Guitar Hero. Best Game Ever. It needs a ‘guitar controller’, but you can buy a bundle with the game and the controller for about $80.
I have played Guitar Hero, and then Guitar Hero II, almost every day now for the last six months or so. No video game has ever had that kind of replay value for me. It’s truly awesome.
You do have to like rock music, though. If you’re a country or classical type, you probably won’t like the music. But if your taste in music runs the gamut from David Bowie to Aerosmith, Stevie Ray Vaughan, Van Halen, Red Hot chili Peppers, Black Sabbath, Queen, Clapton, etc., then you will absolutely love this game.
A great computer simulation lets you experience what it would be like to do something that would otherwise be unnattainable - drive a tank, fly an airplane, whatever. Guitar Hero is a simulator that lets you experience what it would be like to shred a guitar solo in front of thousands of fans, and it’s a better simulation than anything else I’ve every played. It really feels like the real thing, without taking years to learn to play a real guitar at that level (I play real guitar as well, so I know what it feels like).
I’ve had lots of people come to my house and play guitar hero. Almost every one who has went out and bought the game. A couple of people went and bought PS2’s just to play the game. So did I.
To answer this part of your post: I had an Xbox with a Thomson drive (see here for a few pics that show how to tell which drive you have) that started giving the dreaded “dirty disc error” screen after every 15 min or so of play. Finally, I just bought a modded Samsung drive off eBay for about fifty bucks, swapped it in, and it has thereafter worked like a champ.
Now, this is something I’d recommend only if you have A) fifty bucks, B) enough technical expertise to open a computer case and swap out a DVD drive, and C) the guts to do some minor cutting of your Xbox’s case. If you have all of those, you can give it a shot. If you want specifics, the drive I bought was a modded Samsung 616T, but they’re getting rarer (not being manufactured anymore), so you probably should decide what you want to do pretty quickly.
Interesting. Does it have some sort of proprietary interface, or could you stick any P-ATA dvd drive in there? You could pick up a usable drive for $15…
Well, I don’t know that it’s the best game for PS2, but it probably bears mentioning that in Japan, the best selling PS2 game to date was Dragon Quest VIII, a very traditional console-RPG (cite). And Square-Enix is moving the series, THE big-name series over there , to DS next. Think about that for a little while.
Anyways, for me the best PS2 games would be, in no particular order: Final Fantasy X, Ace Combat 4, Castlevania: Lament of Innocence, & Katamari Damacy
Honorable Mention: Soul Calibur 2, but the Gamecube and Xbox versions were better. Also, Dead or Alive 2, but again, the Xbox version (part of the DOA Ultimate package) is better. And Zone of the Enders 1 & 2, but: a.) you kinda need to be able to appreciate anime like Macross or Gundam to dig them, and b.) ZOE 2nd Runner’s cut-scenes are terrible.
On further review, I’d like to throw in supporting votes for Ico and Shadows of the Colossus. They wouldn’t necessarily be in my top 5, but they’re great games by any measure.
I should say that I like just about any game type except realistic driving games, sports games, and rythm games (although I loved the first Parappa the Rapper on PS1).
Another honorable mention would be Prince of Persia: Sands of Time (but not the two follow-ups, they lost the charm and atmosphere of the first one), I prefer the Xbox, but this is simply a must-play game if you haven’t already.
Disaster Report can be found for less than $15 now and is an interesting twist on the whole “survival horror” genre. Instead of dealing with monsters, you have to deal with earthquakes that come out of nowhere and it’s extremely nervewracking. (Especially when there’s several skyscrapers crumbling down around you and you have to quickly find a safe spot before you get squashed…)
Rule of Rose has some sucky gameplay aspects, but the atmosphere and storyline completely make up for it and I literally could not stop thinking about it for about a week after I had finished. If you like horror stories, play this game. It’s very, very creepy and would make a GREAT movie.
I don’t know…I have this game and have played maybe half way through it before I gave up. Why? I got sick of looking at the same green-brown-gray color palette all the time. Boring gray buildings, dull green/brown grass and a boring gray sky overhead non-stop. I really care about the environment of a game and so I had a very hard time enjoying Mercenaries. The missions could also be quite frustrating, and were also pretty repetitive - invade enemy base, capture guy, call in chopper, etc.
There are good points, however. It’s very cool to be able to call in airstrikes and watch them destroy whatever you’ve targeted (in some cases, huge buildings.) I mean, yeah, it’s horrible to think that people are perishing in the explosions or being crushed to death in the rubble, but it’s pretty fun to have that kind of power in a game. And, I mean, maybe the buildings are empty anyway and everyone has a day off at the time that you’re blowing up the building. Or everyone inside it is a soulless Communist with pure evil in his heart. Also, it’s fun hijacking helicopters. You climb to the top of a hill, wait for the chopper to swoop down low, and grab hold of the landing skid things or whatever they’re called (Johnny L.A.? ) throwing the pilot from the cockpit and taking the controls. Unrealistic, yes, but fun to watch. It’s also kind of cool having supplies air-dropped to you, and it’s extra cool to watch the cargo helicopter lower a jeep for you to drive.
OK, actually, this game is pretty good. I think I’m going to go play it now.
