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So guitar Hero3 came out yesterday. It is great, indeed it is glorious.

From the very beginning it is clear that Harmonix is not involved in the game, and this is in both good, and not so good, ways. Harmonix is an awesome group, and while they were partners with RedOctane in the Guitar hero I and II endeavors, and RedOctane owned most of the rights to most things,  I will forever think of the Guitar Hero series as a Harmonix game. The changes are subtle but there, most are for the good, but there are a few things that annoy me. For starters, the entire game has a, well, Tony Hawk feel about it. No surprise there, it WAS made by Neversoft after all. My biggest gripe, and its purely cosmetic and just a personal thing, is the bastardization of Judy Nails. She was the character I always used, because in games I and II she could have been a digital clone of Ariel. It’s not that I have some sick twisted facination with my best friend (well ok maybe a little, but its purely sexual attraction, nothing weird) but simply if I am going to stare at the same person rocking around on stage for hours on end, I want it to be someone who’s easy on the eyes.

However in 3, when Neversoft got their grimy little skate board axle greased fingers on Judy, they seemed to have, well I dont know. Its like the squarshed her down a few inches and plumped her out oddly. Her chest is now 2 sizes two big for her body, shes a few inches shorter than before, and now oddly out of proportion because of it, her face seems far too chubby for the rest of her body because of this, and they beefed up her arms and legs to look rather creepy. All in all looking at her in the selection menu made me go running to the next character option, which was Lars Umlaut, and as we all know hes none to easy on the eyes either, but it was an optical reprieve for me none the less.

Aside from that I am so far happy with the game, the song selection so far is kick ass, and when I was unlocking extra tracks I found Kaiser Chiefs “Ruby” which just about made my day. I was disapointed to see there is no Freezepop songs for the first time, but this is none to surprising because they are personal friends of the Harmonix crew, and likely kept their loyalties to them and Rock Band. The song selection so far is great though, but I wont bore with details on that since its highly documented elsewhere.

Thew new multiplayer battle mode is nice with the twist of having “attacks” to use, instead of star power. Their concept of using this mode against 3 “bosses” made of famous musicians is also a nice change for the campaign mode. It eases a new player into the concept for online play, as well as breaks up the monotany of “beat this song… now this one.. ok good now this one” which is otherwise the only aspect of the campaign mode. One other nice addition is that the cut scenes between venue upgrades got a small but awesome tweak. Gone is the simple graphic of a map with your tour bus driving from point A to point B. In its place is a full cut scene, with a nice artistic twist of no vocal audio. It shows things for example, of after the back yard gig, a guy walks up, shows a business card, throws a ad for a battle of the bands competition in you face, flashes some money and smiles. In other words, you just got a manager and your first gig. The animation style is on par with the guitar hero look and feel, and the lack of spoken dialog is actualy nice, plus there is some good visual comedy in each one, and they are each 10-15 seconds at most to keep it short and simple. Again, this was a good twist that broke up the same ole same ole of the past games, without really changing anything.

All in all I give guitar Hero 4 out of 5 stars, now if you will excuse me… I need to go beat Slash into the ground so I can jack his avatar and rock that pimp ass hat he wears myself.

It has been weighed, it has been measured, it has been judged….

IM-FUCKING-POSSIBLE TO FIND!!!

Ok so Eye of Judgement came out today for the PS3. Its the first PS3 game ive been looking forward to actually. Hihgly acclaimed by the guys over at Penny-arcade, my personal heroes when it comes to gaming information. Its like any other CCG card game, but you play it online with your PS3 against others, using the new PS3 camera (included) on a special 9 square mat where you do battle with your creatures and spells on cards to take control of the board (5 squares wins).

The cards are made by the same folks who make Magic: The Gathering, and are recognized by the PS Eye using a special encoded barcode on them.  On screen the artwork comes to life, with a 3d rendering of the creature of your card appearing to stand on said card.

