I love Guitar Hero.  As a musician who long ago gave up his art to focus on his profession, I frequently miss the cathartic effect performing had on me.  Guitar Hero gives me a way to quickly reconnect with that aspect of my life, without the long-term investment of locking myself in a room and practicing every day.  I know it's a far cry from really making music, but it does a good job of simulating it.

So, with great anticipation, I picked up Rock Band today.  Well, my wife picked it up, actually.  She's probably too tolerant of my fetish for geeky expensive toys, at least from a financial standpoint.  Understand, she plunked down the MSRP $170 for the full set, with the game, the guitar, the mic, and the drums.  This is not a cheap hobby.  This just supports my theory that I have the best wife ever.  Scott Hanselman sometimes gets shot down because of low Wife Acceptance Factor (WAF), but I don't think I've actually been shot down yet.  The rule of thumb is, as long as the bills are paid, the kids are clothed, food is on the table, and I don't question silly expenditures like family portraits, she won't question the serious expenditures like $170 for a toy guitar and drum kit.  I think it's a good arrangement.

I digress. 

Rock Band is awesome.  Well worth the money, particularly for a Guitar Hero fan.  Aside from the guitar and bass parts, the game also allows you to play drums and sing vocals.  Or, at least, try to sing.  It makes me feel like I can sing, and that's what's important.  I reject your reality (the one in which my singing voice is somewhere between William Hung and a cat in a blender) and substitute my own (where my voice would make Frank Sinatra jealous).

The defining moment of my evening tonight:  When I discovered that, while playing the vocal part, you sometimes get to tap the mic in your hand to simulate a tambourine or, in the case of Don't Fear the Reaper, cowbell.  Yes, that's right.  I got to be Will Ferrell!  :)

More Cowbell!

Well, not really.  Not in the flesh, anyway.

A few months ago he and I exchanged Wii Friend codes.  Nothing happened.  Months went by, and I spent less time with my Wii and more time with my Xbox 360.  Then my wife turned on the Wii to play Twilight Princess, and, lo and behold, we have a visitor.  Here's a shot of my Mii hanging out on Mii Plaza with Scott Hanselman's Mii.

Not a bad Mii, Scott.  But which is the better likeness;  Your Mii, or your avatar from A Conversation with Scott Hanselman?

A few years ago, when Xbox Live was first released, I wanted to pick out out a rather unique gamertag that I could also use as my online alias around the web.  As I am a Freemason, I wanted to pick something that was vaguely related to Freemasonry.    Given the legends around the relationship between the Knights Templar and the Freemasons, I thought something Templar-related would be good.  The moniker I chose was Bloody Templar, the etymology being:

• Bloody:  having or covered with or accompanied by blood; "a bloody nose"; "your scarf is all bloody"; "the effects will be violent and probably bloody"; "a bloody fight"
• Templar:  Knight Templar; a knight of a religious military order established in 1118 to protect pilgrims and the Holy Sepulcher

So "Bloody Templar" means a Knight Templar covered in blood.  It's a reference to October 13, 1307, the day when King Phillip IV of France ordered the arrest and torture of the Knights Templar (certainly a "bloody" day, in my book). 

So, there you have it, the origin of my gamertag and online alias, rooted in history, and tied to my interests.  How clever, right?

Unfortunately, what I envisioned as a somewhat cool and pithy gamertag apparently doesn't make sense to a lot of the intellectually challenged gamers that you run into on Xbox Live.  I can't tell you how many times this has happened:

[Bloody Templar enters an online game.]

RandomIdiot420:  What?  Bloody Tampon???

Bloody Templar:  How original.  Did you think that up all on your own?

RandomIdiot420:  Whatever, dude.  Your name is ghey*.

[Bloody Templar mutes RandomIdiot420 and submits negative feedback.]

*sigh*

(*Editor's note:  I use the 1337 word "ghey" because I'm not a big fan of using the word "gay" as an insult.  RandomIdiot420 is not only stupid, he's also a bigot.)

D&D and Star Trek are coming to PSP.  Now I'll never get any work done (presuming, of course, that these games don't suck).

Oblivion rocks my world.

I mean, wow.  Easily the most amazing RPG experience I've ever had.  Highly recommended.

Other than Oblivion, I've been getting in a lot of the Xbox 360 version of Ghost Recon: Advanced Warfighter.  This is very good, but it does have some difficult moments.  And your AI squadmates are pretty dumb and do a great job of getting themselves blown up.  Considering, however, that the  Xbox version of GRAW is something less-than-stellar, the Xbox 360 version is great.

I picked up Syphon Filter: Dark Mirror for my PSP, and I've been playing that with some guys at work.  It reminds me a lot of Rainbow Six 3 for Xbox.  And the single player campaign is very good, too.  This game is very worthy of all the praise it received.

And then there's Grand Theft Auto: Liberty City Stories.  I actually have never been a fan of GTA, mostly on principle.  I don't have a problem with adult-themed games.  In fact, I relish them.  And the game itself is actually a lot of fun.  My problem with GTA is the adolescent testosterone-driven fanboys the games attract.  Yes, GTA lets you play as a person of rather questionably moral turpitude.  That doesn't automatically make it better.  It makes you immature for thinking a game can't be fun without hookers and gang violence.  That said, I'm having fun with GTA:LCS, which I rented from Gamefly.  Definitely worth a play if you're looking for something different on your PSP.

