Taking Rhythm Games to a New Level

Rhythm games have been very popular for years, starting out in the arcades, with the dance pads coming to the living rooms. Also im sure you are aware of the popular franchise, Guitar Hero and more recently, Rock Band. These two games focus on the playing being able to play the songs of well known rock bands using popular instruments, the most common being the guitar.

I got given the latest Guitar hero for Christmas and i thoroughly enjoyed it, still play it know, pretending im a rockstar whilst tapping away at a piece of plastic with 5 coloured buttons.

However, now the creators of Rock Band have upped the tempo and have incorporated a 'Pro Mode' for the guitar, drums and keyboard parts of the songs. The one that stands out for me is the guitar. Instead of just having 5 buttons and a strum bar, you get the full 102 threats and six strings:

However, instead of full length strings, you get a button, 1 for each threat. No more pretty colours which you can learn to play well in a few weeks, this will take months of practice to play well. What i like about it is that beginners won't get overwhelmed by tuning and having to develop calluses. This is what put me off learning guitar back in school, or it was the fact i was 14 and dedicate my time to anything, apart form games. Now i could play and learn at the same time. You can even plug it into your pc and use a MIDI sequencer and have a blast.

Of course some people will think that they will pick this up and then be able to play a real guitar well. Not the case, sure you will know the chord placements and what not, but will you be able to hold the threats down properly, know how pinch harmonics work and whamming.

It is a very sturdy stepping stone though, that i think will get a lot of people learning the guitar from this. I'm quite tempted myself to pick on up, even at the £109 price tag.

I think this is a big turning point for rhythm games, and i suspect there will be many to follow.

You Don't Need Fancy Graphics to Have Fun

Quite a will ago i stumbled across a game called Minecraft, because it was mentioned on the team fortress 2 blog. It is certainly an interesting game. For a lot of people the graphics, or should i say, art style, are an interesting choice. I suspect they are as simple as they are is because it is only been worked on by one indie game developer until now.

The purpose of the game is to survive, and build what ever you want. You start with nothing and simply punch the ground or trees to collect blocks of dirt, wood etc. You can then craft items to create others and combine them to make tools, armor and weapons. What i love about this game is the fact that each time you create a new game the level is randomly generated, and can become the up to 8 times the size of the earth, or until your computer runs out of steam. Here is a fly over, showing the random generator at work:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1DBzT5U6_gw

It can produced some amazing scenes even though it is made out of blocks.

I'm quite a fan of indie games, they show promising ideas, unlike many mainstream developers, producing the same first person shooters over and over, just with slightly better graphics.

You can play the free version if you visit www.minecraft.net where you have unlimited blocks and can only build things, if you want to get the most out of it you have to pay, and it has only just entered beta. I reckon in the next 6 months this game will be pretty damn popular.