I'll get strait to the point...

The Beatles: Rockband is an awesome way to experience the music of the Beatles for the first time or the ten-thousandth time. The game takes you and your friends (up to 6 can play) on a smooth cruise through the Beatles career as you visit episodes of their career spanning from Liverpool club basements in 1963 to the Apple Record's rooftop! Great FUN, great Music! This edition of Rockband soars where others have consistently faltered, the musical experience is 100% quality all the way through. You just should not quibble over the fact that once in a while you are strumming a guitar controller yet the game is actually playing a Cello or other instrument. You're playing a plastic guitar for petesake!! The music is good, you know many of the songs even if you are only 13, and overall the game play simply flows well.

So...why does this review continue??? Ah, that my friend is because I haven't properly vented...Rockband rocks, but has some flaws that we all know about, yet somehow find it in our hearts to quickly forgive or forget.

(the following 4 paragraphs are meant to be read aloud, while leave you breathless in a vain attempt to keep up with the lack of breaks in the paragraph structures...the lack of punctuation it is intentional, and quite fun!)

One of the stronger points of this game is that it is the first Rockband title that is nearly as enjoyable to play as it is to simply watch. Instead of being bored to tears while standing idly as others play (because either A)it is not your turn to play, or B) you lack the intestinal fortitude to have fun in the face of acute personal embarrassment), you will still have a great time with this title because, lets face it, the Beatles are just that good (and if you don't think so, you are either under the age of consent in lower western Louisiana, or haven't happened upon what real music appreciation is like as you beg for Ronnie James Dio to release a 30-year-late-to-the-party album of crappy metal tracks that really were not good in the 80's when people somehow thought they were)! Additionally, as you stand around with your hands in your pockets singing off-key while watching the others have fun without you (as it is most likely the case that your friends are not acknowledging your presence or even your existence while you stand on the sidelines), you will have the distinct pleasure of watching some of the best visual elements ever dropped into the background of this genre or just about any other game for that matter; mindblowing-braincandy-nibblets made up of incredible Beatles inspired visuals and previously unseen historical elements put together by the designers at Harmonix and George Harrison's son that the players cannot see. So don't worry your turn will come, and during the time between the tracks, you shall enjoy a great bit of personal satisfaction telling those greedy-plastic-guitar-bogartin' players about the things they didn't get to see while the hogged all the faux-instruments!

This point gives me pause...but only for a moment. I think that someone out here needs to point out the one of the tragedies of this entire genre of games; you really can't watch the fantastic scenes while your are playing! You the player have no clue what is going on as you mind-numbingly strum the plastic flippers of your favorite 'guitar'. You'll only occasionally acknowledge the overly bright colored splashes of garbage that could have been drawn by a five year-old child armed with an arsenal of half-melted crayons for all you care! Yes, those great images are there, but you cant see them as they'll lay in the periphery of your vision because you dare not avert your narrowly focused eyesight away from the colored thingies flying towards you at a frenzied rate on something that resembles never ending one-lane road of color impregnated finger-twisting hell, but is actually called a 'fretboard'!

It is also well known by most players of the previous Guitar "X" and Rockband iterations that deep-down in our hardest-core-of-gamers-hearts that we all loathe these titles because more than half the time we are playing them they suck, and yet we still go wallowing back to our favorite 'instrument' (using that term VERY liberally), for more of the abuse that is certain to generate early-onset arthritis in half the game playing population aged 10 to 35. It is a known point that every time we let one of these games into our library, the developers entice us a string of hit songs in the beginning of the game, then place our befuddle brains and fingers on a slippery-slope to less than stellar tracks or over-played mediocre drivel through the remainder of the first half of the game, at which point our dulled senses willingly allow the power- that-be to force a bowel movement of obscure content upon us for next 45% of the game, only to give us a measly portion of hits during the last %5 which make us feel as though our bodies have been magically cleansed, enabling us to forget that we really only liked the game 25-35% of the time we are playing it.

OK, I've vented a little, which allows me to point out me to the best part of the game! While playing this game, we get nothing but pure unadulterated Beatles!!! Yes it is true that we are missing a 'few' and by that I really mean A LOT of the key Beatles songs like Hey Jude, Elenore Rigby, or We Can Work It Out or any of the other great Beatles songs released to the public, but lets face it, these games are marketed to drive not only the purchase of the game, but the DLC (down-loadable content) as well, and if Harmonix has a plan it certainly includes the release of these fine songs for a healthy price...CHA-CHING.

Truly the only REAL downside to THIS game is that it's a little too short for $70, and the content of The Beatles: Rockband is a standalone product, meaning the Beatles songs are NOT PLAYABLE on other versions of Rockband. So, you won't be able to used your saved bands, from RB/RB2, nor will you be able to play any content from those titles while your Beatles:RB disc resides in your X-Box 360...and the pain goes BOTH WAYS! So, if you had hopes of buying some great Beatles DLC while you remain tight-fisted with your hard earned money and avoid buying the whole game, you can forget it; because game merchandising doesn't work that way, and the world isn't one giant Burger King allowing you to have it your wayyyyyyyyyy. If you like that kinda thing it looks like you'll need to go get a hamburger instead of playing The Beatles: Rockband.



