While my Xbox gently weeps

I feel like discussing this morning’s announcement of a Beatles music game a la “Rock Band” or “Guitar Hero”. If you read my blog or don’t live in a submarine, then you probably know that Apple Corps. and Harmonix have banged out a deal for (what I expect) a Beatles game that will be a lot like “Rock Band”. There are few details, but Paul, Ringo, Yoko, and Olivia (Harrison) are reported to be involved.

What interests me is that Giles Martin is also involved — the same Giles that worked so lovingly with his Dad George to remix Beatles songs for a Las Vegas show based on the Fab Four’s music.

There has been a lot of stuff flying around lately about the quality of the music in a “Rock Band” or “Guitar Hero” version of a song versus the quality of the original recording. What helps a band like Metallica have a better sounding record in a video game is that video games don’t have the processing power (yet) to apply advanced signal processing to the final “mix” in a game.

This means that without the aggressive dynamic range limiting done in the studio, the songs will have a different (you can decide if it’s better or worse) sound. So…

This and some other factors mean that Giles and co. are gonna have a tough job in the following areas:

• Believably pulling separate instrument and vocal tracks out of four-track mix/master reels (God help them if they re-record)
• Applying (pseudo?) real-time compression and limiting to give listeners/players the same flowing, pumping sound that makes many of the Beatles’s records so distinct-sounding
• Pulling in an older audience that enjoyed the Beatles in the first place
• Pulling in a newer audience that would rather listen to Limp Bi

Oh well, I’ll buy the game. I’m excited to see what they come up with.

Grand theft pocketbook

Oh man, life’s cool lately. Within the coming month:

A) Special screening of Death Wish 3 with some guys from work featuring Charles Bronson burgers (read White Castle Sliders).

B) Buddy of mine’s coming to stay while he starts a new job in the area.

C) Visit from my lady and also some family and friends — off to a Cubs game!

D) New episodes of LOST resume!

E) Moving within the city pretty soon — possibly with aforementioned buddy.

F) Grand Theft Auto IV for Xbox 360! Five days and counting!

Strangely, I’m especially looking forward to playing GTA IV. Rockstar Games set a standard for open-world game play and immersion with the original Grand Theft Auto, and from what I’ve seen from the previews, the latest installment will not disappoint. My brain is scrambling to think of an example to provide — but honestly the game appears to be so vast and packed full that I feel like if I included one thing, I’d be excluding a million others. So just wait for the rockin’ review to come soon. I am gonna have to do a lot of playing to get through a good amount of the game before other stuff in life demands my attention, but that’s fine — if only to prove to myself that I am not an obsessed gamer nerd.

Super nerd bros. brawl

You won’t believe what I did last night:

Yeah! Midnight launch! Can you dig it?

See all those people wrapped around Best Buy? They’re standing in line for a copy of Super Smash Brothers Brawl for the Nintendo Wii.

Normally I wouldn’t associate myself with a group that stands outside of a store at midnight for a dumb video game. But now I am one of them. I’m part of their group.

I was planning on getting the game this week, but I was kinda bored last night and couldn’t sleep — and I saw that the Best Buy in Evanston was opening at midnight to take gamers’ hard-earned money. So becoming excited at the prospect of being able to play the game right away, I put on my coat and went over to the store where I saw the above herd o’ nerd waiting outside of the store. It was rather cold and I was like, forget that, and I went and filled up my car and came back like ten minutes later.

The line was inside the store now, and moving quickly, so I waltzed in. Five minutes later I waltzed out with my copy.

Then I got home and played it for ten minutes, then fell asleep.

But was it worth it? Yeah, why not.

For the record I got a good hour with the game today and it’s pretty fun. Rockin’ review forthcoming?

Return of the prodigal console

Avast! What’s that off in the distance? It’s coming really fast. It looks like… Why, it looks like an Xbox! Wait! That’s — that’s not just any Xbox 360, it’s my Xbox 360!

O, my Xbox. Hello! Let’s get you inside out of the cold. How long it’s been. Texas, you say? And then Mexico? My, what a journey! And they fixed you all up, didn’t they! And what’s this? A free month of Xbox Live for my troubles? And with your original serial number and everything! You weren’t replaced by a new or refurbished console, I’m so glad.

Now wait a second, Xbox. Don’t get all smug. After all you were gone for nearly a month. Yeah a whole month! After you decided to have your little breakdown and stop working. What? Oh, I see how it is. Do you think I enjoyed the hassle of sending you off to the repair center? Do you think I enjoyed not having a 360 for a month? Oh what business is it of yours if I played Wii?

Seriously, you leave for a month and come back with a paltry consolation of a free month of Live and you expect me to welcome you back with open arms?

Ah, Xbox, I can’t stay mad at you. C’mon, let’s play some Lego Star Wars.

Lego my lego video game

I really enjoyed the Lego Star Wars series of games. I thought the addition of the Star Wars license to Lego — in a video game — was the perfect humbler for a series of movies which (while very good) comes a little overrated in some instances. Luckily, Lego Star Wars had no problem making fun of itself. Plus it was humorous, the co-op was stellar, there was lots of incentive to complete the game, and the puzzles were just fun enough to keep from getting boring.

So I’m really looking forward to the upcoming Batman and Indiana Jones Lego video games. Especially after reading this quip from a Kotaku preview of the Indiana Jones version shown off at the GDC:

The DS version will be making use of the microphone to solve puzzles by blowing out torches and also included will be a cooking mini-game featuring the infamous monkey brains scene.

Speaking of the GDC, this is the second year in a row that I didn’t go since going, so I feel bitterly disconnected from the whole thing. I thought about going this year, but I’m too miserly to take a whole week off of work. But that’s okay. I work now so I can buy monkey brain cooking simulators later.

