Justice Is Blonde

A while back, I did a write up about a video game, in the loosest sense of word, known as Plumber's Don't Wear Ties. It was absolutely fucking terrible, the game I mean. Why? Well, it tried to be a videogame with adult themes and situations. It's also described as one of the the "porn" games for the 3DO. The reason why Plumbers sucked was not only was it perhaps the stupidiest video game ever written, but because there was nothing adult about it. Hell, it was basically a bloody Looney Tunes cartoon for teenagers.

Ever since I wrote that, I wanted to do more on some of these "porn" games, just to see if they offered any shred of entertainment value, or if they were just as bad as Plumbers. The problem that face me was that I wanted some decent info, as well as video of these games - but given the fact that the 3DO wasn't exactly the most popular of consoles, and the subject matter, finding video proved to be difficult.

Then the Game Heroes found video of the game Blonde Justice...

And oh boy, do we have a contender for a game that's even WORSE than Plumbers.

The game was released in 1994, again for the 3DO, by a company known as Vivid Interactive. Don't bother searching for their history - there isn't any. Though based on some advertisements in the game, they were mostly known for producing...adult entertainment games for the 3DO, with such clever names as "Sex", "Raquel Released", "Super Models Go Wild" and "Immortal Desire". They're related to Vivid Entertainment, one of the larger adult entertainment companies out there.

Getting back to Blonde Justice, it's a game both better, worse, and just as equally bad as Plumbers. How so? Well, let's begin with the good. The game uses FMV, and actually decent looking FMV too. One of the advantages that the 3DO had over the other CD consoles of the pre-Playstation era was that it was capable of playing higher quality video than what one could see on the Sega CD. As well as that, there's actually some some production values in the game - they're not exactly awesome, but hey, at least they are there.

One other plus, especially over Plumbers is that the game actually lives up to it's "adults only" tag. Slightly. There are a few instances of female nudity, though it's mainly just exposed nipples. There are plenty of instances of sideboob and arse, as well as other scenes of females doing other females, and implied masterbation. Granted, we don't get to see much, but hey, if you're going to make an adults only game, at least they've got the "porn" part somewhat right.

Moving onto the bad, is the structure of the 'game'. Simply put, there is no game. There is no interactivity with it whatsoever. The game is literally a 30-40 minute movie, divided up into five chapters. The chapter markings are also weird - the chapter stops are literally in the middle of a scene, rather than the end...which makes no bloody sense.

In fact, the comment about it being a movie is quite accurate. Go back up and look at the cover. Now, take a look at this:

Look familiar much?

Turns out that Blonde Justice on the 3DO is just an "interactive" version of Vivid Entertainments film, Blonde Justice. Most of the details on the IMDB page check out for the game...except the length of the film. The film is 72 minutes. The game isn't. We'll get into that later.

As well as that, it's actually hard to hear the dialogue. I know it's a porn game and all, and that you shouldn't be watching porn for the plot, but it's incredibly bloody difficult to actually hear any dialogue. Though the music is that cheezily bad it makes up for it.

And then we come to the horrible. This can be summed up in just one phrase - the story. It's meant to be a mystery story, or a thriller, but the game can't seem to make up it's mind. Why?

The story in Blonde Justice is by far the most stupid and idiotic fucking story that I have ever experienced.

Hey! I wrote that story!

It also helps that the story is told like as if a goddamned monkey told me to me and its gibberish was then translated via BabelFish. Like I said before, yes, I do realize that this is meant to be a porn game, and that I should give the story a pass, but no. Why? It's just so fucking stupid that it makes regular porn look bad. And in terms of storytelling in a movie designed to solely to get you off, that's something.

Here's the story in a nutshell. A blonde stripper (she's never named. Or she is, but because you can barely hear a thing, you can't make out a name) has been sent various letters by an obsessed stalker threatening to kill her with her stockings. She gets a policewoman to help her solve this case, until the blonde stripper decides to start carrying around a gun for protection. Her friend, known as Cora (whom is the only major character named), decides to put on a blonde wig and start grinding randomly on a pole with no audience cheering her on. The stalker then shows up, and thinking that it's the Blonde (he only ever sees the back of her), shoots her. The stalker is then cornered by the cop and the real Blonde, whom arrest him. Oh, and this is the last thing we get to see in the game..besides credits anyway:

That's not my censoring, that disc just got in the snapshot.

I'm not kidding. That is seriously the story in the game. It is given all of five minutes. Though that's not the half of it.

The way that the pathetic lack of story is told is also a huge issue. For instance, the opening to the 'game' kicks off with the Blonde reading the death threats, then her at her job, then her walking home, with the stalker following her. The game also forgot what it's supposed to be, because within 30 seconds, we see the stalker chasing after the blonde.

I just wanted to hug you goodnight!

WITHIN 30 FUCKING SECONDS, THE WHOLE POINT OF THE STORY IS RUINED. GEE, I WONDER WHO THE STALKER COULD BE NOW?

In fact, the 'game' is literally just a poorly assembled montage of random clips. You get the occasional glimpse of a story, then five minutes of women teasing you by removing their underwear with their back to the camera or hands covering their tits or cutting away just as something happens, then to another shot of a scene that hasn't happened yet, then back to some striptease, then to some story, and this goes on and on. It's incredibly disjointed

Cover your eyes! A terrible game!

