Artless Gamer

If you are only a little bit like me, you will make careful decisions on how you buy your games. I consider whether I need this title based on its genre, based on the content, the re-playability, the maximum amount of hours in the game, the depth or lack of multiplayer and many more.

On some occasions I have to prioritize and cut down my options. Guitar Hero Metallica would have been one of those cuts. I don’t see why I should pay $40 to $50 for a disc with a few Metallica songs on it.

I suppose this is the kind of conclusion you come to when you aren’t a Guitar Hero fan. Anyone with any real interest in the game would have probably gone and checked out the actual track list for the game. I can’t help but think, however, that a lot of people will pass on this game merely because they think that it’s not worth the money.

After all, it doesn’t state anywhere on the box that over half of the disc is filled with other awesome bands. On the back of the box it just says something along the lines of “Rock with Metallica blah blah blah and the bands that influenced them.” They list the Metallica tracks  but not the ones by the other artists. If I was in the store with no option to get more information on the game, I wouldn’t buy it. I want to know exactly what I’m getting – no surprises.

Metallica Songs

All Nightmare Long
Battery
Creeping Death
Disposable Heroes
Dyers Eve
Enter Sandman
Fade To Black
Fight Fire With Fire
For Whom The Bell Tolls
Frantic
Fuel
Hit The Lights
King Nothing
Master of Puppets
Mercyful Fate (Medley)
No Leaf Clover
Nothing Else Matters
One
Orion
Sad But True
Seek And Destroy
The Memory Remains
The Shortest Straw
The Thing That Should Not Be
The Unforgiven
Welcome Home (Sanitarium)
Wherever I May Roam
Whiplash

Other Artists

Alice In Chains – No Excuses
Bob Seger – Turn The Page
Corrosion of Conformity – Albatross
Diamond Head – Am I Evil?
Foo Fighters – Stacked Actors
Judas Priest – Hell Bent For Leather
Kyuss – Demon Cleaner
Lynyrd Skynyrd – Tuesdays Gone
Machine Head – Beautiful Mourning
Mastodon – Blood And Thunder
Mercyful Fate – Evil
Michael Schenker Group – Armed and Ready
Motorhead – Ace of Spades
Queen – Stone Cold Crazy
Samhain – Mother of Mercy
Slayer – War Ensemble
Social Distortion – Mommy’s Little Monster
Suicidal Tendencies – War Inside My Head
System of a Down – Toxicity
The Sword – Black River
Thin Lizzy – The Boys Are Back in Town

Perhaps they should have just called it Guitar Hero Metallica and other bands that are better than Metallica.

So don’t skip this one just because its only Metallica – it’s not. There’s much more to this game than James Hetfield’s ugly mug and if you ask me, drummers should get a break on this one. If Lars Ulrich can’t keep a beat, then why should the player?

Popularity: 10% [?]

A few updates ago Microsoft added the Games on Demand option to the Xbox360 Dashboard. On top of that, if you have an Xbox Live account, you can also add games to your download queue straight from the Xbox.com Marketplace. Good going, Microsoft. We love the feature and it makes downloading new titles, add-ons or other things much easier when we can’t be in front of our consoles.

However, not all titles are available in all regions. Some titles are region blocked and won’t allow you to download the selected content. If you try to download such a title you may get a message looking something like this “The game’s region does not match this console” or some variation of it. Besides Major Nelson’s blog, which gives a small hint as to which region can download a certain piece of content, there is very little indication as to the availability of a title.

The other day, Streifenhecht decides to download Assassin’s Creed from Games on Demand on his Xbox 360. No luck. Didn’t work. The same thing happened to me when I first tried to download Mass Effect. A few days later I decided to try again – I have no clue why I tried it again but this time around the download started and I was able to download Mass Effect without any issues. The same counted for Fable II. When I told Streifenhecht about this at work, he went to Xbox.com because he knew he could download games from the web based marketplace, as well. Read the rest of this entry »

Popularity: 70% [?]

A typical DMZ

Often enough it will happen that you can’t join a server, or can’t be joined in co-op mode of some game because of firwall issues. Some port is blocking proper communication over the network.

If you’re playing on a PC, the game manual will most commonly tell you which ports you have to open for the connection to work as intended. And if you’re playing on a console, there are usually a set number of ports that you have to forward to the console in order for games to establish a proper connection to the servers.

For new gamers, setting up port forwarding is already a daunting task. Router manufacturers haven’t really done much to make it easier on people who don’t happen to know the difference between a service and a rule, between port mapping, port forwarding and port triggering, or simply what a DMZ ist and how there aren’t really any DMZ’s on routers but instead DMZ Hosts.

You’re ready to play ODST, you fire up co-op play, you send a game and party invite to your buddy and all of a sudden you get the message that the party couldn’t be established because of some network problems. You get a chance to diagnose the issue but the offered solutions are often inane since they always lead to the same two suggestions “Contact support” or “Change the NAT type of your router”. Let’s ignore the fact that you can’t really change the NAT “type” on a common consumer router.

So, if you are a PC gamer you’re screwed. You have to port forward your way along until everything works. And when you think that all ports were configured, you probably still forgot something … like Punk Buster or some such cumbersome anti-cheating software that still isn’t properly integrated into games.

However, if you are a console gamer, then you are in luck. If you want to get rid of all your firewall problems in one quick step, then just place your console into a DMZ host. Most routers have this option and what it does it to pretty much open up all ports for your console, only.

Go here to receive instructions on how to forward ports and make other settings on your router.

I don’t recommend setting your PC into the DMZ, though. It leaves you open to all kinds of foul play. Only do this with consoles as they can’t be accessed by way of the internets.

Popularity: 72% [?]

We’re live and soon you’ll find all the little useful things you won’t find on the manufacturer’s pages.

Popularity: 100% [?]