NXE:
Everyone here should know about NXE, or New Xbox Experience. It's a major update to the Xbox software. Anyway, to review this let's break it down into a few catagories:
Aesthetics
Usefulness
Speed
Other/Misc
Aesthetics: Huge upgrade, it looks much sleeker. They dropped the "Blade" menu scheme (Although I heard you could set it to that manually) and turned it into a larger menu. Categories with box details under it, very lovey. The Guide menu changed from a blade to a pop-up menu. It's simplistic rounded blue and white theme makes it very appeasing. The background to the Dashboard is also animated now. Some backgrounds swirl around and such, and your old backgrounds are still available. You can even customize your own Avatar. These Avatars are totally Mii's, but they beat the living stuff out of Mii's. Almost 4x the customization options, and you even have a wardrobe.
Very lovey, 9/10.
Usefulness: This new theme makes EVERYTHING easier to access and manage, placing spots for your games list, achievement submenus, and other miscellaneous stuff like that. Very effective setup. The marketplace is now integrated directly to the menu as well, so that's always easy access. The guide got a huge reform. There is now Party Chat/Parties, and everything is easy access from the guide. Not much else to say, huge improvement.
Awesome setup: 10/10.
Speed: The speed of the new system seems to vary for everyone, but I'll just vouch for my experience. It is so much faster, the guide takes less than a few seconds to boot up, the Dashboard seems to load quicker. Everything just seems so much faster. Again, not much to say here.
NO2: 10/10.
Other: Really awesome update. It just feels so fresh, new, redone. Like buying a new system and booting it up for the first time. I even had fun with the menu. I love it. There is also a feature to download game files to your Hard Drive, but this is rendered useless by the fact that most games have been optimized to run from a disk. Games like Halo 3 even get totally forgeted up if you try this. It's a waste of space and time, just don't fool with it.
Conclusion: Love the update, really nothing more to say about it. 9.5/10
Guitar Hero: World Tour
This is more of a delayed review, but here it goes:
Customization
Music Selection
Rock Stars
Customization: Now, the customization in this game is incredible. You can tune even the most mundane details like your amp nobs and your guitar strings. There isn't really a "Rock Shop" any more, you just deck out your instrument with whatever. You even unlock parts by playing the storyline. As for Character customization, it's still pretty cool. There's a lack of Hairstyles and Clothing though, but that's cool. One thing this has that Rock Band didn't is Microphone customization. It's small and mundane, but you can still customize it, and I like that.
10/10 for epic selection.
Music Selection: I swear to god, they chose some REALLY good songs only to counterbalance the REALLY stuffty or disappointing songs. There are some fantastic songs that I loved playing like:
The Eagles - Hotel California
Bon Jovi - Livin' on Prayer
Metallica - Trapped Under Ice
La Bamba
Michael Jackson - Beat it
CCR - Around the Bend
Ted Nugent - Stranglehold
Jimi Hendrix - Purple Haze
But then, here's where I REALLY rage: There's a lot of songs that just flat out SUCK and totally demolished the experience. Typically, in every game like this, Nirvana is the stuffstorm that snakes its way in and makes me rage, but not this time. Korn takes the cake for most INFURIATING song ever. I wanted to RIP OFF MY loving EARS. They should be strung up and never allowed to play ever again. Anyway, here's some songs that really got me:
(Whatever the stuffty Korn song was)
(stuffty Nirvana song)
(Other adolescent handicaps singing)
Sting - Demolition Man
forget you Sting, that song sucked. Totally blew, and I thought it was Demolition Man by Def Leppard you starfish.
Lynyrd Skynyrd - Sweet Home Alabama
Bet you didn't expect to see this, right? I LOVE Lynyrd Skynyrd, but this song was disappointing as forget. It was some live version, claimed to be the original band, but it sounded nothing like them and the entire song was RUINED by the Singer and Guitar. The studio version would have been so much better. Hated playing this song so much.
(Some spanish song)
stuffty song, flat-out. It was in spanish, so now I could care even less. The guitar was awful and just tedious to play.
And finally, the song that's making me RAGE SO HARD I WANT TO KILL SOMEONE:
System of a Down - BYOB.
