A PAX East Low-Def Photo History

2010

Gamers Gaming - Expo Floor

Mr. Pope - Rock Band Lounge

Rock Band Lounge

Open Chord Rhythm Game Prototype - Expo Floor

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Do Not Become a Zombie at PAX East

This weekend marks the 3rd annual Penny Arcade Exposition East (better known as PAX East) at the Boston Exhibition and Conference Center (BCEC) on the Boston, MA waterfront. There are some basic guideline’s to think about before traveling to such an event.  First off, tickets are sold out. Don’t expect to buy a ticket at the door. 70,000 (or so) tickets are sold for this event on an annual basis.

For those going to PAX East this weekend, I’d like to give a few tips to help you stay safe, comfortable, and avoid the highly toxic PAX flu (which generally invades your body 2-4 days after closing day of PAX).

Random tips for those attending PAX:

1. Wear comfortable shoes. The BCEC is huge, and you will walk several miles throughout the weekend just traveling around the convention center.
2. Have cash on hand. Not for the muggers, but for cabs (if you want to explore the real side of Boston, which is about a 2 mile walk), and food. Credit cards are welcome just about everywhere, but cash will be handy for those times when it’s the only accepted option.
3. Dress in layers. It will get warm indoors, but outside will likely be windy and cool as the BCEC is right on the waterfront.
4. Bring a backpack. To carry your layers, and all the swag you will pick up each day. Trust me, you will get a ton of swag, like it or not.
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app-a-day: Rock Band Reloaded for BlackBerry

Today we dive into one of my favorite games of all time, on one of the mobile devices I use daily. How do you think Rock Band will hold up on BlackBerry? Will it rock or not? Read on… 

NAME: Rock Band Reloaded

PUBLISHER: Electronic Arts

PLATFORM: BlackBerry

GENRE: Rhythm Game

PRICE: $6.99

TRY IT: N/A

BUY IT: http://appworld.blackberry.com/webstore/content/22193?lang=en

WHAT IT DOES: Are you aware of that console game with plastic guitars, plastic drums, and karaoke style vocals? If you are on this site, I’m sure you are aware of Rock Band. Well, this is a BlackBerry mobile version of that game. It’s actually, the second version of Rock Band for BlackBerry, the first being titled Rock Band Mobile. Rock Band Reloaded does not actually use any plastic instruments or karaoke vocals. In their place, are dots scrolling across or down the screen that you need to tap in syncronization with the music. For touchscreen BlackBerry’s, all the commands work well on-screen.  For non-touchscreen BlackBerry’s the keyboard has commands to simulate screen touches.

As for the music, you do not actually the real songs, or the full songs. What you do get is 16-bit renditions of the songs without vocals. Think of the sounds from Sega Genesis games. As for song lengths, after about 2 minutes, the in-game songs fade out and end.

Graphically, the game is fine. The background looks like what is on Rock Band 1 on consoles. The notes coming at you look nearly identical to what you get on consoles too.  Instead of having your band rocking out on stage in the background, you just get a static image of a band or a player.

Now, let’s talk gameplay. With easy, medium, and hard modes available, you get the ability to tap a few or a lot of bars coming at you. I found it ok in tapping the screen for guitar, bass, and drums. It’s not overly responsive, but not frustratingly poor either.  For the simulated vocals, you tap notes on-screen due to the lack of real vocals. I found the side-scrolling of vocals impossible to get the full 4-stars (and difficult to get 3-stars).

There are single song playlists and a World Tour mode like in Rock Band 1 for consoles. With World Tour mode there are achievements encouraging you play the songs multiple times to achieve the necessary score or goal to gain the achievement and unlock other songs.

You won’t find any DLC available for Rock Band Reloaded. You get 20 songs.

DO I WANT IT: As an extremely hardcore Rock Band player on Xbox 360, I have played Rock Band Reloaded many times. I have also played the iPhone and Android versions as well (those have full-length real versions of the songs, high resolution graphics, and DLC). This BlackBerry version is no comparison to its Xbox, Android, or iPhone brethren. This game is better to play with the audio turned off, since the lo-fi audio is terrible and does not always sync to the notes on-screen.

