Guitar Hero On Tour review

This past weekend, I got my hands on a copy of Guitar Hero On Tour. Since I have previewed it before, I will only do a quick review of the game.


Guitar Hero On Tour is the first time that Activision has brought the incredibly popular rhythm game series to a portable system. Guitar Hero On Tour lives up to most of its promises. The pros include the graphics are, in my opinion, very advanced for a DS game. The game lives up to its promises. The guitar hero franchise and experience has officially been brought to a portable system. The pick stylus is neat and the guitar grip is, for the most part, a great peripheral.


The cons are numbered, unfortunately. One, the strumming does not always work, and isn’t always accurate. Two, the track list includes some odd tracks and some repeats from Guitar Hero 3. Personally, I thought these were some of the most annoying tracks, including La Grange and Helicopter. With only 25 tracks, I don’t think the game could afford many disappointments, and with the combination of poorly chosen tracks and repeats from the previous game, the track list wasn’t a full delivery. Three, the guitar grip is sometimes uncomfortable and does not work well with fast notes and I found hammer-ons extremely difficult in this game.


In the end, Guitar Hero On Tour delivers a similar Guitar Hero experience to that of the console versions, and although the track list is slightly disappointing and the hardware not perfect, the game’s high price could lead it to be a questionable buy for most people.

Rock Band Wii

As some of you may have known, Rock Band Wii was released last Sunday. There was a lot of questioning surrounding why this version was released so late, June, instead of November like the PS3 and Xbox 360 versions, or December with the PS2 version. Although that is not totally clear, it does not make a lot of sense. The instruments on the Wii version hardly differ from that of the previous games, except for the fact the drums are white and wireless. The fact remains, the Wii version is lacking quite a lot that the PS3 and Xbox 360 ones had to offer. There is no wi-fi and no weekly new downloads. Still, the developers have tried to solve this by selling a Track Package which includes 20 songs for $30 that can be sued with Rock Band. Still, the question remains of should Wii owners buy it, or wait for Guitar Hero World Tour?

The game play remains similar to the previous versions. The graphics match the PS2 version. Still, you probably won’t care when you have two people shredding away on guitar controllers, one person pounding away at a plastic drum set, and one person rockin away on the microphone (which is not wireless). Other faults from the Wii version include that the guitars from Guitar Hero 3 do not work with Rock Band Wii. That means you’re stuck with the Rock Band guitar of debatable quality. Other than that, the Wii version lives up to its previous success on the other consoles. Still, Guitar Hero World Tour offers all that Rock Band doesn’t, and more, so personally, I am going to make the decision to wait for World Tour.

Spore Creature Creator

In the “I want that game when it comes out” list, you can see I have the game Spore listed. Spore, from EA and Maxis is a game that has been delayed year after year. Finally, the much anticipated release is scheduled for September 7th in the states. The game’s basic idea is evolution of a creature based on your imagination. You take your creature through the cell, creature, tribe, civilization, and space stages through different goals. The huge thing about Spore the developers wanted to point out is the fact you can design everything in the game from the actual creature to buildings to plants to vehicles. The Spore Creature Creator is simply the Creature Creator available for download to get you started on building your creatures now versus the fall.

The creator is incredibly in depth and can basically build anything you can imagine. The creator gives you a clay blog and you have absolutely infinite possibilities. You can start with the spinal cord, bending it, stretching it, shrinking it, and making it larger in size. You can add arms, legs, hands, feet, mouths, and eyes, each in any quantity or style. Your creature’s diet is determined by the mouth, carnivore, herbivore, or omnivore. There are also many tweaks you can add to each feature. There are also accessories you can add to your creature.

The free trial download contains about ¼ of the parts found in the actual creature creator, which you can buy for $10. If you sign up for a Spore account, you can email photos of your creations to friends and also record videos that can be directly sent to Youtube.

The developers continue to prove that Spore is a game of creativity as well as a combination of RPG and RTS games. For more info about Spore visit spore.com. You can also download the trial of the creature creator at the same site.

Info from ign.com and spore.com. Images from spore.com.

iPhone 3G

Okay, a little delayed, but here is my preview and opinions on the new iPhone 3G. Also, you can check out my friend Kevin’s review, although he is quite anti-apple, at funknowledge.blogspot.com.

The new iPhone, although almost everyone knew it would have 3G and GPS, was still an extremely hyped keynote on Monday, June 9. Held at the WWDC (World Wide Developer’s Conference) the keynote obviously had a lot to do with development of apps. I’ll do a review of those and some of the new features for the new iPhone coming out on July 11th.

First and foremost, the new body of the iPhone. The casing is now a full plastic and comes in black on the back. The price has also been cut to $199 for the 8GB version and $299 for the 16GB, which also comes in a white casing. The iPhone 3G feels even better in your hand, according to Steve Jobs.

Next, new features. As plainly seen from the name, the new iPhone will feature 3G for wireless data downloads. Tests presented by Jobs at the keynote shows that 3G is over 3X as fast as the Edge network, and nearing Wi-fi speeds. New iPhone users will love faster web and email access with speeds like these. Also, iPhone 3G will include GPS integrated into the Google Maps application, making it an amazing navigation device. Also, the new App Store which will act similar to the iTunes Wi-fi music store and will sell the 3rd party apps for the iPhone, more on that later. Lastly, the iPhone 3G will include accessibility to a ton of more languages.

The main focus of the iPhone 3G seems to be to make it more accessible for the enterprise. Apple had a whole video prepared of many companies discussing how well the new software (iPhone 2.0) was so easily integrated into their network. The software has compatibility with Microsoft Exchange, which will let business not have to switch any other tech. Jobs also discussed in much detail about how business can keep certain apps within their own network.

Jobs also discussed the success of the developer’s SDK and went into deep discussion on the App Store. Developer’s name the price of their apps, and can even distribute them for free. Apple keeps 30% of the sales. The new iPhone 2.0 software can also be used on the iPod Touch and will be sold for $10.

Still, even a second generation device can’t achieve perfection, and neither does the iPhone. Here’s a small list of the problems as generated by C/Net. “Unfortunately, we hoped for an even larger bundle of features in this round. Apple still leaves multimedia messaging out of the mix along with voice dialing and video recording. We still don't understand why Apple can't include these basic features, many found in even the cheapest and simplest cell phones. We were also hoping for a landscape keyboard, the capability to cut and paste, Flash support for the Safari Web browser, expanded memory, and additional Bluetooth profiles. Apple, you left us hanging in a big way. It's also disappointing to hear that the dock is now sold separately for $49, but we suppose that helped cut the price. No, you don't need the dock, but it's nice to have. Even the power adapter and the SIM card removal tool that now come in the box won't make up for its loss.” ~Cnet’s Kent German.

So, the final question remains, should you buy it? If you do not yet have an iPhone, this seems like a perfect opportunity to gain a new device if you don’t mind the small lack of nit-picky features. If you have an iPhone, you will definetly by angered by the GINOURMOUS price cut, so if you want to take advantage of it go ahead, but keep in mind that if you’re not going to take a large advantage of the new hardware features, it might not be worth it, because you can still get the software update in early July.