It's like there was an internal conflict within Vivid as to the direction of the 'game' before the cameras started rolling. One side wanted two parts to the game, the story for those who wanted it, and then all the other shots of the stripping and what not. But then the other camp wanted nothing more than the striptease shots. In the end, they compromised some, but realized that the "plotted" segments were long enough, and needed some filler. Like, a LOT of filler.

No...cover your eyes. Not your tits. They're already covered by the top you're wearing.

Though what gets me the most interested is just why there is so much of a difference in terms of runtime between the two products. Based on the videos that I've seen there's at least 30 minutes missing from the film in the game version, which might explain why there is so much filler. I wouldn't honestly be able to tell you just how much is missing, or whether or not what we're seeing is literally what the game looks like.

But I've got to give mad props to The Game Heroes. It was really quite difficult to find any video or decent information on any of the other 'adult' games. Though with this nugget, perhaps I can find something new for you guys next time.

Though I am intrigued if the sequel to the film, released in the same year with most of the same cast, was ever made into a game. That'll be worth checking out.

Later

The Worst Game Ever. Period.

I love bad games for the same way I love bad movies. Everything about it - from the terrible design, terrible writing, terrible acting, terrible sound etc. It never ceases to bring tears of laughter to my eyes, as well as lessons on how to actually not make a movie or video game.

Much like bad movies, there are really two types of bad games. Games that are so bad that they're good, and games that are so bad that they're horrible. But I like to think that there's a third layer to this - games that are so bad that their very existence makes people question their sanity. This is the latter. Say hello to Plumbers Don't Wear Ties.

Everything mentioned in the this cover? It's in the game...for better or for worse...

Back when the 3DO was at least relevant, there were five 'adult' themed games released for the system (don't ask me about the four others, I don't know of them). Plumbers is one of these. Despite it being advertised as a romantic comedy and having a reputation for being a porn game...it's the furthest thing from it. Why you may ask? Well, first off, it's not at all pornographic. That is, unless you count two of three shots of a woman's nipple, plenty of shots of her sideboob and arse, as well as a few shots of male arse. Though my favourite part? This is all censored, meaning you have to enter in a code if you actually WANT the uncensored shots. And before that scene actually starts, you are given a warning about the scene, telling you that if you're underage, to close your eyes until the music ends. Don't believe me?

Though that's not the half of it. As a romantic comedic, it's godawful. But that's just the start. Let's go through the game a little more first.

Here are our two "star crossed lovers". John, a plumber who runs a company known as "plumber on a bike":


And Jane...a daddy's girl who wants to find a man. Oh, and she has a job interview to go to:



Now, there's one other character in the game that serves some role, the Narrator. You're going to grow to hate this guy, because he'll constantly interrupt to tell you what to do next and how you're going. Though usually, he's there to tell you how much you suck. He's also got a penchant for wearing a chicken head.

The intro sequence to the game sets up the experience you wish you was only a dream. Aside from the toilet flushing and obviously early 90's Kirin Entertainment logo (this was the only titled developed by the company), we're greeted with an FMV sequence of two bre...I mean Jane, or as she prefers to be known as, "Microwave Jane". And no, I didn't make this up. Why Microwave Jane, you may ask? Cause she warms up faster than any girl, and jokes that she's so hot, that not only did the fire chief wrote a new code to make her wear a smoke alarm between her thighs, but the coastguard also noted that she was so hot she made tsunamis in her waterbed; as well a few other jokes about her being hot that are so incredibly fucking stupid that I'm not even going to type them out and save your your IQ, time and dignity.

Anyway, the sequence is to let you know just what the game is about. The goal is to get Jane together with another man, and sets you and your "hot little mouse" (her words, not mine) on to the task of doing so. She lets you know a few other things like how she doesn't do one night stands or other acts of prostitution, but we don't care. Hell, the camera doesn't even care. At one point, the camera starts focusing on Jane's breasts. Once she's done talking, the shot zooms out in a pretty cheap effect (every shot in this game does it), and we're not only greeted with a title card, complete one of the more recurring elements of the game - some of the worst music you'll ever hear:

I shit you not. This is the title screen.

We're also greeted with our first choice.

This leads to the first actual problem with the game. While it does feature a lot of audio, it comes at the expense of the game. I'll explain this further in a minute when we actually start the thing, but here's the first example. You get a person reading out a description of what each button does, but you can't actually move your cursor until the audio clip ends. It's especially the case when there's three items on screen - you have to listen to three audio clips before you make a choice, and any more of them again should you decide to change your mind. Oh, and one of them is read by an Asian woman who clearly hasn't been in an English speaking country for long. I'm half expecting a "love you long time" drop.

Anyway, if you're still with me, let's actually start this game.

The title sequence kicks off with someone singing the concluding portion of the US National Anthem...then we get a slideshow of NASCAR-esque stockcars driving about and what not. Looks like Kirin took the line from Prince's Lovesexy "when I touch it racecars burn rubber in my pants" literally. Oh, and for some apparent reason most of these shots have been applied with a negative filter, and a whole bunch of other filters. Furthermore, we see some random shots of a panda in a go kart, pasted in with the other photos. What kills me is that the panda looks obviously cropped in, with plenty of space from the picture it was copied from.


It's like someone at Kirin discovered Photoshop for the first time in the process of the applying the negative filter and adding in the panda thought it was the coolest fucking thing ever, and decided that Photoshop was that cool, to use it for as much of these shots as possible. And yes, the music is still garbage. Anyway, after the slideshow, we're introduced to John...and suddenly, we see the proper game.

