Guy In Rubber Suit

While they don't have guitars to a hip hop beat; check out Machinae Supremacy if you don't know of them already. Power metal with SID chip synth melodies. Very, very cool stuff.

Happy gift exchange day! I hope people get what they want, I know I got some really great things this year. I like my material goods.

Maybe... Or ?Maybe look into later In Flames/Soilwork/Dark Tranquillity and deathcore bands like Born of Osiris, Aronists Get all the Girls, Winds of Plague or something like that. I pretty much hate all off those bands, minus In Flames and Soilwork's earlier stuff. DT is still decent. Whatever. Hopefully that's what you want. I'm done listening to shitty music...

Agalloch - The Watcher's Monolith Finally picked up their new album and it does not disappoint. Pick it up if you're fan of the band. Actually just pick it up if you want great music.

Vanillaware put more detail into their art than most do with other 2D games. I still want to pick up Murasama.

What are you talking about? Advent Children is total fan service! ...Oh. You mean Spirits Within? OK then. I would definitely watch a full length live action movie of that trailer if it was ever produced.

The older days really were more innovative than today. It would follow the same pattern, a single game revolutionizes something and everyone else follows suit in order to capitalize on the situation. The vast majority of games, old and new, follow the same standard recipe with some sprinkling of innovation on the icing. Dating back to even the Atari 2600 days, there were numerous rip off games that lifted almost directly from the most popular ones. You probably don't remember them because they were nothing special. For every Super Mario Bros. there are 70 Bubsys. I enjoy both the modern and classic games equally. I know if I was much younger and didn't have ready access to the older systems, I'd probably not appreciate the older games. And really, there are some games that are pretty archaic making it impossible to play especially if you're used to modern games. It could be that modern games utilize hand holding -- in order to reach a larger audience -- too much or it could also mean that classic games had some poor level design and game mechanics. Either way, I never enjoyed the Mega Man series outside of the second one and don't really care for any pre-SOTN Castlevanias. I guess that's pretty blasphemous of me.

I have a very love-hate relationship with Resonance of Fate. The story, graphics and everything except for the battle mechanics scream mid-PS2 era JRPG. The characters are devoid of most development while the story is unnecessarily convoluted to the point of absurdity. Maybe it's because I'm not super far into the game, but I really do not have a good grasp of the over arching objective and the main motivator for the principal cast is money. Combat in ROF is very unique. I love the action oriented take; greatly dislike the random encounters. However the mechanics have a fairly high learning curve and when you think you got it down, the game throws a cheap ass enemy at you to keep you from riding up to cloud 9. Seriously, make a single mistake of letting your meter deplete and you are screwed for the most part in combat. This is seriously frustrating in boss battles if you had a difficult time leading up to the end encounter. I really enjoyed the steam punk setting of the world and the upgrade system, while very ridiculous, had some points of amusement. I might revisit it once I finish a few other titles. If Mass Effect 3 does not come out before then...

You know what I'm hearing? A bunch of people who have grown old and are afraid of the current generation taking over. These arguments: "...it's more about graphics than usability and game play." "...I see too much focus on ...the technology..." "I'm sick of seeing constant clones of those games." Are just the same tired arguments from generations past. I guarantee if you scour older video game magazines you will see the same complaints from older gamers. You will see advertisements pushing for 'realistic' graphics, when we know that is certainly not the case. You will see sequel after clone after sequel. The best game cited here? A second sequel: Super Mario Bros. 3. How many sequels do we really need? How many rehashes do we need? This is not a new generational development. This is a systemic problem. It's only going to get worse thanks to the rising costs of development. Actually, I take that back. It's going to get better. Why? Because developers are no longer constrained to the dictatorship that is a video game console. The developer can make games for the iPhone. The internet. The PC. A developer can create what they want in a cheap manner, yet they still produce many of the same thing. Really, a lot of the older games do not hold up to modern standards. Early games were built on the arcade mindset of squeezing every last quarter out of you. You had to develop a good memory and reflexes in order to enjoy any of the games. It was a high barrier of entry and many of the games with that high barrier frankly just sucked. What you are remembering are memories through rose tinted glasses. And unless you've never explored beyond those style of games you're only going to scoff at anything new and stick with the old.

