Belated Game Reviews: Burnout Paradise

PS3 Trophies

I've been having issues with the ps3trophycard site, so I created an account over at Playfire which isn't blocked at work. The results of that are up at the top of the post here.

The next game in my series of overdue game reviews is Burnout Paradise, which is the 7th game in the Burnout series. This version of the game has an open world concept like Midnight Club. You can drive around at your leisure. There are 95 different events set up at intersections. When you are at one you want to start, you hit L2 + R2 and then you'll be given the parameters of the race. There are several different modes of racing:

-Race: Obviously, you are to go from Point A to Point B and come in 1st place
-Burning Route: There is one for each car you can find. All you have to do it go from Point A to Point B under a certain time. You're rewarded with an upgraded version of the car you are driving
-Road Rage: My personal favorite, you have to run a certain number of your competitors off the road in under 2 minutes (although you get +10 seconds per wreck)
-Stunt Run: Pull off chains of stunts to beat a given score
-Marked Man: Get from Point A to Point B, except everyone is trying to run you off the road. This one is frustrating because even if you are driving a truck you will still have cars run you off the road.

Additionally there are 2 scores per road to beat, the 1st is a time score. It starts when you hit the beginning of the street and ends at the end (duh). The second is a showtime score. You can hit L1+R1 to go into showtime mode where you deliberately crash into cars for points and boost, you can use the boost to propel the car down the road. It's graded on the number of cars you hit and how far you go, with buses added +1 to your multiplier.

To progress in the game you need to complete events to raise your license level up from D to Criterion Elite (SSS) [You only need to get Class S for the trophies]. Going from one license to the next will reward you with a new car and after a certain # of events you will be notified that a certain model of car is driving around. If you crash it you get to keep it. There are technically 35 cars in the game but each one has a souped up varient that you can get by winning a Burning Route

Graphically, the game is impressive (although I'd expect no less from the series) Car crashes look very realistic. There is a very nice selection of cars which are modeled on a wide variety of real cars. When you're boosting with the last car you get everything is just a blur.

Musically the game has 40 licensed tracks, with the theme being "Paradise City" by Guns n' Roses naturally. There are also another 40 previous Burnout songs and Classical Music. You might want to turn down the engine noises in the settings because even though they sound nice, they can be annoying after a while (just ask my wife).

I found the game to be extremely fun and replayable, especially because I'm not much of a racing person. It's like GTA in the sense that you can just fire up the game and drive around without worrying about the game. It's also nice because the game is still being updated (in fact the 1.9 update came out last night). Some of the DLC is free such as the motorcycle pack and Online pack. However, other's must be bought, such as the Cops and Robbers, Additional Car Packs, and Big Surf Island.

As far as trophies go, there are a shitload of them but the following apply to the main game only

37 Bronze / 10 Silver / 2 Gold / 1 Platinum

You only have to get all the original trophies for the Platinum, so when you get it your overall % will be around 47. The only hard one I found was getting all 8 people into the baseball stadium. What you can do is start your own online game and then tool around until you have 8 people (took me about 20 minutes). Then start Freeburn Challenge 2, which is for everyone to meet at the stadium and then as long as everyone participates (there are some asshats our there), then you'll get the trophy. Also 1 Bronze trophy requires a compatible USB camera for the PS3.

The Online Pack adds 4 Bronze, 1 Silver, and 1 Gold.
The Bike Pack adds 5 Bronze, 1 Silver, adn 1 Gold.
The Party Pack adds 3 Bronze and 4 Silver (USB camera needed)
The Car Packs add 4 Bronze and 4 Silver (You need all the cars pack though)
Cops and Robbers add 3 Bronze and 5 Silver
Finally, Big Surf adds 7 Bronze and 3 Silver

Wooo, that's a lot. However, it only took around 20 hours of playing to get the main trophies (although there's a lot of stuff in the game to do), the add on packs (if you choose) will keep you busy for a while)

Final Verdict: Burnout is part of Greatest Hits collection (and rightly so), so a new copy can be had for $30 and used is around $15-30. I'd say buy it used and you'll get 65 trophies easy and maybe more if you choose. If you buy all the DLC, it'll be around the price of a new game but with a lot to keep you busy.

