Holy Holodeck: it's Project Natal!

I'm a very casual gamer who loves horror/ fantasy type FPS (first person shooters), but can't play very long before vertigo sets in, especially when using traditional controllers with which I've never been dextrous (picture a lot of spinning around and looking giddily up & down as I try to get the camera movement down while walking - or worse, shooting... you should've seen the first time I tried to play Halo - ugh). Besides the great appeal of making music either alone or with friends, the instrument-style controllers used for Guitar Hero & Rock Band are most likely what make me primarily a rhythm gamer.

The Wii is fantastic for remedying this issue with their well-documented revolutionary Wiimote & balance board controllers; I actually managed to get through the entirety of Resident Evil 4 successfully without too many dizzy spells. However, the graphics on the Wii are noticeably sub-par*, and many games (such as BioShock, which is one of the primary reasons I bought an XBOX360, and Resident Evil 5) are simply not available for that console, which has a fairly limited processor & memory for a next-gen console.

Enter Microsoft's futuristic new interface, unveiled at E3 today with the assistance of Steven Spielberg: Project Natal. Project Natal leaps far beyond the innovations of the Wiimote and requires NO CONTROLLER WHATSOEVER to interact with games. For reals. The system uses a special camera/ microphone receiver to detect the room in 3D and recognize motion, as well as particular voices and faces to allow you to login to your account or interact with characters, and apparently can even "scan" real-life objects to insert into gameplay (the example I've seen described involves a skateboard).

Woah.

This sounds to me like we're quickly approaching holodeck technology as seen in "Star Trek: The Next Generation", or "Roger Rabbit" interaction between the real & imaginary - a true virtual reality-style interface.


So, the burning unanswered questions right now are:

• when will this be available to the public to use? The technology was just announced & released to developers today, so perhaps not too soon, but not light years away, either.


• It's been said that this technology will work with all XBOX consoles, but it's unclear whether it will make any sense for any of the existing games themselves to be re-coded to work with Project Natal, which would allow those of us wishing for at least a Wiimote type of interface some hope of being able to get through RE5.

I'm just very excited to see this sort of innovation coming so quickly. Now where the heck's that jetpack I was promised?!

*for those who doubt that the processor in the Wii is inferior to the XBOX360, simply take a look at Guitar Hero 3 which has relatively low-load graphics requirements, on both platforms - there is absolutely no comparison in the graphics quality & animation, as well as subtleties in the gameplay & audio.

Metallica Guitar Hero quickie review

I am so behind on lots of things, including posting to this blog instead of letting it all simmer in my head... but I managed to carve out a little time to get through a couple of levels of Guitar Hero Metallica yesterday on the XBOX360 ($37 @ Target through tomorrow!) which was well worth it. Now that I finally have the GH drums with the raised cymbals($30 on eBay brand new from the OEM shop, when they normally retail for $99.99... steals like this are one of the few GOOD things about the recession!!), I'm finding I'm playing GH more than Rock Band, which does not recognize the 5th pad (orange cymbal, actually). So, quickie review:

* cut scenes/ graphics / venues are fun & beautiful quality, especially if you unlock the Zombie Metallica costume achievement - or do as I did and use the cheat code via CheatCC.com [Green, Red, Yellow, Blue(2), Yellow, Red, Green], so you see them walk out in the intro to the Career mode as zombies - fantastic!

* Drums are a great workout on this - very heavy on the kick just as should be expected given Lars's style, but also very challenging because of this, esp. with some songs having a ton of syncopated kick drum, including Thin Lizzy's "Boys Are Back in Town".

* If that weren't enough, apparently some songs support double-kick drum controllers, noted by the "Expert+" level. Yikes. You can also just unlock virtual versions of these bigger kits so it looks cooler on screen even if you're still stomping just the one foot frantically in real life.

* Love that you can select your venue for songs the second time you play them, including Metallica's (super high-res - almost completely realistic when you first see it!) rehearsal space & recording studio, which means no cheering (or booing) audience but a quicker turn at the end of a song as well.

* Also love the realistic Hetfield intros to songs - waiting for him to also say "are you ready to rock, San Francisco?!".

* Pyro & lights are also very realistic & well-placed.