Now, before we start the game proper. I ask you to go back up to the games cover. Based on this, you'd think it's an FMV game. It's perfectly understandable and to be expected. I mean the start of the game was an FMV, and it was released during a time where FMV games were at their peak. Hell, the front and rear covers basically show what appears to be FMV. With that established, allow me to deliver to you a megaton.

That intro you saw earlier? It's the only FMV sequence in the game.

As for the game itself? Well, It's a slideshow.

And it's not just a small portion of the game either.

The entire fucking game is a slideshow.

With voice over.

And minor forms of interactivity.

Now, I haven't a problem with low interactivity in games. Hell, series like Myst and Ace Attorney are examples of games with very low interactivity but there's always something redeemable about them (like fantastic music, writing, character etc.) Hell, visual novels pride themselves on having little to no interactivity. But that's fine, because usually there's some great art or writing and what not. As we have firmly established earlier, Plumbers does not have good writing. Furthermore, it looks cheap, has terrible audio (at times, it sounds like the actors are TOO close to the mic) and the worst part? It gets worse. And it doesn't stop getting worse.

There really isn't much to say about the plot. I'll go through it, because really, this game makes me want to kill myself the more I talk about it. John and Jane's parents both want their children to get married and what not. They end up meeting in a parking lot, where after an awkward meeting, Jane goes to a job interview. It turns out her boss, Thresher, is a pervert, and will only give Jane a job if she strips for him. She goes along with it, until she learns that it's being videotaped. then runs out of the room. Thresher, pissed off, grabs a letter opener and plots to stab her. She runs out into the parking lot, where John has apparently been THIS WHOLE TIME.

All three have this chase scene, which looks more like a fucking series of vacation shots than an actual chase scene, until they end up in an abandoned building. Thresher then offers her a shittone of money to sleep with him. She refuses (she can accept, but the scene is terrible and awful, and it's not the proper ending) and goes with John. They then end up happily ever after. As they ride off into the sunset, Jane also refuses to believe that John's a plumber because, well, plumbers don't wear ties.

Good. Fuckity. God.

Though that's not the end of it. You want to know the biggest problem with the game? Amongst everything else? There are no alternate paths. There are no alternate endings. There is only one possible thread you can take. And should you divulge from the path, you'll get given a game over scene..but you can go back to the previous decision point and then choose the right scene. No matter what, it's impossible to lose at the game, and you're going to get the same ending each time.

But that's just one thing. Let's take a look at some of the other more idiotic elements present in this...game.

During the job interview sequence, you're given a bunch of choices. You come across one, where it says that Thresher takes advantage of the situation. The audio clip here? It tells you that you need to be over 18 to play through this bit. And it's required to hit this option to continue as well. Hitting any other option sends you to a game over screen. From here, you get another choice to make. Here's the image in question:



Look at the text that it tells you - "she rejects the disgusting proposal" and "she'll do anything to get the job?!?!". Those images don't make much sense - because if she declines...why would she take her top off anyway? And sure enough, if you DO pick it, she still gets part of her kit off, then after a few minutes, realizes his disgusting proposal and runs out of his office. Without much of her top.

The score is also another element that doesn't work at all. Mainly because for the most part, the only score you get is in the negatives. No, I'm serious. Here's how the score roughly is shown on screen.

Score: -100000

You may be wondering just how badly you need to mess up in order to earn such a score. Well it turns out that's just gotten during regular gameplay. Since you can't really get off the path and what not, your score is always really going to end up the same amount. It also doesn't look like a mistake either, because the hyphen is so close to the numbers that it suggests negative value. Let's move on, the stupidity is killing me.

Later on in the game, the narrator gets attacked by some random woman in a Karate Gi (later a dress), whose role is, and I cannot believe I'm writing this, A TAKE OVER ARTIST, WANTED IN THIRTY STATES FOR HIJACKING FICTION. Oh, and she doesn't do anything useful either, she basically plays the same role as the narrator, complaining about how bad you've been going. The next, and only other time she returns, she reveals to be a feminist, complaining about why Jane shouldn't sleep with her boss.

Makoto, she ain't.

Then the narrator returns and kills her with a toy gun, which then results in about a minute of a gray filter being placed over the screen with copy/pasted bulletholes and gunshot noises going off. There's no blood. There's no violence. It's unbelievably stupid. LIKE EVERYTHING ELSE IN THIS GAME. Oh, and to top it off, there are sounds of DOGS APPLAUDING.

FUCKING. DOGS. APPLAUDING. ARE YOU KIDDING ME.

The ending also features one of the stupidest moments in gaming history. As the game ends, it then randomly cuts to an outtake. Literally, the dude messes up the line and the next thing we here is the actor, the director and the crew laughing about it and saying they're going to leave it in. Then the next thing we hear is the line being said correctly...and the thing about this that sucks? He messed up one word, and it wasn't even that funny. Like everything else I've just said, I'm not making a single shred of this up.

What kills me is just how this game got certified. While it's been documented that the 3DO was one of the more open platforms to develop a game on, I find it hard to believe that someone at the 3DO Company, the people responsible for ensuring that games get certified for public release and what not, thought it was a good idea to let this game be released to the public. If you tried to pull this shit out on today's consoles, there's no way it'd happen.

Though there is some good to come out of all of this. YouTube user Hormone1944 (who I gotta thank for the YouTube links I've used in here) has not only uploaded most of the video, but created it in such a way that you can effectively play the game. Gotta love technology.