Score 9.5 of 10

Belated Game Reviews - Alone in the Dark: Inferno

Now that I'm going through some of these older games for trophies, I may as well tell all y'all what I think about them and the prospects of getting trophies in the games. I'm hoping to try and make this a regular feature here.

Anywho. Alone in the Dark is credited as the first survival horror game, with Resident Evil coming after it. Alone in the Dark: Inferno is the 5th game in the series and some of the ways I've been able to describe it is a smarter Resident Evil and the best bad game I've played.

You play as Edward Carnby, a private dectective/paranormal researcher who is suffering from amnesia. You wake up in the beginning being held at gunpoint in a New York City hotel by two thugs who keep talking about handing over a stone. As the story progresses, you find that not all is what it seems in New York City. Large fissures at random keep opening up in floors and walls, etc. swallowing people whole or corrupting them into the "zombies" of the game, Humanz. The fissures seem to be radiating out from Central Park, which is where you eventually end up and discover the secret of.

Without giving too much away, the story involves the occult and gateways to the afterlife, and is very good. The voice actors do a very good job at conveying the story and what's going on without going too over the top which is something Resident Evil has had issues with in the past. The story is also broken up into 8 episodes. A nice touch is that each episode ends in a cliffhanger and then goes to credits. You can then choose to continue to the next episode or quit out. If you quit a selection of cutscene from the next chapter is shown, similar to a teaser trailer you may see at the end of a TV show. Additionally when you start a chapter from a saved game you get a recap of what's happened which I think is a nice touch. [Trophy note: there are at least 19 trophies from just progressing through the story and not killing a thing, except when you need to]

The graphics are good but not spectacular. I guess the thing is that I've never really seen a bad graphical game on the PS3 so it's hard to say how good they are. If we are comparing to Resident Evil 5 then I would say they definitely not as good as RE5.

Evironmental interaction is where AITD really shines. To start, you're inventory is limited to what you can carry in your jacket. When you access the inventory screen your character actually opens his jacket and looks down into it, which is a nice touch. You only have 1 of two guns during the game, a 9mm and a Magnum, but you have so many other options for destruction. You'll find all sorts of flammable bottles scattered across Central Park (apparently everyone drinks gasoline or Everclear there). The bottles come in glass and plastic varieties and it affects how they work. Glass obviously will smash, soaking the area in gas and making things flammable. Plastic doesn't. You can also find aeresol canisters that can be used as impromptu flamethrowers when used with your lighter, you can even pour gas on your bullets to make them fire bullets [Trophy note: There are 5 trophies for killing creatures in inventive ways]

The combinations of items are quite numerous. Sure you could just use bottles as bombs, throwing them and shooting when they are close to the creatures. You can also wrap the bottles in doublesided tape so they stick to the enemies and then shoot the bottles at the right time to take out more at one time. You can combine a handkerchief with a bottle to make a Molotov Cocktail. You can tape a flare to a bottle for a time bomb or a box of bullets to make a spread bomb. Flares and glowsticks can be taped to walls to add light to a dark hallway. [Trophy note: there are 8 trophies associated with item combinations]

The smartness of the game also extends to the cars, if you come up against a locked car, you can smash out a window and unlock it. Once inside you can check the glove compartment for items, and then check the sun visor for the key or hotwire it. You can also shoot out the gas tank to make it explode, or punch it with a knife to drain the gas into an empty bottle. [There are another 6 trophies related to cars, 4 of which can be had on the 1st car you see]

So by now you're wondering why I say it's also a bad game. Weeeeeellllll, to start the method of killing creatures sucks balls. They have these cracks on their bodies that have to be set on fire or they'll never go away. There's (usually) no shortage of flammable materials but it literally make your aerosol + lighter combo the most deadly in the game and not your gun. Actually unless your gun has fire bullets it's pretty worthless, and even then it's not incredibly useful as you have to shoot 2-3 fissures with fire bullets to kill the humanz and that's hard unless you've knocked them out already.

Secondly, you can only shoot in 1st person view and do melee attacks in 3rd person. Also the 3rd person view isn't all that great (although it's better than the XBox version)

Next, driving sucks and is a pain in the ass. If you hit the smallest bump, you'll fly out of control. Also with some ramps, you can't hit them straight on or it registers as a crash

If you quit in the middle of the chapter, even though you can save you still have to start from the beginning of the chapter with none of the in-chapter progress saved. This is especially a pain in the ass on Chapter 8. Speaking of, in Chapter 8 you have to take on a stupid quest to destroy certain targets which magically popped up in areas you already were in. Of course you need to destroy them all if you want the trophies.