I almost wish Harmonix did not put their name on this version of Rock Band, as it is by far the worst implementation of a Rock Band game on any platform. Unfortunately, there is not a free version to try first, so I did buy the app at the steep $7 price point.

In summary, stay away from this abomination. BlackBerry has never been known as a good gaming platform, and this game proves why.

Others agree:

“Worst game you could ever buy for your phone”

“It doesn’t hav full songs and no singing”

“I’m a Rock Band fanboy…And this version of the game is an embarrassment.  The music is all MIDI renditions of the original (think 8-bit Super Mario Bros theme song). Songs fade out about 3/4 through the song. There are no vocals, they are all replaced with synth MIDI sounds. Graphics are decent, achievements are nice, menus are good…looks like the iPhone version. The music issues heavily outweigh the decent look of the game.” <– Actually I left that review in BlackBerry App World

app-a-day: Airport Mania 2 Wild Trips HD

Welcome to our new feature app-a-day. It’s pretty simple, we pick an app (chosen either by you or our editors) and walk through its details. You might get a mobile app, console app, browser app, or something else. We will work on making this a regular feature, based on traffic to the site and feedback in comments. If you like this feature, or hate it, let us know.

To start things off, read on…

Airport Mania 2: Wild Trips HD (for Tablets)

NAME: Airport Mania 2: Wild Trips HD for Tablets

PUBLISHER: Reflexive Entertainment

PLATFORM: Android (also available on Windows and Mac)

GENRE: Casual Game

PRICE: $1.99 Android tablets, 99¢ Android phones

TRY IT:

BUY IT: http://amzn.to/wrVIiI

WHAT IT DOES: Basically, you act as air traffic controller and lands planes. But, there is more to it. You guide planes to terminals for unloading/loading, you direct them the the garage for repairs, fueling, etc. So, you are the eye in the sky. It gets frantic quickly with many planes looking to land/take-off with limited runways and terminals. You also earn money to upgrade your airport. There are plenty of “achievements” and in-game mini-games, like popping ballons in between slinging jets around.

DO I WANT IT: The graphics and audio are very nice, looks great on a 10″ tablet. The game is very fluid, and well developed. You can play this game on a phone, but the touch screen gestures make it difficult to tap the right spot accurately. (For phones, I suggest going with the 99 cent non-HD version). The developer is also regularly adding updates and levels to the game.

This game is addictingly fun, and the challenge grows at a good level. So, yes I want this game. It’s worth the two bucks.

Others agree:

“I’m not very good at these time/task management types of games, but I found this one to have a pretty good difficulty curve. It was relatively simple in the first few stages, then slowly started to get more hectic and difficult. However, the “minimum score” to pass the level has generally been pretty low, so I think even people who are worse at these types of games than I am could still have fun and progress!!”

“this game surprises, it’s a feel good kind of game,something you can play for 5 minutes or hours. the concept is simple but the game itself can be challenging. you wont regreat buying this game.“

What’s MyGGGo Doing?

Hey, if you are reading this….thanks and why?

Months have gone by, many months. No Rock Band news or rants. No updates on my gadget obsessions. No shameless plugs for online deals to support our sponsors. Nuthin! So what gives?

Our first four years were very active (2007-2010), with multiple writers and sometimes many articles per day. (Remember, we run this site pro bono, make gilch, for free). Well not entirely true. It cost us money to keep it running. We do on a very rare occasion make a coin or two if you check out our sponsor links or buy from one of our Amazon links.

2011 had a turn (not for the worse, no one died or anything), just a turn. Shawn started a side-project in the smartphone security space (of course MyGGGo was already a side-project). He also started another side-project developing technical training courses. And finally started another side-project playing drums in a couple bands. Oops…I think that’s 3 too many side-projects.

Where are all the other writers from MyGGGo? They have faded into their lives, and we haven’t worked at replacing them. Our bad.