It's impossible. It's just impossible. I mean, not only is it a highly overrated song, but it's a stuffty song anyway. The fact that it's not even the final song, it sucks, System of a Down sucks, and the intro riff is absolutely loving impossible makes this the worst song in the history of man. I mean SERIOUSLY. Couldn't they find something challenging rather than stupid loving handicapped impossible stuff? HERE'S A SMALL IDEA, WHY NOT "The Sentinel" by Judas Priest!? The solo is at least CHALLENGING. Now, someone will say "It IS challenging!" No. It's not "Challenging". Let me point out the fine line between challenging and handicapped stuff impossible.
Challenging - It's fun to try and beat, where you know you have a shot, and that closeness and epicness makes you try harder to do it. Freebird in GH2 is a perfect example. It was fun, but it was hard as hell, I still can't beat it.
RAAAGE IMPOSSIBLE - When the only thing compelling you to even attempt something is just to get it out of the way, it's not fun. It's just NOT FUN. IF IT'S NOT FUN THEN I DON'T WANT TO DO IT A HUNDRED TIMES. I'D RATHER TAKE A CHANCE AND HACK MY XBOX RATHER THAN PLAY THIS PIECE OF stuff AGAIN. THIS SONG FOLLOWS NO REQUIREMENTS FOR "CHALLENGING." Oh and to those friends who say "You suck", then I reply: I'm good enough to at least beat the game, but I actually compared this song to Through the Fire and the flames on HYPERSPEED 6... I racked up 6% highest on BYOB, and 17% ON THE DRAGONFORCE SONG. WHAT THE forget IS THIS stuff? THE DRAGONFORCE SONG WAS A BONUS, YOU DIDN'T EVEN HAVE TO BEAT IT. SERIOUSLY, AND BYOB ISN'T EVEN THE FINAL loving SONG HOLY stuff. The only option now is to practice it, but again, it's not challenging. I DON'T HAVE THE MORALE TO PLAY IT ANY MORE THAN I REALLY HAVE TO. I'm having a Guitar Hero God come over and do it for me.
Rock Stars - God damn this game is really loving awesome when it comes to Rock Stars. I'm serious, it's just godly. Ted Nugent, Jimi Hendrix, Ozzy Osbourne. Those are just a few of my favorites. You don't battle as many as you'd think, like Jimi (He's not alive to make a battle track...) Ozzy Osbourne does make an appearance, but he doesn't even have a song. Seriously, he appears in the setlist without a Black Sabbath song. What the forget?
11/10 for TED MOTHERloving NUGENT HELL YEAH.
Endgame: 9/10 for stuffty credits song and poor song management.
Beat it by switching to hard mode for BYOB. As for the finale...
HOT FOR TEACHER BY VAN HALEN
Awesome song, was CHALLENGING, fun to play, totally rocked out. Was out of place though, shouldn't have been the finale. So I beat it, the end was cool too. The credits song for this game though... It totally blew. The credits song should be the most impossible song. "Pull me Under" by Dream Theatre wasn't even remotely impossible. It was a bad song too, tedious and boring. At least the setlist after New York was good, I mean. Joe Satriani! He knows how to rock. I can name MANY songs that should have been there:
Def Leppard - Switch 625 (maybe)
Joe Satriani - (Anything)
Michael Angelo Batio - (Quad/Dual Guitar)
Rick Astley - Never gonna give you up (lawl)
As for the song that should replace BYOB:
Deep Purple - Burn
Iron Maiden - Moonchild, Seventh Son of a Seventh Son, Only the good die young
Judas Priest - The Sentinel, Painkiller
Metallica - The Four Horsemen
Ted Nugent - Great White Buffalo
And for songs that should be the finale:
Led Zepplin - Stairway to Heaven WHY ISN'T THIS IN ANY GUITAR HERO!?
REM - It's the End of the World (Singing Finale, oh god.)
Also songs that should JUST BE SOMEWHERE IN THE GAME. PERIOD:
Ronnie James Dio - Rainbow in the Dark, Holy Diver
ANYTHING BY AC-DC. WHAT THE forget.
CCR - Run through the Jungle, Have you ever seen the rain
To sum that up, a lot of bands should have been there that weren't. I can only hope for DLC.
Conclusion: BYOB is the worst song ever, I hate it more than anything holy loving stuff I'm totally raaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaging. The good songs seem to counterbalance the bad songs effectively enough.
8/10 for mediocre song selection and song management.