I don't get to play my Xbox or my Xbox 360 nearly enough.  These past two weeks have been a prime example.  We deployed our new Online Banking system on the 23rd, so the week leading up to that and the week after have been rather hectic, especially considering the minor issues we had in production.  So the games on my playlist are a bit old-news-ish, but at least I've been able to put some thought into them.  Take that, IGN!

First up, I finished Call of Duty 2 on Xbox 360 last night.  Having given up on Dead or Alive 4, I decided it was time to play through the rest of this one, and I'm really glad I did.  This is easily among the most intense experiences I've ever had with a video game, at least from the single player aspect of it.  I haven't bothered with the online side of it, since it's apparently been mired with issues.  Playing the game on a 91" screen with 5.1 channel sound probably contributes to my love of this game.  Not since sitting in the front row at a Saving Private Ryan screening have I felt anything close to the level of anxiety (pseudo-shellshock?) as I felt playing this game.

I've been playing my way through Gun on Xbox 360.  I have a real love/hate relationship with that game.  On the one hand, you've got respectable graphics, an awesome storyline, and an interesting old-west setting.  And voicework by Kris Kristofferson!  That dude should be a prerequisite for anything even thinking of resembling the old west (Deadwood, I'm looking at you). On the other hand, you've got a sandbox game world that is just too small (I can cross the whole thing on horseback in just a couple of minutes), and really shallow gameplay.  The storyline missions as well as the side missions are spoonfed to you, made entirely too methodical thanks to the radar on your screen that plainly marks the objectives.  Being raised by a father whose favorite shows were Bonanza and Gunsmoke, and being a Deadwood addict myself, it's still a lot of fun.  Just not the perfect 4 out of 4 Playboy gave it this month.

On the legacy Xbox, I haven't got to play much of anything.  Michelle commandeered it for the living room, and she's been playing through SW:KOTOR, SW:KOTOR II, and she's just starting on Fable: The Lost Chapters.  I'm considering putting some time into Morrowind again (when I can pry Michelle away from the Xbox), since I'm looking forward to Oblivion in March.  Nah.  Between work, reading, preparing for my MCSD (hopefully to be followed with an MCSE), my kid, my wife, and my other games, I don't think I'll be hurting for things to do waiting for Oblivion.

Dear EA:

I'm writing to give you a clue.  I don't know why I'm being so generous, as I generally hate your company.  In my mind, it is everything evil about Wal-Mart and Hollywood wrapped up into a single package.  On the one hand, you work your developers like slave labor while swooping in to buy up every licensed content and/or independent developer that you can milk, and then on the other hand, you churn out schlock on a weekly basis because you know the lowest common denominator will buy it.  To put it succinctly, you suck.

In your latest example of suckage, your downloadable demo of Fight Night Round 3 for Xbox 360 on the Xbox Live Marketplace is so frustrating to play, I don't see how you can even dream you'll garner any sales from the demo.  First, let's talk about the music.  Not every video gamer likes rap, but I can tolerate certain varieties of it in small dosages.  That said, I have no idea what that garbage is you're playing on the title screen, but in terms of enjoyable music, I rank it somewhere between Yoko Ono and fingernails on a chalkboard.  Not necessarily the first impression you want to make on prospective buyers of your product.

Now that I've got that off my chest, let's talk about controls.  Why do you offer 6 different control schemes without a way for the user to differentiate between them?  "Config 3" and "Config 6" without a controller map to look at makes it hard to make an educated choice in controller configurations.  So I have to play "guess that control scheme" without knowing what the controls are until you show me the loading screen.  I'll give you points for having the controller map on the loading screen.  Now if you'd just give me the option of starting the fight when I'm ready, instead of starting the fight as soon as it's done loading (which takes about 3 seconds).  Once the fight starts, I have no way of looking at my controller scheme again.  Thanks.

Finally, rather than just throw me into a fight, how about a brief tutorial so I understand what I'm doing?  It took me 4 bouts to realize that I even could block, much less how.

Overall, your demo seems pretty typical for EA:  Lots of pretty graphics, frustrating gameplay, and least-common-denominator styling.  I think I'll take a pass on buying this one.

I don't consider myself a hardcore gamer, as much as I would like to.  I love gaming, but I don't get to devote enough time to it to get really good (although devoting money to it never seems to be an issue).  Even then, I was able to beat Dead or Alive 3 with just about every character on the normal difficulty.

So what in the heck is up with Dead or Alive 4?  Is it me, or is that game just stupid hard?  I have fun with it until the 5th fight with any given character, then it gets ridiculously hard.  It's a beautiful game (hehe...  She kicks high...  Also gotta love the "jiggle" factor!), but dang it, I want to beat it with all 16 default characters and Helena so I can unlock Spartan 458!!!  So far, I've only managed beating it with Ryu, Kasumi, Jann Lee, and Ayane.  I got owned when I tried with Kokoro, Brad Wong, and Zack.

Knowing that unlocking Spartan 458 ain't gonna happen, maybe I'll try some sour grapes rationalization.  Let's see...  Oh, how's this:  "It'd be stupid to play a Spartan in a fighting game set in the 21st century, because the Spartan program didn't exist until the 26th century."  What?  You say they explained that?  Oh.  Drat.