and loved every minute of it. Well, almost every minute of it. I do have minor gripes with how it ends, but up until that point it just got increasingly awesome.

By far the best moments of the game featured the Scarecrow. It would be a crime for me to spoil any more than that. They are must-experience moments for any gamer, period.

Many people have said this is game of the year material. I don't think this will win it, but I would definitely say the game is a sure-fire honourable mention and worth your time. Go buy this game!



Making the rounds of video game websites and blogs is the above video from YouTube user Corporalgregg2, who recorded a few of the awkward things you can do with Kurt Cobain in Guitar Hero 5. Everything from imitating Flava Flav's trademark, "Yeah boy!" to four Kurt Cobain's performing a Megadeath song with invisible instruments.

My initial reaction is, "LOL! Look at Kurt Cobain being crazy!" However, as someone who knows a little bit about the life and death of Kurt Cobain, I can't help but feel eerily uncomfortable watching this.

Part of the reason why Kurt Cobain is no longer with us is because he hated celebrity and the commercialism his music brought to him. He wanted to be seen in a certain light, and that not happening partially lead to his death. Ever since then, the legacy of Kurt Cobain has been fairly well protected.

So it comes as a bit of a surprise to see cyber Kurt Cobain in the video singing music from Bon Jovi and Stevie Wonder with an XBOX avatar and a skeleton. When the makers of Guitar Hero pitched this idea to the estate of Kurt Cobain, did they mention that this would be possible? If so, was the estate of Kurt Cobain cool with it?

As an outsider, this almost feels like they dug up the corpse of Kurt Cobain and slapped him into their video game strictly for marketing purposes. Am I the only one feeling uncomfortable about this?