BTW- my review is inspired by Ben "Yahtzee" Croshaw, a fine reviewer of video games notorious for his penchant of using adult language and as little punctuational as possible in his animated video driven column aptly titled, "Zero Punctuation". Check out Yahtzee's work for the real-mccoy at the escapistmagazine website...And, should you fail to laugh out loud or spew your drink at the monitor or simultaneously do both as you experience the very shocking brutally stated truth of his sentiments, then quite a few high-minded filthy-mouthed people would likely say you have no real sense of humor at all...and you should probably crawl back under your rock, and ignore him, myself, and those other people altogether because you really don't matter anyways. Personally, I think he is funny as hell! ;-)

I haven't gone anyplace...just been mighty busy. With the GLUT of great games that have arrived since summer '08, and the final season of my involvement in USA Rugby as a player, I have not had time to write anything

All in all, I am just happy to see that developers, bloggers, and writers have stopped predicting "THE END" of PC gaming...as you can see the doom-sayers of the past year have been all wrong! I know we will see few INITIAL releases on PC, butwith the rate of piracy out there, I am pleased to see the distributors have found a way to deliver PC games, without having the developers suffer under the weight of the torrent-sphere.

Cheers,

RaQin

All is well in the MMORPG world...Age of Conan: Hyborian Adventures has finally gone live, and things are looking pretty sweet.

Pre-Orders went fine...don't let the ones who experienced issues make it sound bad; they represent a MINIMAL percentage of orders (less than 1% by the count). I received my AoC:CE from Amazon without issue, as did everyone I know who ordered it. My only point of concern occurred while creating my account/subscription, as FunCom's site stated that Collectors Edition users would get 30 days of free play from the launch date of 5/20/08 (which meant I was already short on my 30 days since I didn't sign in until Friday 5/23; I was within 5 heartbeats of calling Customer Service!!!!). However, upon completing the registration process, I was given 30 full days (to the second) from the time I created my account, thereby nullify any point of contention.

Game play is like a lot of MMORPGs...auctions, merchants, guilds, grinding. It is really nice to actually be able to control the combat with combos, but at the early levels it doesn't seem to make much difference in beating enemy NPCs or PVP players (I am getting owned as of this writing, but then I am the suck at PVP). One of the bright points early-on in the game occurs during character creation. Unlike WoW, you are able to completely customize the look of your character, including scars, tattoos, height and build features, and even a black eye or the sleepless look if you so desire. It was a refreshing break from the constrained selections I have grown accustomed to in WoW, and I came up with a character who looks a lot like me...including the sleepless look (scary; I clearly need more sleep!!)

Most players will totally appreciate the steps that FunCom has taken to eliminate gold sellers/gold spams, as one must fight for about 30 mins before they can see another person online. With this considerable time investment in getting to see other players, and this should cut down on the www.GOLD4LESS spammers messages...BLIZZARD should take note of this, and move to it for WotLK. You cannot simply create a character and run to town for a spamming session; if you don't do the quests and fight the critters, you just won't be able to see other peeps.

Graphics are great, but the game is a resource hog in DirectX10...I feel that it is as demanding as Crysis, but I have not run any benches against it, so I can only base that on my perception (remember that 90% of the time perception is reality). That said, if you have an older PC, don't expect to put down WoW and find yourself playing Conan at a great framerate...As of this writing, I am thinking no matter what level popularity AoC achieves, WoW will still have a substantial market foothold with MMO players who own mid/lower-end systems for a long time.

Now for the COOLEST part!!! The quests are actually interesting, and drive the story. In my experience, all quests have full voice acting, and a dialog similar to that of games from BioWare (makers of Star Wars: Knights or the Old Republic and Jade Empire to name only a couple). This means you get a bit more out of the quests than simply clicking on the giver, and heading to fight. You need to listen to them, and to read them...They are pretty sweet so far.

Another REALLY BIG DEAL is that I have not noticed any lag in AoC...we'll see if this holds up when the business world logs in on Tuesday, but for now the kbps flow freely.

So far I'd give Age of Conan an 8.8. Despite my CONSTRAINED G-Spot rating, I don't think it is an 8.5, nor do I feel the game is worthy of a 9.0 rating. You be the judge, and please post your ratings in your reply to this blog post!

Cheers from Cimmaria,

RQ

Tested on - Intel Xeon 3050 @ 3.2GHz on EVGA 680i Mobo, 4GB Corsair Dominator 1066MHz Ram, and EVGA 8800GT Akimbo 1024MB Graphics. Connecting via Verizon FiOS. Avg FPS = 26 (this was observed over time, not benched), and Avg Latency was ~60ms.