Label: PSP
Label: PSP
NOH GAMBARNA, HOME DIGANTI LOGO PS
Label: PSP
You knew this day would come, the day when Guitar Hero went the way of other popular rhythm game franchises, releasing pseudo-sequels and expansions that are really just batches of new songs with little to nothing in the way of gameplay or feature upgrades. Guitar Hero Encore: Rocks the 80s is the first for the series, an expansion of sorts to Guitar Hero II that offers up 30 new tracks with a decidedly 1980s bent. Everything else is basically how you remember it from GHII, including most of the same characters, venues, and modes, but now everything's been tinted neon to indicate that, yes, this is very much the '80s. In theory, such an expansion could be an extremely welcome addition to any Guitar Hero fan's library, but Rocks the 80s doesn't quite deliver on its promise. There's a good chunk of significant '80s hits on here, as well as a few inspired, lesser-known choices, but at a price tag of $50, 30 mostly solid songs doesn't sound like such a great deal.
Getting right into the soundtrack, Rocks the 80s deserves credit for not just going the easy route and churning out nothing but cheesy hair metal tracks. Certainly there's plenty of that on there, with big-time hits like Ratt's "Round and Round," Poison's "Nothin' But a Good Time," Winger's "Seventeen," and Twisted Sister's "I Wanna Rock" all on hand. But then you also get lighter rock tracks, like Asia's "Heat of the Moment", pop rock tunes like The Romantics' "What I Like About You," and new wave classics like The Vapors' "Turning Japanese" and Flock of Seagulls' "I Ran." You'll even get some neat choices from the underbelly of '80s rockitude that might not be immediately familiar but are a lot of fun to play, like Oingo Boingo's "Only a Lad," The Police's "Synchronicity II," and .38 Special's "Hold On Loosely."
Of course, it's not all good stuff. Roughly two-thirds of the tracklist could be considered fun either because it's a cool song to play, or just because it's a big hit with a memorable riff. The rest scrapes the bottom of the '80s barrel like a fourth run of I Love the '80s. Does anyone besides those who spent the entirety of the decade inside seedy metal bars even remember who Faster Pussycat is, let alone the song "Bathroom Wall"? "Radar Love" is a heck of a song, but seriously, the White Lion version of it? Not the one you really want to be playing. And while the inclusion of a faux-80s song from joke-band Limozeen is mildly amusing, it's the sort of thing that would have just been a throwaway bonus song in another Guitar Hero game.
At least most of the covers are quite good, and there are even several original master tracks, including "Round and Round" and "I Ran." "I Wanna Rock" is also a master, though it's from a much later Twisted Sister release. It sounds a little like Dee Snyder at the front of a Twisted Sister cover band, and it sticks out like a sore thumb.
Those flaws aside, the tracklist is ultimately pretty solid. It's as eclectic a mix of songs as you'll find in any of the Guitar Hero games. The real trouble is that there's just a lot less to it. Thirty songs for what basically amounts to an expansion sounds about right, but $50 for those 30 songs is pretty much a rip-off, especially when you consider that both the original Guitar Hero and Guitar Hero II (sans included guitar) had way more songs, and cost just as much. It doesn't help that there's no new supplementary content in this version, and in fact, some of the content from Guitar Hero II has been out-and-out removed. There are fewer characters to choose from, the Stonehenge stage has been cut, and there are no bonus songs of any kind to unlock past the core 30 tracks. On the plus side, you do still get all the same multiplayer modes for the new songs, as well as the excellent practice mode.
My rating : 7 out of 10.
Label: guitar hero, pc games, ps2
There's a reason why the Civilization series is one of the oldest and most beloved strategy game dynasties you can find on computers today. The addictive turn-based games draw on real-world history and offer open-ended gameplay that lets you conquer the world as a warlord, diplomat, or scientist. They also have a disturbing tendency to keep you up late into the night taking "just one more turn." Civilization IV was an award-winning new chapter in the series in 2005, and last year's Warlords expansion pack helped make a good thing even better. And now, the Beyond the Sword expansion brings even more improvements to a solid foundation. The new game adds plenty of features that breathe new life into the core Civilization gameplay, and also tosses in lots of new content in the form of new modifications ("mods") and custom scenarios to play through. Not all of the expansion's additions are clear-cut improvements, but if you're a Civ fan, you'll find that Beyond the Sword will give you plenty of reasons to get hooked all over again.
The core game of Civilization IV starts you out with a national world leader who possesses a few advantageous "traits" in various specializations (military, scientific, economic, or cultural) and starts you off at a specific era in history to conquer the world through force, science, economy, or culture. Beyond the Sword adds new world leaders to play as, as well as new leader traits that help expand certain strategies, such as the "protective" trait, whose defensive properties aid players who seek to conquer the world using scientific research to win the space race, and the "imperialistic" trait, which greatly speeds the production of "settler" units that can be used to stake new claims in uncharted territory by building new cities.
The expansion also offers new options to create customized games to your liking, such as the handy "advanced game" mode, which starts you in a game about 10 turns in, unmolested. This helps get you into the game's truly interesting action (beyond just building your first city) faster. You can also opt to use the expansion's new events system, which randomly triggers various events that take place throughout the game. Many of these events aren't all that important, but some can have farther-reaching consequences, such as changing your standing with a rival nation. If nothing else, they add some welcome variety to the usual turn-based Civilization pace, and they can be toggled off if you don't care to use them in a custom game.
Beyond the Sword's more significant in-game features are espionage and corporations, which are interesting additions that bring even more variety to the game, though they aren't always practical or all that useful. Corporations essentially act like late-game religions; that is, just like with Civ IV's original religion system that let you spread religion from city to city, the expansion's corporations can spread around the world--though in this case, they focus on various economic specialties like cereal mills, mining companies, or even a chain of sushi restaurants. When used properly, they can provide powerful economic advantages, but they're balanced out by their substantial maintenance costs, even though these can only be accessed much later in the game.
Espionage, on the other hand, doesn't figure quite as prominently into the average game of Civ IV. This new feature was supposed to give you exciting new options with the new spy units, which can scout out other nations and perform undercover operations like gathering additional info on your rivals or stealing their technologies. Unfortunately, spies don't provide enough advantages to justify constantly pumping them out and sending them to the four corners of the world, since they frequently get discovered and captured before they can even get to enemy territory. In many cases, you may find yourself just skipping out on the turns it would take you to research espionage improvements to focus on your scientific research or military might. Fortunately, the expansion offers plenty of other accoutrements for the game's core strategies, including a fistful of new units, new combat tweaks to better balance siege combat, and an expanded space-race game for technophiles that makes a space-race victory not just a matter of who builds a shuttle first, but who builds the best and fastest one.
Label: civilization IV, pc games, strategy game