AI characters are kind of dumb, but at least you're not tasked with keeping them alive as the humanz are programmed to go after you only.

You can take quite a beating, but if you touch fire for more than 3 seconds, you're toast.

Also I had the game freeze up on me twice during play, and if you try jumping on a car as a stepping stone the game sometimes recognizes that as getting hit.

The game has it's issues, however, it's still pretty playable....for about 12 hours, because that's all it takes to finish it, and you could probably do it quicker than me. The game has 50 trophies and you can get them with a single playthrough (no difficulty level BS) The breakdown is like this:
-43 Bronze
-3 Silver
-3 Gold
-1 Platinum

Final Verdict: Even though it's about $15-20 now, I'd still say this one is a renter. It shows flashes of brillance but is saddled with some questionable bugs/design choices. I'd definitely pick it up if you're looking for some cheap trophies because there aren't too many games easier than this for the # of trophies. I give it a 6/10

What in the hell happened to spring?

I've been lazy and haven't blogged for 2 weeks :( There's also just been a shitload of stuff going on. To start, Pam and I had quite the active Memorial Day weekend. Between her and I we got some of the outside trim painted, the garden planted, and a bunch of other little chores done that we've been sitting on for a while now. It's also been insanely busy at work (where I usually blog from). We have a large computer upgrade project right now and guess who get to deal with the computers that come back? That's right, it's me!

The other big part is that Pam and I went to Indianapolis this weekend for the NIN/JA tour show there. That was quite the adventure. I decided to go through Chicago, but I severely underestimated the traffic there. It took almost 2 hours to get from where Hwy 41 merges into I-94 to where I-94 meets I-65 in Indiana. On top of that, there was construction on I-65 so we were delayed by another half hour in addition to the hour lost to the Eastern Time Zone. Essentially we left at 11am CST and didn't get to the hotel until 8:30 PM EST. That meant our original plan of catching a dinner and movie was scrapped and we just got dinner instead. It was a very nice dinner though.

We went to Joe's Crab Shack and I liked it very much. We ordered 2 of their steampots which had quite a bit of food for the price. Pam got 2 bunches of crab legs, a pound of clams, sausage, corn, and potatoes. I got the Bean Town Bake which is 2 whole lobsters, 1 pound of clams, with shrimp sausage, corn, and potatoes. All of that ran about $55 which isn't bad considering the amount of food you get. For two lobsters (which were about 1 to 1 1/2 pounds) you would pay 35-50 dollars alone. Also the atmosphere was very nice and I do have a picture of me in my Joe's bib

Our hotel was a sweet deal through Hotwire. It was a single room, king size bed, with fridge, decent TV, free breakfast, etc. for about $40 a night. The breakfast was relatively decent, however the only hot food was biscuits and gravy and you could make your own waffles. Something about the food didn't really sit well with either of us (I think it was the gravy) Other than that, I can't complain.

I took Pam to go see Star Trek which was just fucking awesome. The best thing is that you don't really have to be a Star Trek nerd to enjoy it because it's a reintroduction to the cast and story (although you do have to kind of like sci fi a little bit). Even Pam had to begrudingly admit that it was pretty good. It's also kind of funny to take her to anything Star Trek because our first date some 14 years ago was to go see Star Trek: Generations. It's a wonder there was a 2nd date, let alone a marraige and kids.

After Star Trek went to the venue after that. It's really weird, there's nothing out there but the venue, some businesses and a upscale outdoor mall, which we killed some time at. As an aside, I got 3 new games from Gamestop (more on that later). The Verizon Music Center is a larger Indoor/outdoor ampitheater a la Alpine Valley so obviously there was quite a line when we got there. Even though we had preordered and got to go in before the rest of the general public, we still stood around for quite a while because they were late with sound check. It took about 30 minutes to get inside the outside gate and then we still had to stand in line for another 30 minutes to get inside the seating area, and another 45 minutes still to showtime. It amazes me how much these places fuck you in the ass for food and drinks. $9 for a 16 Oz glass of Busch? Gross. We did end up buying a little merchandise and actually the one thing they had at a decent price was a full size messenger bag which I needed anyways. It's canvas with plenty of pockets and it feels pretty sturdy for only $55 bucks. That's a lot of money you say? Well it's a steal when baseball hats and t-shirts are going for $30-40, $55 isn't all that bad. Anyways, here's what it looks like.