* I got a little lost in creating my avatar - almost too many variations, and instead of selecting from among choices of noses, eyes, etc., there are graduated controls to make these features wider, shift position, etc. in addition to the usual choices of colour and such. You're practically creating the thing from scratch. Another good 15 minutes was spent on quickly customizing my drum kit - the skin graphic choices alone are overwhelming. And then, oh yeah - I have to name my band and choose the logo - tired at this point so only chose a good name and settled for a decent logo.

* Second level seemed the hardest to me - only really knew one of those song selections so muddled through it.

* One of the best things (and I believe this may be true of GHWT as well but I haven't tried it) is being able to change difficulty levels while plowing through Career mode, so you can muscle up on the couple of songs you do well on without getting bored, but you don't get completely stuck as you level up and have trouble getting through some of the songs which would prevent you from proceeding.

* Some neat extras are available as you level up (e.g. lyrics), or as you unlock achievements, including "Metallifacts", a sort of pop-up video version of the song that plays through without you, with full concert graphics so you can lean back and enjoy them - and delivers trivia tidbits about the song across the lower third of the screen.

* Overall song list is great, but not as spectacular as I'd like it to be. Highlights for me include "Albatross" by Corrosion of Conformity (what a great surprise - I used to love this song and kind of forgot about it! It swings to play, fo' sho') and "Boys Are Back in Town" by Thin Lizzy... some of the other track choices from great bands are a little odd to me, most notably the track "Stone Cold Crazy", of all the Queen songs they could've chosen.

Overall, I would say if even 50% of the full tracklist inspires you, this game is well worth it. We haven't had a party around this title yet, but I'm sure the improved graphics and big rawk attitude will entertain the spectators even more than usual.

Coveting new GHWT drums...

Have been coveting these new drums with the raised cymbals for both Rock Band & Guitar Hero World Tour play to take my playing to the next level:

Excited that they're finally available to purchase separately! Now just need a sugar daddy :)

Ask me how excited I am to ROOOCCCCKKK!!!

Guitar Hero Metallica ships 3/29 for PS3 and Xbox 360! The official press release from Red Octane conveninently lists the entire setlist (25 of them including "Fuel", "Master of Puppets", "One", "King Nothing", "Enter Sandman" which I am SUPER-excited to play) - and YES!! it's for the full band, so I get to attempt to channel Lars Ulrich on all of them and pound those (plastic, electronic) skins. Can. Not. Wait. Looking for a date to hold the house party right now...

“All Nightmare Long”
“Battery”
“Creeping Death”
“Disposable Heroes”
“Dyers Eve”
“Enter Sandman”
“Fade To Black”
“Fight Fire With Fire”
“For Whom The Bell Tolls”
“Frantic”
“Fuel”
“Hit The Lights”
“King Nothing”
“Master of Puppets”
“Mercyful Fate”
“No Leaf Clover”
“Nothing Else Matters”
“One”
“Orion”
“Sad But True”
“Seek And Destroy”
“The Memory Remains”
“The Shortest Straw”
“The Thing That Should Not Be”
“The Unforgiven”
“Welcome Home (Sanitarium)”
“Wherever I May Roam”
“Whiplash”

Complementing Metallica’s intensity are the following 21 rockin’ tracks personally chosen by the band:

Alice In Chains - “No Excuses”

Bob Seger - “Turn The Page (Live)”
Corrosion of Conformity - “Albatross”
Diamond Head - “Am I Evil?”
Foo Fighters - “Stacked Actors”
Judas Priest - “Hell Bent For Leather”
Kyuss - “Demon Cleaner”
Lynyrd Skynyrd - “Tuesdays Gone”
Machine Head - “Beautiful Mourning”
Mastodon - “Blood And Thunder”
Mercyful Fate - “Evil”
Michael Schenker Group - “Armed and Ready”
Motörhead - “Ace of Spades”
Queen - “Stone Cold Crazy”

Samhain - “Mother of Mercy”
Slayer - “War Ensemble”
Social Distortion - “Mommy's Little Monster (Live)”
Suicidal Tendencies - “War Inside My Head”
System of a Down - “Toxicity”
The Sword - "The Black River"
Thin Lizzy - “The Boys Are Back in Town”