Shard Eighteen - Game On

Alright, which topic should I start with? Let's flip a coin.

*flips a coin*

Rock Band it is.

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This is a more personal update, here. As in, it's not particularly exciting. It's mainly just for those of you who love hearing about my personal activities.

For those of you who've been living under a rock and don't know what Rock Band is about, it's a music-based video game. You've got a Guitar controller, a Drums controller, and a Microphone. All adds up to a rock band; guitarist, bassist, drummer, and vocalist. (Bassists just use the same guitar controller, since there's not any difference in the gameplay for the controllers, only a difference in the song charts.)

Anyway, I play Rock Band 2 almost non-stop. I'm at Expert level on all of the instruments (the highest difficulty), and out of the hundred-plus songs I've got, I can beat all but three of them on guitar.
One particularly fun play style is if you've got a mic stand; set up the microphone on the stand, and play the guitar or bass at the same time. It's decidedly more complex (tough to watch both charts at the same time), but if you know the song, you can do it very well. It's quite fun.

Just today, I've finished up a fun project, which is the subject of this section; using PVC pipe, I've constructed a boom-style microphone stand. Why? So I can play drums and vocals both at once.
It's decidedly harder then vocals/guitar, but it's a ton of fun. I'm still finding out which songs I'm good enough at to finish on Expert with both vocals and drums, but so far, it's been working out.
I've got a habit of singing at a very low volume, since singing isn't something I'm totally comfortable with. But it's something I've been wanting to get more comfortable at; drums/vocals seems to be fixing that. I'm not sure, but I think I'm singing louder when I'm doing them both. (Mainly because the drum controller is quite loud, and I need to sing a bit louder to hear myself, hah.)

...that's about it, I suppose. Anyone else play Rock Band 2? I'd love to hop on XBox Live and play with you. =D

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And now for the tails on the coin flip (yep, I flipped a heads).

The so-called "TRICO" game.

For those of you who haven't heard of ICO (I won't re-use the "under a rock" expression this time, since the game is sadly not extremely well-known), ICO was a very early game for the PS2 system. And might I add, still an amazing game, borderline artwork.
It's gained a cult following more or less, not gaining a ton of widespread fans; not because it wasn't impressive, but because it just wasn't very well-known or advertised.
The game developer, Team ICO (led by the visionary who thought up the concept for ICO, Fumito Ueda), later made a second game, Shadow of the Colossus. Another amazing game, this time slightly more popular, having ICO as a predecessor.

And now, Team ICO is working on "TRICO", which is a working title for their third game. Very little is known about it, other then the fact that it's in production, it'll be for the PS3, and it'll probably be really good.
And recently, a teaser trailer for the game was released. It's still a little tough to tell what the game's story will be like, but it seems to be another adventure/puzzler game, like the previous two. And it looks very impressive, which is why I'm taking all this time to lead up to a simple video.



I'm certainly looking forward to buying this the day it's released. (more info)

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