The Man Who Wasn't There

So the reason the US Xbox 360 owners are getting screwed on the lack of Turok demo on Xbox Live is because it is apparently an exclusive demo for the Official Xbox Magazine. The announcement was probably either a slip-up or was released too soon. The review for it came up at 7.0; they basically said it's an "old school FPS" game, with the annoyingly use check point system and a very hard difficulty level, especially with bosses where you have to learn their pattern (usually dying a few times in the process). They said those who enjoy the old school shooters will probably get more enjoyment out of the game than they did.

The Xbox Mag also has three exclusive songs for Rock Band that you can't find elsewhere. Xbox.com, additionally, accidently let slip what's probably coming to Rock Band's downloadable content roster the next two weeks. Expect an Oasis pack (with Wonderall and their other big hit) next week with a "progressive rock" pack the following week. The progressive rock pack has a Coheed and Cambria song (!), a Rush song and......a Smashing Pumpkins song? Since when is Smashing Pumpkins "progressive rock?"

Before you get too excited, though, it looks like both the Coheed and the Rush song are covers...which isn't surprising with Rush...but Coheed? That makes me a sad panda. At least it's a good song ("10 Speed (God's Blood and Burial)").

I'm glad to see Cloverfield is sitting at a nice 77% with 65 reviews so far. Means it should be a pretty good movie. I'm really excited to see it tonight. I'm dragging people to it because of my birthday. We're going to eat at Nebraska Brewing Company then it's monster-destroys-New-York-time.

I'm so glad it's a three day weekend. I just wish I could kick this cold. I haven't had a good, full night of sleep this entire week. I even took a cough suppressant last night that's supposed to work for 12 hours and I woke at 2:00, coughing and hacking up a lung. You know how you cough and cough and your chest and throat start to hurt? That's my morning.

Finally...alright Quentin. We already know you're in love with trash films, exploitative films and grindhouse pictures. We get it. But, seriously, move on. Please. I really don't think the world needs a remake of the exploitative Faster Pussycat! Kill! Kill!. Let's just leave the homage responsibility to the song which, surprisingly, is kind of catchy.

So, I lied. I do have a couple things to talk about. Nothing too big, though. One of my Xmas gifts was the book Fangland by John Marks. What a fascinating novel. I'm really enjoying it. It's kind of a modern day, post 9/11 retelling of Bram Stoker's Dracula.

It's about Evangeline Harker, a young producer for The Hour, a hit TV news show. Recently engaged, she's sent off to Romania to meet with an arms dealer named Torgu. The events leading up to the meeting are ominous and speak to what's going to happen in the coming pages. When she meets him, he's very off and the events seem very similar to Dracula. She's locked in his giant hotel as he's gone "on business" during the day. He also wants to use Harker as a way to get to New York. I'm not very far into it, but it's definitely an exciting novel with a kind of cheesy name (though the name refers, at least partially, to the environment Harker works in at The Hour; a kind of dog-eat-dog world). It's written in the epistolary format, just like the original Dracula, and is actually pretty intense. I'd definitely recommend it to fans of vampires/Bram Stoker's novel. I'm sure I'll have more as I get further into it.

I brought Rock Band over to my parent's house yesterday so we could jam for a bit. It's funny, when I first brought it over back at Thanksgiving, I thought my dad would be good at it and my mom would barely get by. I was shocked to find out it's the opposite. Especially yesterday. My dad was struggling to get 60-70% on either the bass or the lead guitar (and in fact said that the reason he was doing poorly on the lead was because he "couldn't hear his part" so he switched to the bass). On a couple songs we had to save him and bring him back. Conversely, my mom was rocking it out with high 80s and some 90s.

The best part was when my dad switched to the drums so I could mess around on the guitar. At one point, he was just smashing away and his sticks went flying. All three of us broke down into laughter to the point my mom was coughing. I'm not sure what caused it exactly, but the simple act of seeing the drum sticks go flying and my dad's confused "how did that happen?" look was priceless. Definitely worth the hassle of carting around all of the equipment.

Ugh. So, there's been this bickering back and forth between Harmonix and Activision concerning a simple patch for Rock Band that would fix the compatibility issue PS3 Rock Band players have been having. All it does is allow the PS3 Guitar Hero 3 guitar to play with Rock Band. It went like this:

Harmonix said they had the patch ready to go on December 4th. It was approved by Sony. Activision threw a temper tantrum and blocked its release.

Activision came back a day later and blamed it on Harmonix. But they said something that I thought was very interesting: "Unfortunately for Rock Band users, in this case Harmonix and MTV Games/Viacom are unwilling to discuss an agreement with Activision."

An agreement? For a patch? I thought that was a bit strange. There's no reason why Activision should be involved with a patch. Unless there's money involved. And that underlined portion certainly sounded like Activision wanted to see dollar signs.

Turns out that's right on the money. This interview at the Boston Globe says it point blank:

"We believe we should be compensated for the use of our technology," said Activision spokeswoman Maryanne Lataif.

*sigh*

What's not being said is that Activision paid $100 million for RedOctane and they want to protect their investment. Whatever the costs to gamers. And this is the only way they can try to hamper Harmonix legally.