“No Doubt” & Courtney Love Need to Stop Suing Activision

“No Doubt” is suing Band Hero (and Guitar Hero) maker Activision over their appearance in the game (GameSpy).

Allegedly, the band’s contract with Activision dictates that the band member’s avatars can only be used on their own songs, but they are fully playable characters in the game. This means that players can appear as say, Gwen Stefani on any song in the game.

Apparently this is damaging to the members of “No Doubt.”

Someone screwed up badly, and only time will tell who it was. Either…

1. “No Doubt’s” lawyers dropped the ball or…
2. Activision breached their contract.

I don’t know how it actually went down, but either way, this is pathetic.

At the end of the day, I don’t see how the members of “No Doubt” are actually damaged and deserving of financial reward on account of this, but I’m sure their lawyers would be happy to explain why I’m wrong. By the same token, Activision needs to get their shit together and make sure that the artists that they put in their games understand, and are happy with their role within it, as the very same thing happened with Guitar Hero 5, and their use of Kurt Cobain.

Speaking of the late Mr. Cobain…

Cobain’s wife Courtney Love complained that the ability for players to use Cobain on any song in the game, including a lot of pop and electro-crap that he probably would hate was damaging to his legacy. Normally I would agree. Cobain was a revolutionary figure in music, popular culture, hell, culture in general. Having him play a song like “Play That Funky Music” is degrading. Then I saw this commercial for Nicktoons that is set to Nirvana’s “Smells Like Teen Spirit” (Sorry, I can’t embed this one, but it’s worth watching).*

I’m sure that the same lawyer who approved the deal with Activision over Cobain’s appearance along with the song “Smells Like Teen Spirit” in Guitar Hero 5, had to approve the deal with Nicktoons as well. I can’t imagine that Cobain would have liked that commercial.

So, “No Doubt” & Courtney Love, let’s cut this shit out. Everyone got paid and these games introduce the music of “No Doubt” and Nirvana to a younger generation. Everyone is making money, and that’s all that you folks really want at this point.

* That commercial really does break my heart.

Happy Guy Fawkes Day

“People should not be afraid of their governments. Governments should be afraid of their people.” ~V

Brütal Legend Röcks

The Yankees win! Now onto relevant stuff.

The Premise

In Brütal Legend, you play as the greatest roadie in the world, Eddie Riggs (Jack Black). Riggs is killed while saving his wussy band’s pathetic guitarist after he does something stupid on stage. Instead of dying, Riggs is transported back in time to the World of Metal where he takes on the small task of saving the human race with the power of his metal.

The Basic Game Mechanics

Riggs is armed with two axes. The first axe (the chopping kind) is used for melee combat, while the second axe (the musical kind) is used to electrocute, blow away, and explode enemies… in the World of Metal, guitars can do that kind of shit. However, that’s just the tip of the mechanics iceberg. You also have an awesome car, “the Deuce” (as in the Deuce (not douche) from Bruce Springsteen’s song “Blinded By the Light”).

Finally, there is an entirely unique portion of the game, and that’s a real-time strategy (RTS) component. Riggs leads his army, the forces of heavy metal into battle against the likes of General Lionwhyte’s (Rob Halford of Judas Priest fame) glam metal army.

The game is part sandbox/ hack & slash, and part hack & slash/ real-time strategy. The combination works well.

The Good

There is a lot to love about this game; especially if you enjoy metal… but I believe that you don’t need to enjoy the music to have a good time playing this game.

First, the game is hilarious. The dialog is brilliant and well-crafted.

Sample dialog from the opening scenes:

Eddie: “I can fix anything, except that” (in reference to his band’s awful music)

Roadie: “Metal is dead”

Eddie: “Ever feel like you were born in the wrong time, like you should have been born earlier… when the music was real?”

Roadie: “Like the 70’s?”

Eddie: “Earlier… like the early 70’s.”