Our tickets were for the pit, and of course the "pit" is only 1000 square feet that they're trying to cram 500 (according to staff, I think there were more) people into. Pam and I have learned our lesson from before about getting too close to the stage so we sat by the back railing all night Still I was no more that 75 feet from the stage at all times so that was cool.

The show was pretty sweet but kind of disappointing at the same time. Street Sweeper Social Club was the opener. The band is a collaboration between Boots Riley of The Coup and Tom Morello from Rage Against the Machine and they tore it up on stage. It's probably more funkier than Rage but still politically minded. They also did an awesome cover of Paper plates by MIA and I wish they would put that out somewhere but as of yet, I haven't found it.

Nine Inch Nails played next, which I thought was kind of bullshit considering this is a farewell tour (of sorts) for Trent Reznor, they should be closing. Maybe we've gotten spoiled from the Lights in the Sky tour but they didn't really do anything with stage effects. Yeah there was lights and stuff, but no video screen, no projections or anything of that sort. They also had a very mixed bag of music for the setlist, playing no more than 2 or 3 songs off of all their major released, and also doing their cover of "Metal" by Gary Numan. I like the song but I don't think it fit into their set.

Jane's Addiction closed and I'm not the biggest fan of them, but they put on a pretty decent show. It was mostly songs from Nothing's Shocking and Riual de lo Habitual but not too bad. The acoustic rendition of 'Jane Says' they played for an encore was pretty sweet.

Sunday we went on the most boring drive ever to get home. I-65 to Bloomington, IL then I 39/I90 to Madison and then US 151 home. Despite it being boring we still got home in only 7 hours (accounting for the time difference). I definitely am going to go that route if I ever need to go South of I-90 again. Well, it's either that or leave at 4 in the morning and then we don't have to worry about traffic.

We had a great time but it just makes me sad the with baby #3 on the way that vacations are going to be even fewer and farther in between because of the logistics of getting people to watch all 3 kids. Oh well, that's the price of admission for the parent ride. Besides it won't be too long before we'll be taking the kids on large scale vacations and if I keep them glued to a TV set in the car, it'll almost be like not having them there :)

The iPhone came in quite handy on our trip, helping us find all the places we needed without having to drive all over the place. We were able to stay connected fairly well. However, one thing that pisses me off is the coverage by AT&T. I had 3G outside the gates at the music venue, but when I went in it was Edge only and not good coverage at that. Spots on the Interstate were completely dead and it's still dead in Juneau where Pam works. Strangely enough when you are 1 mile east of there it's a perfect signal. I swear if the iPhone was on a different provider I'd be all over that. In the meantime I just hope that they continue to improve their infrastructure.

On the gaming front, I've been going pretty nuts with games. A week and a half ago I got Buzz for $20 at Walmart (buzzers and game) I'm almost to the Platinum trophy there (1 more to go). The games I bought at Gamestop were Bad Company, Burnout Paradise, and Alone in the Dark. It was a buy 2 get 1 free sale and all were 18.99. With my Gamestop card, I got all three games for $35 bucks, so that's pretty sweet. I had a day off Monday and managed to get my trophies for the Endless setlist on Rock Band 2 on Expert. That finally made me able to reformat my PS3 hard drive (I couldn't copy the RB2 save game). Now I can actually put more than one game's data on the hard drive :) Soooo, I'll be pretty busy for the next few months.

Well, I'm all typed out. I'll be posting photos of the concert later when I get home, but for now use your imagination :)

First Thoughts: Resident Evil 5

So after much wailing and gnashing of teeth I was able to come up with a plan to buy Resident Evil 5. I hit Gamestop last night for their midnight release and played it until 3 in the morning. A few thoughts on the game:

-Would it be freakin possible to break the game data that needs to be installed into smaller chapter sized chunks, ala Metal Gear Solid or run the install concurrently with the introductory cutscene? The 1GB data install before you can play the game took 15 minutes to install. I understand it's necessary for the proper running of the game but c'mon. 15 minutes is 14 and a half too long.