But in all seriousness, this is easily the worst video game ever made. If you can even call it a game. I can't sum up the sheer amount of stupidity present in this game. It's baffling to think that people actually created this, and not think for one second that they're creating the single worst video game ever made. ET and Superman 64 might be awful, but at least you can actually play them. And hell, Big Rigs, while it's an unfinished product, is clearly much more playable than this garbage.

Though that has to say something. When your game is less playable than the unfinished mess that is Big Rigs: Over The Road Racing, then you know you're onto something horrible.

University Navigation Is A Bitch

Yesterday I went down to Monash University's Clayton campus with the Level 3 crew to take a part in the Computer Games Boot Camp that was being run. It's essentially a program run by the University for kids in Years 9-12 to sort of get them excited about all the possible careers one can get involved with in gaming. It's a cool idea for an event, and something that I wish I had when I was looking for possible career choices.

Anyway, we went down there to do a talk to the kids. That part was done by Jason, Dale and Anna. I was there recording the thing. I'm in the middle of editing it now, and it should be uploaded hopefully shortly. But before I did that, I had to find the bloody place to begin with.

To be fair, it was mostly my fault. I had practically no familiarity with the campus, and I thought that all I needed was the building in which the event took place as well as directions to Monash. For that part, it worked out fine. Then I actually got to the campus, when I came to a shocking realization.

There were no maps. Or anywhere with directions.

I hadn't looked at a map of the campus prior, thinking that there would be at least one, if not more maps around the campus. Yet I saw none. I was just stumbling through the bloody campus until I saw some kids who were involved in the event (they had nametags), asked them where the building was, and they thankfully walked me to it. Then I was asked if I was a parent. I laughed.

But the point is, what kind of university doesn't at least have one map to show you where the bloody hell you're supposed to go? I mean, Deakin in Burwood is good in that there are maps everywhere. Vic Uni in St Albans and Footscray is the game. Ditto Swinburne in Hawthorn. It's bloody stupid to not do it, and to think that any and all visitors are going to check online for a map and NOT have one there is incredibly moronic.

It's like they expect you to go there to understan...

Son of a bitch...

Fate Told Me Not To See Transformers

I probably should have seen it coming.

Prior to watching Transformers last week, there were several signs on the day telling me that I should've given the movie a miss, and save my money for something else. The first signs were reviews - two reviewers that I trust (Roger Ebert and Paul Rodgers of "Careful With That Blog, Eugene") both gave the movie terrible reviews.

Yet despite this, I knew that I couldn't believe it. The second sign was the Herald Sun review. Normally, I don't trust the words of Leigh Patsch, due to him spending more time summarizing the movie than actually talking about the pros or cons of the movie. Patsch gave the movie the same score as the Hannah Montana movie (released on the same day). Now I was curious.

Hell, previously I was willing to pay money now not for entertainment, but now? It was just to see just how bad Transformers really was. Yet the signs kept coming.

The fourth sign was the IMAX. Let me explain, my friend and I had decided that we were going to catch the movie at Melbourne's IMAX theater in Carlton, if anything for the experience. When we got there, the session had been completely booked out. Granted, this was probably my fault for not booking in advance and not thinking that such a thing would actually be booked out.

Yet we kept persisting. I had brought a copy of the MX Newspaper (it's the free paper you get at various train stations around Melbourne), which had actually contained sessions times for a vareity of cinemas. We then decided to hit up Hoyts Melbourne Central, due to it being close to IMAX Melbourne as well as the next session being somewhat closer (we got there at around 5:30pm, the session was at 6:15).

After a brief walk, we got to Hoyts with plenty of time to spare, only to have been met with the fifth sign - a stupidly long line. Granted, this was to be expected somewhat. After all, it's a Thursday night in the city, and the movie has been highly anticipated. Yet the line moved slowly...and I was annoyed that I wasn't going to get a spot in the cinema. We waited for around 20 minutes in line before we finally paid for our tickets, which lead to the last sign.

You see, when we had gotten to the ticket booth, we were given several options as to where to sit, thanks to the theater already being booked out. Specifically, we had told the woman in the booth that we had wanted a seat in the middle of the theater. We were given a front row ticket. Faantastic.

Then we saw the movie...which I'm sure you can read all my thoughts about.

Though it wasn't all bad. After the movie, we caught up with George Matthews of Australian Gamer (a site I love), and went out for some drinks and a meal. Was fun, more than made up for it.

Just goes to show that sometimes, it's not the destination that matters, but the journey to get to the destination.

Level 3 - June 26th

Click to Play

Segments include a review of the Sims 3 by Anna, a Mega Drive retrospective by Aleks and Kane, and a look at the iPhone OS 3.0 update by Jason.

DarthHomer On Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen (WARNING SPOILERS)

Allow me to begin this by saying something which I know is going to get a lot of hate spewed towards me.

I enjoyed the 2007 Transformers movie.

It was by far not the best movie of that year, but compared to some of the other dreck that I witnessed that year (I can attest to have seen both Epic Movie and Alien vs Predator 2: Requiem in theaters), but it was at least somewhat entertaining. I know I'm going to attract a lot of hate for that, but I don't care.

Fast forward two years.

It's the week of the release of the hotly anticipated sequel, Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen. Reviews are hitting the internet, and the word is getting out that the movie is nothing short of terrible. In fact, one particular review stood out to me - Roger Eberts one star review of the movie. You can best sum his review up with this opening paragraph.

"Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen" is a horrible experience of unbearable length, briefly punctuated by three or four amusing moments. One of these involves a dog-like robot humping the leg of the heroine. Such are the meager joys. If you want to save yourself the ticket price, go into the kitchen, cue up a male choir singing the music of hell, and get a kid to start banging pots and pans together. Then close your eyes and use your imagination.

