In Third Person

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

Some Thoughts On Abbey Road DLC For The Beatles: Rock Band

Posted by Jet
Wednesday, October 21, 2009
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Image from Game Spy

One of my initial concerns over The Beatles: Rock Band was the limited song selection. With Rock Band 2 packing over 80 songs on the disc and currently over 900 songs total available, 45 Beatles songs seems paltry in comparison. Even if the game eventually included every single Beatles song ever made, the catalogue would never catch up in terms of sheer volume of songs.

Since the game came out though, I've played way more Beatles than regular Rock Band, because most of those 45 songs are really, really awesome. Adding to that awesome this week was the release of Abbey Road as downloadable content. If you're familiar with The Beatles catalogue, you probably already know wheter or not you want this.

For me, Abbey Road is easily my favourite Beatles album, so buying this was a no-brainer. The moment I had a chance, my brother and I played the whole album front-to-back.

The joy I felt from playing through the entirety of Abbey Road may have only been rivaled by the first time I "got" Guitar Hero. Your experience will vary based on how much you like the music, but for me that is the best music game content to date (and maybe the best it will ever be).

Image from IGN

For all of the hyperbole, there are two caveats to this package. For the cost of completing the Abbey Road package, you're paying a lot for not much. Most of the big songs from the album came on the disc, so you're paying mainly for 2 full songs and the 16-minute medley. If you love Abbey Road then this doesn't matter. The pricing for individual tracks is a bit dicey as well. Would you pay $1 to get "Her Majesty", a 21-second song?

The only other beef that some may have is the inability to play certain songs from the medley separately. Due to te way these songs were put together, it would be weird to have "Polythene Pam" abruptly stop when "She Came Throgh The Bathroom Window". If you've played The Beatles: Rock Band, you've experienced this withthe first 2 songs off of Sgt. Pepper.

And in the end...if you're looking for more Beatles music for your Rock Band, this might be as good as it gets.

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Some Thoughts Before The Beatles: Rock Band Drops

Posted by Jet
Monday, September 7, 2009
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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!

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Rock Band Drum Surgery

Posted by Jet
Thursday, August 6, 2009
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The Rock Band series of video games are hands-down my favourite video game series this console generation. I could go on for days talking about how awesome the games are. However, this time I wanted to highlight one major gripe I've lived with since I bought the full band kit on launch day of Rock Band 1:

The Rock Band 1 instruments are some of the worst-made video game controllers of all-time.

While my guitar technically still works, the strum bar feels horribly mushy and makes it difficult to consistently hit the notes.

My drums though, have given me way more problems.

I've sent them back 4 different times over the course of 2008. All 4 sets broke. In that time I've had 3 kick pedals. All of them have snapped in half.

Unfortunately, the warranty ran out on my drums a while ago. So what am I left to do? Besides drop $100 on a new set? Attempt to fix them.

My first attempt at fixing the drum pads involved me snapping the cracked pads back together and taping them up. That worked for about...two days. Then, I got more serious.


In order to prevent the pads from cracking apart again, I taped plastic butter knives across the cracks. This worked...for about a week. Unfortunately, directly around the middle piece is a round crack where not even a broken piece of butter knife can properly reinforce.

My next step? Construction glue.


They're drying right now on the table. I'll re-enforce these with something else once the glue is dry.


My kick pedals had to go through this shoddy surgery too. In order to keep them together, I've taped plastic butter knives to the bottom of the pedal.

It's so frustrating to be in this position. I could just buy new drums, but why should I if there's a way I can fix them on my own? I know my fixes feature terrible craftsmanship, but if it works, why not? The Rock Band 2 drums as far as I know work fine, but for the millions of people who got punked by the Rock Band 1 drum set, I feel your pain.


Top image from PS3 Attitude

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25 Things About Me As A Gamer

Posted by Jet
Friday, July 24, 2009
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If I plan on selling you my voice and personality as the reason to regularly check in with this site, I probably should give you at least a few tidbits about me to start. If you've got a "25 Things About Me As A Gamer" that you'd like to share with me and the rest of the world, leave it in the comments section!

1. Super Mario Brothers on the Nintendo Entertainment System changed my life before I hit kindergarten.

2. I didn't own an NES growing up. Instead, my parents bought me a Famicom because they knew where to get all the bootleg Japanese games from.

3. In this current console cycle, I own an XBOX 360, Wii and DS. Most of my gaming currently is on the 360.

4. I keep an Excel file of all the games I currently own.

5. I learned how to play real drums by playing Rock Band.

6. I have been lurking the NeoGAF forums for many years now.

7. A few of the games I'm anxiously awaiting to play are The Beatles: Rock Band, Left 4 Dead 2, Scribblenauts and DJ Hero.

8. I still own an Atari 2600 and about 15 games. My favourite of the bunch is Bezerk.



9. Not sure whether or not I should be proud or ashamed of this one, but I've played over 5,000 Tetris DS matches. Proof:


10. Fire Emblem is probably my favourite video game series that nobody cares about.

11. Gaming podcasts are a big part of my day. I currently subscribe to 19 of them. I don't get to listen to every single episode every week, but I get to what I can!

12. I own a few video game t-shirts, but I have very picky taste. In particular, I hate t-shirts that try and slap some sort of pop-culture reference onto a video game t-shirt to make it less nerdy.

13. Part of the reason why I started this site is because I don't really have any other gamer friends to talk to. :(

14. I'm proud to have attended Video Games Live.

15. Remember that promo video for Donkey Kong Country? I received that in the mail from Nintendo years ago and I must have watched it about 100 times before I finally got the game for Christmas.

16. Many years ago, I had the chance to play Super Mario 64 before it came out and it blew my mind.

17. I have been a victim of both the red ring of death and the DS Lite crack.

18. Leading up to my 9th birthday, my parents teased me for weeks saying that they got me a TurboGrafx-16 instead of the Super Nintendo I had been begging for. At one point, I broke down and cried over it.

19. Currently, I've been playing a lot of Street Fighter IV online. My main character is Akuma.

20. At the height of my Rock Band obsession, my Rock Band setup was kind of crazy:

Yes, those are real live performance speakers hooked up to my TV.

21. I've brought in both my Wii and my XBOX 360 to college so my classmates and I could play video games in empty classrooms on the big projector.

22. Super Nintendo vs. Sega Genesis? Super Nintendo all the way.

23. There are a few games I've bought on the first day they came out and years later, I still haven't played them.

24. I love gaming on my iPod Touch. My two favourite games on the platform to date are Peggle and Drop 7.

25. In spite of those last 24 things, I still have a girlfriend. *knocks on wood furiously*


Images courtesy of No More Lives and 80s Tees

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