Needless to say, being the afficianado of card games that I am, I was psyched about this. This game was not preorderable, it seemed no one was taking them. 5 Gamestops, a wal-mart,  best buy, amazon.com, bestbuy.com and 3 google searches later I know why. Each retail store, no matter who they were, got ONE copy today… one… uno… everywhere online is showing backordered in terms for 4-8 weeks… I was devastated… until I found a copy on buy.com. They claim to be instock and shipping in 1-2 business days. So I ordered a copy… heres to hoping I have it in by next wednesday or so to satiate my yearning hunger

So i have become hooked with twitter (www.twitter.com) and its a hell of a lot of fun. Basically, you sign up and set it up how you like. When the mood suits you, you can send in a mini blog (max 140 characters) via a text message, an IM to them, or on the web site. Once its been submitted, everyone who has elected to follow your blogs will get a text message, IM, or email, based on their personal settings with the updated entry inside. Its a lot of fun because it changes the whole mindset on blogging.  Rather than sit down and plan out an entry in a journal type point of view, it encourages a person to randomly send off whats on their mind at that moment, say your stuck in a meeting and something funny happens you want to share, or your in line at starbucks and want to vent about the morons behind the counter.. you get the idea. Its fun.. if you want to track me after you have signed up, just search for my usual name… sargonas, and add me!

I’ts a day later and I am on the plane back to Atlanta, and to be honest it still hasnt fully sunk in.I just spent yesterday at EA’s home office, and it was as one of their employees.

The first dose of new-reality was  checking into the hotel. We were each given our own room, none of the sharing that I have grown so accustomed to over the years at work and Event travel. We left the hotel just before 9am and headed over to EARS (EA Redwood Shores) and signed in at the lobby. After waiting around a bit, the head of EA Partners,  (the guys who liason with all the non-ea studios that EA publishes)  who is a good friend of SCI, showed up and took us over the the 250 building, also know as the Studio Building.

Over at 250 is an awesome set of conference rooms, that can be combined to form one hall for 500, or 3 individual rooms each seating 100 or so people, in an auditorium style theater.We had a lengthy 4 hour meeting with the rest of the online groups in one of the rooms, the contents of which I obviously cant share. There were two awesome revelations at lunch: One was the now well publicized announcement of the aquisition of Bioware/Pandemic, theother was the fact that EA apparently has a standard for large conferences. Catered lunch from the cafeteria across teh quad, and cases of beer. Yeah, free beer at work for lunch, apparently the place thrives on its consumption of beer on a regular basis.

After the meeting we were given a private tour of the campus, after being given our new employee photo-id badges, starting with the building we were in. The main studio building has its own mini cafeteria, plus a Starbucks and “the library”, where you can checkout just about any game or movie ever made, sort of their own in-house blockbuster. The studio, as well as every other campus building, has a dedicated “game room” with consoles, pool tables, foosball, pc’s and more. We also had quick tours of the other 3 main buildings, the main offices, or Mission Control, the online building where ecommerce and online stuff is, and the final building. EA cares alot about its employees health and happiness, and this one reflects that. It has an awesome cafeteria with great, healthy food, a 24 hour gym, and a high school sized basketball gym complete with motorized bleaches built into the wall, and the EA Sports logo in the center of the court. The tour was wrapped up with a trip to the EA Employee Store, where we were given free run to snag all the swag we wanted for free. Also, all EA console and PC games can be bough there for $20 and $10 respectivel. (this is after you have used up your annual 10 “points” where pc titles cost 1 and consoles are 2).

After that we had a short sit-down with HR about our benefits, the usual crap, the moved on to the most surreal part of the visit. We went into the EA Partners office where they wanted to celebrate our joining the office, with shots of jack, and beer from an ever-stocked mini fridge.

We then relocated to “the garage” a small conference room that had been taken back to the studs intentionally, with garage band styled artwork on the walls, bar stools, and tables. You honestly felt like your back in highschool in your friends garage for band practice, and thats why were were here. In front of us sat an omninously looking ginormous HD tv with a 360 and a ps3 attached, surround sound, and a full array (plus extras) of Rock Band periphreals. For the record, Jesper sucks, and I rock.

And so that was our day at EARS, finally capped off down the road at Sushi Sams, a small hole in the wall sushi bar all the locals raved about, where we ate $200 in sushi on EA’s dime…

God damn this job has perks…

After months of details, various procedures, and all the hassle involved therin, all the work in secret is complete, and now I and the rest of my company no longer are SCI, but are the newest division in the Online branch of EA Games! Rawk!