MyGGGo has suffered. I can’t say 2012 will return us to previous levels, but here’s a first ditch effort. Coming this week, will be our new feature, known as App-A-Day.

Since we have literally hundreds of apps (from business to games to time wasters) for many platforms, We are bringing (sexy) back all three G’s to MyGGGo (Gadget, Game, and Gizmo Obsession) with this new feature. We will have a standard format for App-A-Day and will walk through the details of an app, the good, the bad, the malicious, the free, the ridiculously expensive.

Get ready for stuff from the Android Market, iOS App Store, Mac App Store, Chrome Apps, Xbox 360 games, Xbox 360 Dashboard apps, BlackBerry apps, Wii games. We will go all over the map. Why the whole map, well we actually use them all.

Join us later this week for the first real blast-o-news for 2012 with App-A-Day. If you have any preference of platform, type of app, or a specific app you’d like us to highlight on App-A-Day, drop us a line below.

$3 for 22 Classic Video Game Theme Songs

You are sure to find a classic that you love now, or grew up loving. Check out this deal at Amazon today. It’s a no brainer if you are on this site.

I’ve setup a link from the post (hint, hint: it helps me pays the bills to keep this site running).

I’m off to pick it up now, and I bet you are too.

Rock Band 3 Midi PRO-Adapter for just $25

It’s on NOW! Amazon just started a Lightning Deal of the Rock Band 3 MIDI PRO Adapter for only $25. These are the adaptors which allow real electronic drum kits, real keyboards, and the Fender Squier (designed for Rock Band 3) to be connected to your console for your rocking pleasure.
Here’s the link. Go now, get yourself some PRO adapters and rock out.

Rock Band 3 MIDI PRO Adapter

Original Tweet from Amazon: “Morning all…at 10am PST, get the Rock Band 3 Midi PRO-Adapter (all platforms) for just $25.”

Rock Band Slacker Radio: January DLC

This is the second update this week. This time 17 more Rock Band 3 DLC songs are added.

Get ready for some Johnny Cash, Linkin Park, and Stone Sour added to the Rock Band station. With this update, all available (Rock Band proper) DLC through January 25, 2011 is on the station.  Enjoy!

INCLUDES ALL SONGS THRU 1/25/2011.

NEW:

Johnny Cash - Johnny Cash 01 pack

Linkin Park - Linkin Park 01 pack

Stone Sour - Stone Sour 01 pack

Direct link to Rock Band Station on Slacker.com

Xbox Indie Shmup Controlled with Microphone

Check this out. Use Rock Band mics to player a shoot-em-up Xbox Indie game. YouTube link below says it all.

Original article here:
http://www.siliconera.com/2011/04/04/this-xbox-live-shoot-em-up-is-controlled-using-a-microphone/

Rock Band Slacker Radio: All DLC through 2010

I will keep this simple. After four months, I got off my butt and added a bunch of Rock Band 3 DLC songs to the Slacker Radio Rock Band station.  More than 40 songs were added in this update. With this update, all available (Rock Band proper) DLC through January 1, 2011 is on the station.  Enjoy!

INCLUDES ALL SONGS THRU 12/28/2010.

NEW:

John Lennon - Imagine album
38 Special – “Hold On Loosely“
Bad Company – “Can’t Get Enough“
Lynyrd Skynyrd - Lynyrd Skynyrd 01 pack
Queen - Queen Extravaganza Pack 01
Billy Joel - Billy Joel: The Hits: Rock Band Edition pack
John & Yoko, The Plastic Ono Band – “Happy Xmas (War Is Over)”
Anaïs Croze – “Peut-Être une Angine”
BB Brunes – “Dis-Moi”
BAP – “Verdamp Lang Her”
Wir sind Helden – “Nur ein Wort”
Linea 77 – “Fantasma”
Litfiba – “Proibito”
Skizoo – “Dame Aire”
Caesars – “Jerk It Out“
Paul McCartney - Celebrating Band on the Run pack
Inhabited – “Open My Eyes”
Siouxsie and The Banshees – “Cities in Dust“

Direct link to Rock Band Station on Slacker.com