The voice acting is great. Metal legends like Ozzy Osbourne (who is unusually coherent), Lemmy Kilmister (or as I like to call him, “the fucking man”), Lita Ford, and the aforementioned Rob Halford all lend their legendary voices and faces to the game. They are joined by other actors like Tim Curry (the Tim Curry), and Brian Posehn.

The World of Metal is gorgeous. It looks exactly like what heavy metal world look like if the music and album covers became a functional reality. The landscape, people, weapons, buildings, cars, men, women (especially the women), and even the creatures all look like they could grace a stage or album cover.

The story is oddly compelling, and pays such a loving tribute to the often misunderstood musical genre.

My favorite part of the game was visiting the location known as “the Wall of Sound.” Guitarists like Yngwie Malmsteen play with a wall of amps behind them… the Wall of Sound is a cliff of amps.

While returning from the Wall of Sound, Riggs & Co. are attacked by a flock of seagulls; the joke was so subtle I had to pause the game to cackle (if you don’t get it, click this link & this one, but this link is at risk to your ears).

The subtle, and inside metal jokes were superb.

The use of the music was wonderful, especially in certain areas of the game where the music was deliberately selected. The getaway scene where you are speeding in the Deuce, avoiding the onslaught of some big and ugly monsters is set to Dragonforce’s shredfest, “Through the Fire and Flames” (I can’t help but speed in real life when this song is blasting in my car, so I was happy to race to it in-game). During one critical story moment, Ozzy Osbourne’s “Mr. Crowley” struck me as particularly beautiful and powerful.

Throughout the game, music constantly plays through the stereo in the Deuce. The selection is broad and generally good. I was especially pleased to hear song’s like Motörhead’s “We Are the Road Crew,” and a pair of songs by Racer X.

The driving and combat was intuitive, and the RTS components were easy to control after I got the hang of it; fortunately the learning curve was pretty shallow on the RTS battles.

The Not So Good

Brütal Legend gets everything almost perfect, but it could have used some polish. For example…

• Riggs often gets stuck on things like rocks – a jump button would have fixed that
• Riggs dies in water – I’m so tired of characters dying in water (especially when you see them swim in the during cinematic sequences of the game without dying)
• A mini-map while driving the Deuce would have saved me from constantly pausing to check the damn map
• Cinematic scenes, particularly at the beginning and end of the game cut to load screens in odd places; this yanked me out of the narrative
• A lack of instructional cues – There are things throughout the game that aren’t explained and you have to discover them for yourself (how do you a free serpent statues, or disabling songs that you don’t enjoy [I can't stand industrial metal], among many other key features

None of these ruin the game by any stretch of the imagination, but an extra month or two in development would have gone a long way.

The Ugly

I’m not completely sold that this belongs in the “Ugly” category, but I need to put something here, and this bothered me the most about Brütal Legend…

It was too easy, even on the Brütal difficulty level.

Once I got the hang of the RTS system, and discovered that the old Starcraft Zerg rush technique worked insanely well, I destroyed the computer without any resistance.

The Bottom-line

This is a great game, and well worth your time and money; if only for the humor, story, and music. Brütal Legend is a breath of fresh air, and a truly original experience in an ocean of sequels and rehashed game mechanics. There are so many great things about this game that I couldn’t even get into all of them. I guess you will just have to play and discover them for yourself.

Pre-Ordered My Droid & Clarifying Data Plan Confusion

I’m still hard at work fixing up my computer, but I did drive over to Best Buy to pre-order my Droid. I should be getting it on Friday!!!

If you are going to get a Droid, you should purchase it at Best Buy. All Droids come with a $100 rebate, however Best Buy gives you the $100 back in gift cards immediately. Then you can use the gift cards towards the purchase of the phone, as opposed to mailing the rebate in and getting a check sometime in the future.

One final point about the Droid. There has been a lot of misinformation circling around teh Internets regarding the Droid’s data plan price. I checked, and the data plan costs $30.

Back to work & the Yankee game.

I should have another post up in a few hours.

Monday Morning Silliness

Andrew WK’s music doesn’t do a thing for me, but he is clearly a funny dude.