Alternate reality gunk

I’m all for alternate reality games. My own large-scale projects are definitely influenced by aspects of ARGs. As far as I know, the roots of the trend are in marketing: adverARGs. The early ones had a novel aspect that got people excited and effectively promoted their products, but it’s clear at this point that to run a successful ARG, especially one that’s main purpose is to sell something, you need a really clever set of developers. A big budget wouldn’t hurt either.

The ARG to build buzz for the new season of LOST was very well done — and I was a big fan of the cross-media backstory for the game Portal.

So being in an ARGey frame of mind, I was quite interested when I saw what looked like an opening for an ARG in a TV spot a few weeks ago. In the commercial, a bunch of hipsters were running around with handheld cameras, scared of something and talking about finding the truth and seeing a symbol or something. Really the only reason I was interested is because the commercial looked to take place in the Chicago area, showing buildings around the city and a blip of a city map. So I thought it to be a local undertaking, maybe something worth getting involved in — it would be cool if there were teams of people doing that kind of thing somewhere outside of New York.

So I went to the site displayed at the end of the spot, seeitnext.com, where there was a message that said something would be revealed in the first week of February (something earth-shattering, I’m sure). I was directed to enter my e-mail address for updates, so I did. I also made a half-hearted attempt to scan the page for links or secret images, you know — ARG stuff. Nothing. So I assumed they’d send an e-mail once the game got underway.

So I had the site in the back of my mind for the next couple of weeks when I’d be watching TV and see other spots for the mysterious website, but I didn’t look into it much farther because, well, I was busy with stuff. Anyway, for me, the official King of not Doing Fun Stuff, to be tracking an ARG, even half-heartedly — that’s evidence enough that there were probably a whole bunch of other people in the area really looking into it, making a serious attempt to get to the next step in the game.

So last night I was again watching TV (seeing a pattern?), and a commercial comes on. It’s new. And it looks as though the next step is about to be revealed. So I put down my tortilla chips and actually pay attention.

There’s a brief moment of cryptic video, and then it launches into…

A full-blown commercial for a General Motors dealership.

Seriously, me and my tortilla chips were like WTF!

There wasn’t even any attempt to make the commercial fit in with the style established by the earlier spots. It was your same old local car commercial announcer yelling about leases and financing and APRs and stuff! And what’s worse, when I went back to the website, all the cryptic ARG stuff was gone, replaced by a form that, if filled out, would no doubt get you bombarded by phone calls from enthusiastic car salespeople. The same form you’d see on any other car dealer’s website.

So now it appears that the ARG-that-never-was is over, revealing it’s true face as a run of the mill car dealership promotion.

I really hope that the marketing team behind this steaming piece of skunk dung is listening:

It’s incredibly BAD FORM to start what looks to be a game, and then switch it out with a crappy car sweepstakes. That’s called bait-and-switch. Fool me once…

Shouldn’t there be a code of ethics involved here? Like I said, if someone as apathetic as me was interested, you can bet your bottom car commercial that there were other people in the Chicago area taking off work and canceling father/son picnics to obsessively track down THE MEANING OF THE SYMBOLOMGWTFBBQ!!!11

So, marketing department: you can’t hire a bunch of attractive young hipsters to run around Chicago with handheld cameras, starting up mysteries with clandestine symbols and single-frame flashes of words and webcam videos. Well actually you can, but you have to have a payoff. That’s why people get involved with ARGs, so they can find out what happens at the end. Not to win a shoddily-built SUV from 1997 in a one-in-ten-million car dealership sweepstakes.

So out with the payoff, blow-holes. Come on, you started this thing. What’s the big mystery? And don’t tell me that to find out I Have to Hurry on Down to my Local Chevy Dealer and sign a thirty six month lease.

Red ring of inevitable customer support

So last night I was booting up Rez HD for Xbox 360, looking forward to playing it and writing a rockin’ review. Five minutes into the game the thing froze up, so I shut down the system and watched an episode of Monk to quench my desire for video-based entertainment. This morning I went to it play, and the game froze again. I decided to restart the console, but it wouldn’t boot back up. Instead it flashed the dreaded Red Ring of Death (the name of which is a play on the conceitedly named ‘Red Ring of Light’ on the front of the console), indicating a ‘General Hardware Failure’ (thanks, Microsoft support). My circle of friends being made up of nearly exclusively of gamers, I knew that the Red Ring of Death spelled doom for my Xbox 360*, and that the console would have to be sent in for repairs. I called customer support and they’re sending me a prepaid box so that I can send in my console to be repaired or replaced.

Though my livelihood is based in part on video games, I’ve never considered myself addicted to games. I play a lot less than many of my friends, and I generally take a casual approach to technical issues or a disappointing title (as opposed to flying off the handle and say, running over my Xbox with my car). But just the fact that I now cannot play when I want to has me feeling strangely stir-crazy, though it’s not like I’m ever starving from a lack of things to do with my time.

With the reported failure rate of Xbox 360s, and the increasingly poor performance of my system over the last few months, I knew this moment would come, and I’m happy to live a month of my life relegated to playing the Wii. I may just revisit Bully on the Playstation 2.

Despite my contentedness in looking toward a month of Xbox-less life, I briefly considered buying a new 360 and then selling the old one when it came back from repair. Luckily I quashed that urge by spending a little time reading to calm myself down, and calling friends on the phone for support.

Meanwhile I have a date with my Wii.

Meaning my Nintendo Wii Game Console, you sickos.

*In lieu of flowers, the owner of this Xbox 360 requests that donations be made in the Xbox’s name to your favorite charity.