Wow. After having read that, I knew that I needed to catch this movie. So now that we're up to speed, let's actually TALK about the movie.

...Yeah. It's not good.

I knew going in that this was going to be more of the same, and have nothing really redeemable. Yes, it's a Michael Bay movie, so there's going to be an overemphasis on action and EXPLOSIONS!~ Yes, it's a summer blockbuster, so I shouldn't expect a deep and moving story, but replaced that with lots of shots of Megan Fox in poses and giant robots fighting giant robots. Oh, and EXPLOSIONS!~

But yes, this movie does have so major flaws. At least, the ones that I had with it. So let's go into those. This'll go into some spoiler territory, so if you're wary about what happens in the movie - stop reading now. I'll try to not bring up anything too major and what not, but bare with me for the moment.

Let's start off with the biggest problem. The length. In regular theatrical cuts, the movie is 150 minutes long. IMAX screenings have been reported as longer, but I can't comment on how long exactly. I haven't a problem with long movies, but I'll be damned that Michael Bay didn't at least consider maybe cutting down on the movie somewhat. Especially towards the end where the movie practically stops to have this giant battle in the desert.

Now, I can understand that Bay was going for this epic movie and what not, but at the same time, when there's as much explosion porn present in this movie, you kinda get sick of it real quick. It's basically like Bay realized that he had little to nothing in the way of plot and thought that the best way to achieve his vision of an epic movie was to pad it out with moronic 'comedic' moments and...well...EXPLOSIONS!~

Speaking of these 'comedic' moments, for some strange reason, the film contains an absurd number of sex/genital related jokes. It's not funny in the slighest. Especially watching dogs basically fucking one another. It's a moment so nice that Bay thought it'd be awesome to show it twice. Oh, and there's an instance of seeing John T.'s ass and package. The audience laughed their arses off at this. Sitting in the front row (thanks to a ticket snafu), that was the last thing I wanted to see. Then there's the "hash cookies" that Shia Lebouf's mother consumes which does not help make her anymore likabke. Even tackling a security guard didn't help that...though since when does pot give you tackling power?

Then there's the fact that characters have a tendency to disappear for a large portion of the plot. Take the titular Fallen for instance. He's hyped up as this big and stupidly powerful villain whom is so unbelievably awesome that even Megatron is sucking up to him. I mean, the subtitle of the movie basically makes us think that the Fallen is this one super bad motherfucker who's going to kick some major arse when he comes to Earth. Then he disappears for close to two hours, and only appears for a brief moment in a flashback, then again five minutes before the end of the movie, and does practically nothing but fucking job to Optimus Prime.

Biggest pussy of a villain ever.

As an Australian, I feel that I have to comment somewhat on the role of former Home and Away starlet Isobel Lucas. Prior to the movie, her role was being hyped up as her big breakthrough role and what not. Even after an extremely awkward interview on popular variety show Rove Live, she was still being hyped based on the cause of "she's an Aussie in a huge blockbuster film", similar to fellow Home & Away castmember Chris Hemsworth in Star Trek or Sam Worthington in Terminator Salvation. She appears for all of five minutes. I shit you not. And after her "big breakout role", she is never heard from or mentioned again. Sure, she's hot and all...but she doesn't really leave much of an impact on viewers (well, at least me), or the plot.

And then there are these two. Say hello to the Twins. Mudflap and Skids

You recall how a large portion of the movie going public absolutely despised Jar Jar Binks upon seeing Star Wars Episode 1? The same fate shall meet them. They contribute absolutely fucking nothing to the plot, and you wish that they get killed in the most violent and brutal way a transforming robot can. In fact, one of them comes close to dying, and SURVIVES. I literally cried out "BULLSHIT" when that happened. Then there's all the cries of racism, but honestly, I was too enraged each time I saw them to not take note.

I know I'm probably reading into this way too much than I should be doing, but really, let's take a look at two of the biggest and best blockbuster tentpole movies from last year: Iron Man and The Dark Knight. Both movies are the complete opposite of RotF - well written, well acted and had reasonable runtimes and uses of explosions. And they were fantastic films. This? Not so much.

Really, the movie would've been better served as a video game. Which it does have, yet reportedly isn't much good. Though weirdly enough, the online mulitplayer components of the 360/PS3 game is meant to be fantastic, and watching the last battle...it's something that would've been better served as an online MP game than an actual movie. For some reason, I got visions of a class based, multiplayer focused first person shooter.

Though honestly, I should give at least some praise in the CG stuff. As you would expect, the CG work is quite impressive, and the fight scenes are much better shot and laid out, unlike the first film - where the fight scenes were difficult to watch and make out precisely what's going on. Granted, there's a bit of that in Revenge of the Fallen, but it's much clearer than before.

Let's close this off. The movie isn't fantastic. It's too long, there's no story, the attempts at humour are stupid overall, it's just a mess. Yet it's going to be one of the highest profiting movies of the year, and more than make it's budget back. Despite this, here's the kicker though.

Once the credits hit, audiences were applauding.

I couldn't be making this up, even if I tried.

A packed audience in Hoyts Melbourne Central for the 6:15pm session on Thursday 25th of June 2009, applauded Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen.

I sat there stunned.