Computer Upgrades & Halloween

I’ve been working all day to upgrade my computer. Backing up, reformatting, installing Snow Leopard, Windows 7, and all manner of software… it’s a bit much.

Moving on… here’s a look at my Halloween costume. I went as an axe murderer.

Since it’s impossible to find toy weapons that look even remotely real, I had to spray-paint my own axe. Do children really need to be feeble and afraid of the world?

"I loves my axe"

Cleanliness is next to Godliness... or so I'm told

And that’s about that.

Happy Halloween

The Legend of Neil

There is a growing number of quality web video series that are mostly target towards geekier audiences, in large part because geeks are the web pioneers, and geeks are also the early adopters of this kind of stuff.

With that in mind, I present to you, The Legend of Neil.

The Legend of Neil is a web series that is based on the classic videogame, The Legend of Zelda. Basically, a loser named Neil is sucked into the videogame where he is the game where he assumes the role of the hero.

The show is ridiculously funny, but it’s one of those things where you probably should have played at least one Zelda game to fully appreciate. For instance, if you don’t know that the hero of the Zelda games is a guy named Link, you most likely won’t have enough background knowledge to completely enjoy the show.

Actress and geek queen bee, Felicia Day shows up to costar in a few of the episodes as the Fairy. All I’ll say is that Ms. Day is usually typcast as the crazy cat girl or the geeky friend by Hollywood… her role here is absolutely not the crazy cat girl or the geeky friend.

Finally, The Legend of Neil is not safe for work. In terms of humor, it takes quite a bit to really shock me. The Legend of Neil made me blush on a number of occasions.

You can watch all 14 (4-9 minute) episodes on the show’s website: http://effinfunny.com/legend-of-neil

The UpSouth Twisters

I have been taking guitar lessons with a guy named Billy Roues for the last few years. Aside from being a great teacher, exceptional guitarist, and all around good guy, he is also puts on one hell of a show. He performs with a number of different bands that span quite a few genres, and I go to see him play whenever I have time.

Last weekend he played at the Turning Point in Piermont, NY (near where I grew up) with his band, the UpSouth Twisters. Whenever Billy plays, he mashes genres, techniques, and styles into a sound that is uniquely his own (and he has a few of them). He plays with his brother and bassist/ blues harp extraordinaire Muddy Roues; accordion wizard Kenny Margolis (if you don’t like the accordion, watch Kenny, he will change your mind); master of the washboard Boris Kinberg; and the difficult to see, but easy to hear Billy Rankin on drums. The UpSouth Twisters play an fun combination of Cajun zydeco, rockabilly, and blues that is easy to love.

They play mostly original material during their shows, but they always cut loose on their cover of Canned Heat’s “Up the Country.” Their rendition is stunning, and as far as I’m concerned, blows the original out of the water. To prove it to you, I recorded their last performance. The audio isn’t perfect, and the video didn’t quite capture the power of their performance, but it certainly gets the point across.

You can purchase their CDs or see their tour dates on their website: www.upsouthtwisters.com

If you get a chance, go see them live; they are really worth it.

This is the Droid You Are Looking For

Let’s add to the hype, shall we?

I’m so excited about the Motorola Droid that I stopped by a local Verizon Store to check and make sure that nothing with my account would prevent me from getting one. No joke. In case you worried for me, I will have no problems attaining one… except for the fact that my friend just has to get married on Droid’s release date (seriously Eric, WTF?).

So on that note, we do have a release date for the Droid, and it’s November 6th. It will cost $199.00 with a contract after a $100.00 mail-in rebate. That’s more good news because I budgeted a bunch more money than I will need.

Engadget got their hands on the Droid, and this is what they had to say:

“* That big screen is killer. Bright, crisp, and tons of room for your icons and widgets.

* Speed is noticeably improved — particularly when moving from app to app. We did notice that some of the home screen scrolling looked laggy.

* Android 2.0 is definitely cleaned up — but it’s most definitely still Android

* The browser seems significantly improved — pages now load up in a fully zoomed-out mode, and the load times and scrolling are way snappier.