I really prefer In a Flesh Aquarium over Utopia, their first album. Megalomaniac Trees is my favorite song of theirs. Highly recommended. And great live band to boot.

Not soon enough! This is great news, and I love the album artwork. I've been mulling over a long time of making my own but ended up just being incredibly lazy. Or I can say that my telekinetic prowess has finally grown to such a capacity that I influenced djpretzel and liontamer and all involved to create an album cover and retag all of the previous mixes. Now to improve upon my telekinesis and make them work faster!

Just check the original article. IGN has a video up. That's actually pretty neat. Much better than forcing the game into being on an always online connection. I know there are few other games that force a crash in various areas if pirated. I believe this happened with Titan Quest. Unfortunately, many people though it was a problem with the actual game rather than an anti-piracy measure.

I listened to about half of the second one and enjoyed it. Right now, I still can't distinguish between the variety of sub-genres, but the sampler should at least help me look into the artists' back catalog.

Sweet. I'm downloading the two samplers now. I've only recently gotten into electronic music. You can thank Sefiros and chiptunes for that.

I just typed jazz into the genre search box at Metal Archives and came up with 58 results. Atheist was already mentioned. Ephuel Duath is worth checking out. I checked out Clockwork, which has been described as Yes meets Dream Theater. Pretty good stuff, though it takes a little bit to get into.

Botch - C. Thomas Howell As "The Soul Man" I read about this band in Precious Metal. Basically a post-hardcore band that influenced a bunch of modern -core bands; yet they do it better.

Teleidofusion - 5 Minutes of Autumn I really do not remember downloading this at any point but I'm really digging it. I've only recently gotten into chiptune music and this is quite good.

Heh I thought it sounded a bit like Pantera at first, specifically from their pre-Cowboys days. If you ever heard their four hair metal albums, you'll know what I mean. Hmm...listening to it again, you can hear that Dimebag recycled some riffs. The pre-verse riff in this song sounds like the fast breakdown part in This Love.

I think Danny Carey of Tool would be a good fit for Dream Theater.

Kind of sounded like Spectre General aka Kick Axe. I dunno, you might want to wander over to the Metal Archives and ask them over there. Someone will have the answer within one or two posts.

Bah! I won't buy that guitar until I know how it sounds through an amp. Squire makes alright guitars, cheaper Fenders basically. And I'd much rather save my money for a guitar I really desire.

Nice! I can use my MIDI keyboard then! I'm really curious how the real guitar is going to interact with the game. From the pics I've seen, it looks like it can take a standard guitar cable input, so maybe I can use my own guitar? But from the interview here that really doesn't seem to be the case. Either way, I'm actually pretty stoked about this. Harmonix, I was doubting you at first with your Lego, Beatles, and Green Day Rock Bands, feeling that you were falling into Activision's trap of mediocrity and what do you do? You come out swinging showing that you are the true rulers of the music game genre. Kudos.

Nile - Unas Slayer of the Gods One of the most epic songs. Ever. 11 minutes of death metal awesomeness.

I like jazz, but I tend to enjoy the guitar oriented jazz and bebop/swing more than other types of jazz. Seriously check out Larry Coryell and the Spaces Revisited album. That is simply fantastic guitar jazz there. George Benson is worth checking out as well as the great Wes Montgomery. That guy learned guitar at 19, played with his thumb, and had a pretty prolific, if short recording career. If you want some more bebop/swing style, then check out Benny Goodman and Artie Shaw.

I've been working on this blog for a couple of weeks and now that I got a logo designed I feel that I should show the site off to people. This blog is about video games and metal and while it is leaning a bit metal heavy right now, I'll add more video game related stuff in the future. I'll try to update it at least once a week, life and work permitting. So follow it, comment, whatever and have fun! http://pixelpit.blogspot.com/