A Years Difference – How Rock Band Influenced Guitar Hero World Tour

I've been hitting up the music rhythm genre pretty heavily as of late. Round the end of November, I picked up Guitar Hero 3 (w/guitar). On Boxing Day, I picked up GH: World Tour (again, w/guitar) and not too long ago, purchased a copy of Rock Band (without any instruments). All three are good games. Guitar Hero 3 is great if you're stupidly hardcore and want to handle a decent, but utterly broken game. World Tour is good for parties, instruments and for a more hardcore, yet casual experience. And Rock Band? Well, the same idea of having fun in a party , but with plenty of music that you'll know, as well as over 500 songs up for purchase.

I'd wanted to compare these two games, but I didn't want to do it in much the same way an Australian game reviewer would actually compare them. I think it's really unfair to be comparing a game that was released late 2007 to a game that was released two months ago in the same way you'd compare two games of similar genres.

Personally, I'd recommend both of these games, but I'd like to focus on one specific aspect that I've noticed while playing both World Tour and Rock Band – specifically just how much of a difference a year can make on a product. There's more to it than the obvious statement that because Rock Band exists, Guitar Hero had to add in a drum kit and microphone for the 2008 version or risk being left 'out of date', as well as how because Rock Band handles its DLC, Guitar Hero's DLC plans were changed for the better.

Before I continue, it's important to note that this comparison is strictly for the current gen versions of both games. I'm using the PS3 version as my main reference here, but both games are similar enough anyway that unless specified, it'll also be relevant to the 360 version.

GAMEPLAY

In general, both games play almost exactly the same. You form a band with friends or people online and proceed to play songs for points. There's no denying that. But the ways that both games handle said gameplay is still different. One major is the way that the points boost powerup is handled. In World Tour, the traditional system has been changed somewhat. While Star Power is achieved in the same way achieved in any of the Guitar Hero games, once it's attained, anyone currently playing can use it. Example – the lead guitarist is the one that actually earns the Star Power for the band, but as soon as he gets it, the drummer can immediately activate it to gain a boost to their multiplier or save themselves from failure. It's a good thing if you need it to save a band mate who is struggling, but feasibly, unless there's more than one star power light lit up – only one member of the band at a time can use star power. This can be extremely annoying when you're playing with people who refuse to co-operate as a band and just use Star Power the second it's attained. It's an annoying design mechanic that should have been fixed.

Rock Band's Overdrive is slightly smarter in execution. It's exactly the same concept, but modified enough to actually make it awesome. Each band member gets their own unique overdrive which can be deployed at any time to increase the band's multiplayer (which Guitar Hero also does – minus the unique part). What's more interesting is the way that it's activated. For instance, players doing vocals or playing drums have it activate automatically after playing a serious of notes. Guitarists have to do it manually. It's...interesting, and works better for when you're playing co-operatively with other people, since you can easily co-ordinate when you'll activate it – thanks to the way notes are laid out. But at the same time, you'll want to activate your bonus whenever you'd like, and this is something that you can't really do in Rock Band.

Then there's some of the more unique gameplay elements to each game that also help to show just how much of a difference a year can make. For instance, Rock Band has a great mechanic where if you're playing with a band, and you fail out of a song, it continues, but you can't get back in unless someone sacrifices their Overdrive. It can't be done all the time though – fail three times and you can't go back in, and that players track is permanently muted. It's a very smart decision that Guitar Hero hasn't capitalized on – in this case, if any one of the four players fail a song, the entire band fails the song.

However, Guitar Hero includes something that's not in Rock Band and is extremely useful – a countdown after pausing. Let me explain this a little further. For whatever reason, you have to pause the game. You do whatever you need to do that required pausing the game and upon resuming, you are greeted with a countdown that will help to lead you back into the song. You'll also get enough of a look as to what notes you needed to hit when you paused that you'll easily be able to get back into the game. In Rock Band (or the previous Guitar Hero games), if you paused, the game would immediately start up again, and there's a chance that you'd miss out on whatever notes you were playing at that time.

Lastly, Rock Band has a huge advantage in the fact that if you play a song, it'll focus specifically on the instrument you've chosen. Let me explain – say you're playing Train Kept a Rollin' by Aerosmith on vocals; and solely vocals. The game will actually shorten the song allowing you to sing more and enjoy yourself by shortening or removing guitar solos. There's also a tapping mini-game in certain songs where you tap the microphone to simulate a tambourine or a cow bell. Guitar Hero doesn't do this. Instead, while you'll get sections to shout out to the crowd or sing any vocals, these are few and far between. As well as that, the songs aren't edited down – so if you're singing a song where verses are minutes in between one another, it gets boring quickly just sitting down and waiting for your turn. Granted, there's nothing wrong with listening to a song, but if you're just playing vocals, and you're stuck with practically nothing to do, it gets real boring real fast. Rambling Man by the Allman Brothers Band, while it's a good song, is almost borderline unfun to just sing during its second half.

So in this instance, World Tour still kinda does its own thing compared to Rock Band but yet hasn't really learnt or improved much. Star Power should have really be unique to each player, but this has been made up with the countdown after pausing – a very useful function that neither Rock Band or its sequel possess. With that being said, Rock Band does have some gameplay elements that Guitar Hero should have capitalized on – such as the way you can use Overdrive to save players who failed out or the unique Overdrives for each player. But at least in Guitar Hero – it's much easier to use your overdrive, especially in the cases of a drummer or vocalist.