* The keyboard takes some getting used to, and it suffers from a similar hand-position issue as the G1, but it’s fairly usable. We think it’ll be second nature once we spend some time with it.

* Facebook is integrated into accounts, which means some of that BLUR functionality is here (though now it’s part of Android 2.0 natively). The good news is that when you add a Facebook account you can choose to pull all Facebook info and contacts, or just info related to your existing contacts — a real clutter buster.”

They also have some video of the phone, if you’re into that sort of thing.

Finally, Droid is going to have free Google Maps GPS Navigation. Score. Again.

my parents were awesome dot com

Oh BoingBoing, you give me the greatest gifts… and now I’m sharing.

Behold! My Parents Were Awesome.

For the record, these people are not my parents.

Yeah, that’s right, people can submit photos of their parents from long forgotten era (perhaps they never remembered in the first place).

~ syndicated by TheGeekWhisperer.com

“Castle” Successfully Pandered to this Geek

I’m not ashamed to admit that I need to turn my brain off, and just take in some mindless television for an hour or two a week; I find it incredibly relaxing. Without fail, Castle always fulfills my compulsive need for something easy to watch. It’s not a cerebral show, it’s never hard to follow, and you don’t have to remember much of anything from week-to-week. However, the characters are amusing, and the murders stories never cease to hold my interest.

Anyway, this week Castle had a Halloween episode that seriously pandered to the sci-fi & comic geek crowds. The show opened with star Nathan Fillion, formerly of Joss Whedon’s sci-fi classics Firefly and Serenity, suit up in his Captain Malcolm Reynolds garb, bust into his living-room while drawing his pistol, and striking a one of his famous poses. I was amused.

They followed up with a generally geeky episode filled with Buffy references, comic book art, vampires, and the pretty female detective costar (Stana Katic) drawing a distinction between comic writer / artist Frank Miller’s work with publishers Dark Horse Comics & Epic Comics… It was a nice homage to Fillion’s past, and (what I’m assuming are) the Firefly fans that watch Castle simply because Fillion is in the show.

Guitar Hero 5 Review

This is the first of a few “better late than never” game reviews.

The Good

The revamped multiplayer mode is exceptional. Having the game boot right into a party play mode that never stops is brilliant. Players can join or drop at will, no one fails out, and anyone can play any instrument on any difficulty (which means you have have four people playing guitar). It’s perfect during big geeky parties.

The graphics are very pretty.

The ability to use your own Xbox Live avatar in game is freakin’ awesome. I love that I am able to import myself into the game, make a guitar that looks just like my wine red Gibson Les Paul Studio, and rock out on stage to a song like The Derek Trucks Band’s Young Funk.

The Not So Good

I’m not sure this is really a problem with the game, but the track list is so broad and diverse that inevitably you spend a fair amount of time jamming on songs that you just plain dislike (even if you have broad musical tastes). I’m not sure there is a way around this other than band, or genre specific games (Like Guitar Hero: Aerosmith, Guitar Hero: Metallica, and The Beatles Rock Band).

The Ugly

Why the hell can’t Activision make a guitar controller with a silent strum bar? I hate all of the incessant clicking, and so does everybody in the room when you are playing.

The Bottom-line

If you like music rhythm games, it’s worth the money. If you don’t, this probably won’t convert you.

Smart Phone & Data Plan Comparison Chart

This is incredibly an incredibly useful chart if you are looking to buy a new mobile device.

AT&T doesn’t even look good on paper.

Thanks to @takabanana for making and sharing this spreadsheet.

Don’t Make Me Do My Special Move!

My friend, coworker, and designer extraordinaire RJay Haluko photoshopped the hell out of a picture of me from a company bowling outing.

I saw a videogame called “Dragon Punch” and couldn’t help but strike my best Street Fighter pose… he did the rest in about 15 minutes while I was picking up lunch.

P.S. – If you found this site by googling “RJay Haluko,” who are you? Fess up to your stalking here. You know who you are.