-I have a love/hate relationship with the new parter system. For those who don't know, your main character Chris Redfield (from RE:1 and Code:Veronica) has a partner in the field that can be controlled via AI or an online or offline human partner. I love it because it adds a new dyanmic to the game which is much more in depth than the partner stuff from RE4 (mainly because Sheva is also a highly trained agent and can hold her own). I hate it however because you have limited control options over her. You can tell her to either go on the offensive or cover you. In either case you have to control her inventory because she won't always pick up ammo for herself. Also with her around it makes it hard to accomplish certain trophies/achievements such as 'kill 5 enemies with your knife'. Well, I can't do that if my partner is popping shots into the zombie I'm trying to stab. You literally have to disarm her to do it.

-Speaking of trophies, they are all fairly acheiveable and the counter ones (kill x zombies with y) add up whether or not you die after doing it. Most of the harder ones are ones where you have to get all the weapons fully upgraded and that's just hard because of the game time involved. You also have to play through at least twice, once on Easy/Medium/Hard to unlock Extreme difficulty and then beat the game on that. I've found no word if beating it on hard will satisfy the beat it on easy or medium trophies.

-The graphic and lighting effect are top notch (as they should be). The first part of the game is played in an African village with blazing sun beating down on you. When you go from shadow to light you are momentarily blinded as your "eyes" adjust.

-The new zombies, dubbed the Manjini, are similar in speed to the Ganados of RE4 but with even more erratic movement making them harder to hit. Their "zombie" biological agent appears to be some sort of worm. Later you have to fight a sub-boss composed of nothing but worms. It's a very interesting fight.

-Many of the improvements from RE4 are still there. Over the shoulder camera, context specific button presses (i.e. near a window, press square to jump out. Near a fence press square to jump over). The big change is that inventory management is done in real time like RE: Outbreak (the online one). Also like RE: Outbreak, your inventory is limited to 9 different things which you can switch from a larger inventory between chapters or when continuing.

-One thing that continues to vex me is there is no dodge or 'jump back' feature (to my knowledge, I've yet to look at the instruction manual). If there really isn't one, seriously why not? You have a Special Ops. trained agent and the best he can do for evasion is to do a quick turn and run? Also, WHY IN THE HELL CAN'T HE WALK WHEN HIS KNIFE OR GUN IS DRAWN!!! Capcom, if you're going to move more toward realism then please, please remove this last gameplay mechanism tie to the 1st Resident Evil.

-The story so far is really good, with one minor gripe. They revealed that a major character from games past is now dead. I have two thoughts. If it relates to nothing, then it was way too early. My other thought is that it may relate to this mysterious hooded figure you see in the beginning who is apparently working for the bad guy, and yes Wesker shows up again. Maybe you'll finally be able to kill his smug sunglass wearing ass?

So yeah, all that in two hours of playing :) I can't wait for the rest, too bad I have to finish all my 'projects' this weekend :(

Jesus tittyfucking Christ!!!

So, the plasma place really isn't working out. I never considered that there'd be a problem with me giving whole blood 3 weeks ago, but I got deferred until April because of it, so there's no shot of getting the collector's version of RE5 (or just the game for that matter). So that sucks

Because of the economy, Pam's mom has given us a choice:

-Get less money from her for our birthdays and Xmas, we normally get around $800 between the 3 so I'm thinking somewhere around $200-400.

-Give us $400 to take the kids to Chula Vista or somewhere in Wisconsin Dells

Obviously we took option 2, because we at least get to use the money, whereas with option 1 it all goes towards bills. I don't really get why she made us choose at all, yeah she's laid off, but she VOLUNTEERED for it. Whatever, it's her money and her decision, I just don't understand it. It still sucks because we really do need the bill money.

A little background before this next part: We had a 55 gallon aquarium in the living room and noticed Friday that the wood in the stand is warping and the carpet is soaked. We had no idea where the water was coming from so I emptied the tank, relocated the fish, and moved everything so that the carpet would dry.

Anyways, I come home yesterday, pissed off because I wasted 3 vacation hours for no fucking money from the plasma place and Pam wants me to tear up the carpet in living room because the wet spot (see paragraph above) appears to be growing. So I have to tear apart the AV Center, couch, etc and move everything else out of the room. We were planning on putting laminate in there anyways, so that's not a huge deal I would just rather do it when it's warmer out.