DIFFICULTY

One of the big reasons why many people converted from Guitar Hero to Rock Band after Guitar Hero 3's release was due to difficulty. Aside from the far more difficult than necessary final set, GH3 also included one of the most broken and unrewarding gameplay modes in history – the Guitar Battles, which placed an emphasis on achieving Mario Kart like items to screw over the opponent than actual skill. This was extremely true during battles against the computer – who cheated like crazy, to the point where if you didn't beat them before their song ended, you'd lose regardless. But enough about that.

Let's kick off with Guitar Hero – who improved their difficulty EXPONENTIALLY. It doesn't feel as overly difficult and hardcore as GH3 did, and you'll find yourself doing much better overall. Hell, there's even a beginner mode (where you basically just strum – no button presses required), and the ability to change difficulty mid-song, which is always a welcome addition. That's not to say that Guitar Hero wussed out or anything. If at all, the game is still much, much more of a hardcore game than Rock Band is – aside from the whole part that if one person fails, everyone fails; the game features some stupidly challenging songs towards the end of the game, such as Van Halen's Hot for Teacher, System of a Down's B.Y.O.B and Joe Satrini's Satch Boogie. The latter of which is challenging enough on any difficulty. But regardless – that's how it should have been in the first place, starting off easy, THEN getting progressively difficult, but not stupidly and overly difficult by the end of the game.

Conversely, Rock Band handles its difficulty slightly better. While the original game doesn't individually score difficulty for each individual member (much like the sequel and the music store does), there is a tiering system in place that helps to clearly tell you how difficult a song is. I've already brought up how Overdrive can be used to save players, which also helps to make the game easier. In general, Rock Band was designed more for a casual audience, and it's not too difficult. However, that's not to say that Rock Band is too easy. You still have to play the songs – there isn't any of the No Fail mode present in Rock Band 2 here.

However, there's plenty of songs both in Rock Band (and the sequel), as well as DLC songs that prove to be an almost absurd challenge. For instance, there's a video of a three player band playing "They're Red Hot" by the Red Hot Chili Peppers. They're sightreading (as in they don't know the chart, so they're going by what they see), and fail within seconds. As well as that, there's a video on YouTube of a player fully clearing the song, on drums, on expert. Supposedly, Harmonix employees were freaked out with just how quickly the player fully cleared the song upon its release. Iron Maiden's "Run to the Hills" on the original Rock Band has also caused major issues – Harmonix developers have said that more people have trouble beating it on Hard than Expert on drums. As well as that, there are several Who songs taken from their Live at Leeds album – which are nightmarish on drums. I guess Keith Moon wasn't thinking about how other people would play his beats in a video game.

If anything, Neversoft have definitely fixed Guitar Hero in this regard, while not so much learning from Rock Band, but more from experience than anything else. After all, when Guitar Hero 3 was as overly challenging and broken as a rhythm game was going to get, you can tell that sweeping changes needed to be made. At least the final set actually poses a proper and fair challenge, instead of the game basically saying "LOL GOOD LUCK".

CAREER MODE

Sure, both Rock Band and World Tour are all about playing music co-operatively in a band, but every rhythm game has at least one mode where you play a structured series of sets and get rewarded with money or other unlockable items. World Tour has its Career Mode, while Rock Band actually has two – Band World Tour and Solo Tour. Both modes are distinctly different to one another, and we'll cover this now.

World Tour's career mode tries to deviate slightly from the Guitar Hero norm of playing tiers of songs, and after completing a certain amount, play an encore song, then moving on to the next tier until you've finished them all....but not by too much. In World Tour, the tiering system is still in place – in each tier, you get four sets to play. There are four tiers in all – with 15 gigs to play (four each in the first three tiers, two in the last, and one dedicating to playing custom setlists of songs previously played in the Career Mode). Each gig you play is a proper set though – you work your way through a number of consecutive songs before playing an encore song at the end of most of the gigs. You can play through the career mode five times – once for the band, and once for each of the instruments. Despite these five career modes, it's still exactly the same game, no matter what and how you're playing career mode.

Rock Band's career is slightly different depending on what mode you play. Band World Tour sees you start a band of 2-4 people, and then travel around the world, playing individual songs, custom sets, mystery sets or specialized sets, earning fans and generally...well...be a Rock Band! It's very open and can't really end...but there are some major problems with it. For instance, once you start a Band World Tour – and you've chosen which players are playing which instruments or who the band leader is (i.e. the person that does all the selecting for menus), they're locked. So if you've started a four player Band World Tour, and your drummer can't make it for whatever reason, then you'd need to start a completely new game, delete that member from the band...or just play random setlists in the quickplay menu.

Solo Tour is nowhere near as awesome as Band World Tour. In fact, instead of being as revolutionary as BWT...all you do in Solo Tour is play tiers, similar to what you were doing in Guitar Hero 3 (and even the Harmonix developed Guitar Hero games). Each tier has around five songs, and you need to play all the songs in the setlist to proceed to the next one. Unlike World Tour, you can only play three instruments – lead guitar, vocals or drums. There's no bass career. This is unfortunate, but kind of understandable at the same time (especially when you play Bass in either Guitar Hero or Rock Band). Solo Tour also doesn't let you create your own setlists, unlike Guitar Hero World Tour, and you'll have to do each song individually. Whether or not you find that a problem will vary depending on the person playing the game.

In this regard, it's kind of sad to see that Guitar Hero really hasn't learnt too much from what Rock Band has done. It still seems too...shackled by what the previous games have done that if any form of major change is introduced the career mode, then Neversoft/Activision might feel that the fans would rebel against them. Conversely, Rock Band's Tour modes are well intentioned and have some good ideas, but have some completely stupid elements in them (such as locking members in BWT, or having a mediocre single player mode) – though this was all fixed in the sequel.