The color palette issue still bugs me, though. Dammit. I wish I weren’t so aesthetically picky. Fortunately, a new Mercenaries for PS3 is on its way which takes place in a tropical environment, which will be much nicer to look at.
Well, here’s the thing: as I understand it, the drive interface is standard IDE. The drive power connector, however, is freakishly NON-standard, and modding a stock drive to work in the Xbox requires the soldering of about eight 30-gauge wires, which I wasn’t comfortable doing. If you are, however, there are instructions to be found out there on the web. Some folk will just split the power connector from the hard drive; I had heard that some people who did that encountered problems with their hard drives, so I didn’t want to do that.
Before any of that, though, you have to get a drive that’ll work in your Xbox. You can’t just snag any old drive. The Samsung 616T was my choice because the firmware could be flashed to make it report and behave like a Samsung 605, which was the drive the Xbox would talk to. And, at the time I bought it, the 616T was in greater supply than the 605. So, I’m afraid you can’t just grab any DVD drive off the shelf and expect it to perform; a little research will tell you what will work.
How…surreal. With a similar time investment, one can learn to play a real guitar. Having said that, I haven’t played Guitar Hero (since I do already know how to play guitar), so perhaps I’m missing the point. My impression was that its a DDR style button-twitch with a good soundtrack, no?
Anyway, agree on many of the recommendations here, and would like to add the Jak series (at least II, the best one), if you like sandbox/platforming with a fantasy twist. I’m a sucker for a good platformer or adventurish title with a mix of gameplay, so Jak, Ratchet & Clank, Beyond Good and Evil, etc etc were big fun for me.
And if you like arcade racers, Burnout (any) is awesome.
Yeah, but you don’t sit around with your friends, drinking beer and learning to plan an “E”, which is how we play Guitar Hero. It’s much more social than just learning the guitar.
All of the guys I play GH with (except for myself and one other guy) all play guitar, and all love the game (in some cases, more than I do)… While it doesn’t help them play the game (well, they’re initially a bit better because they’re more used to moving their fingers in the proper manner) or improve their guitar skills, it’s still damn fun.
I guess you could boil it down to “a DDR style button-twitch with a good soundtrack” but it really doesn’t do it justice. Yes, it’s in the same vein as DDR, but I can’t stand DDR… The presentation, the polish, the guitar itself (the controller’s a big part of the game) in my opinion blow DDR out of the water.
That’s part of what I thought looked so nice about the game- Lush autumn tones. The game took place in North Korea warzone in the fall. Did you want bright spring colors?
The airstrikes and vehicle options made the standard mission activities fun.
Okay I have to storm a compound and capture a guy.
Do I-
A. Use a humvee
B. Use a scout chopper
C. Use Civilian car
D. Chinese APC
E. On foot
F. Level the place with a fuel-air bomb
etc. etc.
Mercenaries 2 and Dynasty Warriors 6 are the only reasons I’m considering a PS3.
I dunno, all I remember is gray, brown, green. When I think autumn I think red, yellow, brown, orange - why not have all those tones in the game? Is it that much harder to make a few trees yellow or orange here and there? Something about the color palette seemed washed out to me. Maybe I’m too hung up on aesthetics, I don’t know. Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater has the same kind of environments but it uses the full range of the color palette and the environments are much more satisfying to look at because of it (although Metal Gear Solid 1 is a great game, and a must-play for anyone wanting a good story and action gameplay, I had the same complaint about the blue-gray-green color scheme of the game. This is why Snake Eater was such a breath of fresh air.) Unfortunately, despite the graphical advances, MGS4 seems to take place in a dusty desert and the whole game seems to be in brown and tan. I really wish more games would be more colorful in general. Mafia for PC and Xbox is a good example of a game that is extremely bold, vivid, and colorful, and the environments are so much fun to look at because of it.
And just to give you the opposing view: I liked the first Jak and Daxter but found Jak 2 to be awful. It suffered from a very poorly done attempt to make the game more “mature”. And if you want to talk about pointless down time between tasks, there was ten to fifteen minutes of driving through almost identical looking streets between each task.
I just started playing last night but I’ve got to give a recommendation to Indigo Prophecy. Unless it goes way downhill after about five hours of play it is superb. The game is extremely disturbing and creepy. The game starts with a cut scene of your character murdering a man and then procedes to have you control both the murderer escaping and the police investigating the crime. It’s odd but it works.
I play guitar as well. With a similar time investment, you can not learn to play even remotely as well as you can learn to play the Guitar in Guitar Hero. I guarantee you that no one will be able to pick up a real guitar and within six months be able to lay down a killer version of “Texas Flood”.
But really, that’s not the point. It’s a game. It’s not just that you’re experiencing playing a guitar. It’s that you’re experiencing playing guitar in a rock band. Blasting out Sweet Child O’ Mine with a full band, in front of thousands of people. Plus, you’re trying to get high scores, unlock songs and new instruments, etc.
I’m also a pilot, and I enjoy flight simulators. I drive a car, and I enjoy driving simulators.
But I don’t blame you for being skeptical. I’ve always been baffled by the appeal of rhythm games, and when I first heard of Guitar Hero I thought exactly the same thing you did - hey, why not just play my real guitar? But then I tried it, and was hooked almost instantly.