USER INTERFACE/PRESENTATION

It's extremely important to be able to see how you're doing, especially in a game like this. As well as that, the way that the game is presented to you is also quite important. Both Rock Band & Guitar Hero have completely different methods of presentation and UI, and whichever one you prefer is based on personal preference more than anything else.

Rock Band is presented in an extremely simple way. The best way to describe it would be to compare it to how Sony treat their Singstar games, in that the frontend is simplified enough where you can quickly go pick a song and play it. The Solo and World Tour modes are again, just simplified where there's little between you and the songs. There's no story, no cutscenes, nothing. Then when you get into the game, there's still plenty of simplicity. Hell, there aren't any crazy animations when you go into Overdrive – just your notechart turning gold.

Though the one problem people have with the game is the design aesthetic of both the menus and the characters. Personally speaking, it's not that bothering – though it's easy to see why people would get sick of the cartoonish and at times, unappealing looking Rock Band characters. Though honestly, the same could be said about the Guitar Hero characters.

The presentation of the UI is also quite nice. The overdrive bar is laid out on the bottom of all the note charts, and the total score is presented in the top right-hand corner of the screen. In addition, is that the game will actually show off how you're doing by showing how many stars you've achieved. In fact, you'll get a noise everytime you get a star, and it's notable enough that you don't need to constantly be looking at how many stars you have to know how many you currently have. It's a neat addition, and beats waiting until the end of the song to know how you went.

As for World Tour...it hasn't really evolved much from Guitar Hero World Tour. The presentation of the game is still that over the top 'metal' feel, as well as feeling much more like a game, if that makes any sense. For instance, each encore is presented with a brief scene of something crazy happening – such as an electrical fire starting. As well as that, there are animated cutscenes, courtesy of animation house Titmouse (best known for Metapocolypse). What's disappointing is that they open and close each career – there's nothing in between, which is weird. Lastly, for some strange reason, the game reuses the biographies for each of the returning characters in World Tour. Surely it couldn't have been that hard to rewrite some new text?

Though what's even weirder is that the cutscenes actually focus on the four new characters that represent the drummer, vocalist, lead and bass guitarists. Which is quite dumb – since for the most part you'll be playing as either a customized character, one of the other returning or licensed characters. It feels quite jarring to know that despite you playing as any of the other characters, you'll get the ending for just the ONE character. Which is kinda dumb.

As for the UI? Well, it's basically the same as Guitar Hero 3's. It feels too much like Neversoft just took the GH3 interface, added in the drum and vocal track. You can't check how many stars you have until the end of the song, but unlike Rock Band, you can specifically check how you went in a particular section – making problem identification for specific areas easier.

DOWNLOADBLE CONTENT

Finally, and quickly, is the issue of downloadable content. I'll go through this quickly, since there isn't all that much to cover. We all know that this has been a huge deal with Rock Band – with such a large variety of music up for download at reasonable prices. But one of the better things about Rock Band's DLC is that (mostly) every week since the game's original launch, there has been some form of DLC released simultaneously on both the Xbox Live Marketplace and Playstation Store.

To better illustrate the point – here's a brief recap on how Activision treated Guitar Hero 3's DLC. All the items were released as track packs, and only as track packs. So if you wanted the Coldplay pack to specifically play Violet Hill, then you're stuck with two songs that you might not want. For the 360 version of Guitar Hero II, this was exactly the same scenario. As well as that, releases were few and far between – and to date, there are only two complete albums up for download (Metallica's Death Magnetic and Oasis's Dig Out Your Soul).

How did World Tour learn from Rock Band in this regard? Simple. DLC is now being released weekly, and you now have the option to download individual tracks instead of being forced to download packs. Granted, there are some songs you can only get as a pack, but when you figure that two of them are Hendrix packs, as well as how stupidly restrictive the Hendrix family are with using ANYTHING related to Jimi, it's understandable. So far, it's all well and good, save for the fact that the songs are exclusive to the Xbox Live Marketplace for two weeks, before hitting the Playstation Network.

From a business perspective, it makes sense. After all, more people own 360's and play these kinds of games on their consoles, so in that regard...I guess it's acceptable. But at the same time, it's still completely wrong. It screws out a potential half of their audience for little reason other than money. It's not like the actual content needs to be recoded too drastically for the each of the different versions of the game.

CONCLUSION

In the time between the original release of Rock Band, and seeing how its release has impacted the rhythm game genre, it's almost unfortunate to see that Activision and Neversoft really haven't learnt too much from what MTV and Harmonix have created. Don't get me wrong though, there are some things that have been learnt (such as an improvement in DLC releases, the pause countdown and the ability to activate Star Power at any point in the song or anyone can earn star power for the band), but at the same time, there are some stupid mistakes that should have been fixed (such as the fact that anyone can use Star Power) as well as problems with the game that were actually perfected in Guitar Hero 3! (Such as text entry and character bios)

But with that being said, 2009 is going to be a very interesting year for both the Guitar Hero and Rock Band franchises. With Harmonix not working on Rock Band 3, and Activision releasing a rumoured six Guitar Hero games this year (so far, Guitar Hero V, Guitar Hero Metallica, Guitar Hero Smash Hits and two more Guitar Hero On Tour games), there's plenty of an opportunity for Guitar Hero to improve itself. If not immediately, but slowly.

Let's just hope that the yearly exploiting for Guitar Hero actually helps the series.