Then we end up going to Menards to buy the stuff to build a brick veneer wall in the living room because Pam has been talking about it non-stop and I am a whipped pussy. She also wanted to repaint and get new blinds. So the short version of the story is that Menards didn't have the flooring in stock so we couldn't buy the one thing that really needed to be done and then maxed out the Menard's card on the stuff for the wall that technically could have waited. At least we had a little tax money left so we could pay the $600 off right away when we got home but we still need the flooring and I can't really move anything back in until that gets done....the walls I could have done with all the furniture in there :-<

Anyways. I peeled out the carpeting and padding and that carpeting is fucking wrecked. Massive stains from our kids/pets and the former owner's are all over. It's pretty fucking stupid because the hardwood underneath is in very good shape.....except for where all the moisture bonded the padding to the wood. I had to bring out a driveway ice scraper to scrape it off. Anyways where the wet spot was the wood is soaked and warped so I'm not even sure if it was the fish tank because it seems like too much or if somehow it's coming up from the crawl space, so now I have to dig out the fucking crawl space and take a look in there. When I got up this morning it did appear a little dryer so I'm not really sure what's going on any more. Either way I'll probably have to replace that section of the floor and then still have to lay down laminate whenever we can afford it.

On top of that we found out that the USDA got our letter, they admitted that they made a mistake (they thought Pam was getting paid 2x a month and not the once that we reported). However they wouldn't indicate how much they would take off of the mortgage or even if we are in line for a reduction.

I can't find my PSP games anywhere because I've completed LocoRoco and I need something new to play at work. On top of that we get the Wii Fit today, but my fucking living room is in shamble and I don't know when we'll be able to use it. I need a fucking new digital camera because the kids broke the old one. There's still the recessed lights to install and the coat room to refloor. I also couldn't watch House, 24, or Monday Night Raw and I'm expecting to be without TV for a while yet..

THIS IS TOO MUCH FOR ME TO TAKE!!! I don't even know where to begin and it's depressing the hell out of me.

Other than that, everything's going great *sigh*

Do I eat this or put it on my face? My back hurts?

So it was an interesting weekend. We got a load of freezing rain on Saturdy so everything was covered in a nice coat of slippery ice Sunday. I perfomed a triple back sommersault with a twist down the stairs but I completely messed up the landing. The Chinese judge wasn't impressed and scored a 7.5. It's OK, though. My back broke my fall and is feeling awesome right now. Which is to say it hurts. A lot.

Unfortunately it's not helping with exercising. I'm trying to get down to 250 by the end of the year and I seem to be gaining weight despite eating better and exercising. I know it fluctuates and I could check right now and be 3 pounds under where I was this morning but it's still depressing.

Speaking of dieting, The Daily Plate and Traineo are helping me track my calorie intake. It's working out pretty well except I have to create every meal for the first time because we made it from raw ingredients. Hopefully the weight starts going down soon. I'm also using Joe's Goals for some of the more basic tasks I want to improve upon, like brushing teeth, reading to the girls before bed, etc.

I managed to catch parts of all 4 NFL playoff games but not any whole one. I'm pissed that I fell asleep during the Indy - S.D. game, sounds like it was exciting. I did manage to watch most of the Fiesta Bowl last night. Surprisingly Texas did not wipe Ohio State off the map. This was actually one of the more compelling bowl games this year. It was back and forth all the way with Texas shredding the Buckeyes defense in the last 2 minutes to win the game.

If I do have one gripe about college football, it's the bands. I understand it's tradition and all that, but first of all, the Texas band's uniforms are just silly looking. I get that Texas was primarily known for ranching and stuff, but they look like cheap ass Howdy Doody knockoffs. Secondly, is it really necessary for the bands to play their drums everytime a first down is made, or it's late in the game, or it's 3rd down, 4th down, the coach is yelling, end of the quarter, etc. It's irritating. The sound board guy needs to turn that crap down because it's distracting me from the game. And you, Ohio State, look like a bunch of re-re's dressed like white Black Panthers. Black isn't even on of the football team's uniform colors. Also, why is Texas, dressed like idiot cowboys, playing Led Zeppelin? THAT. DOES NOT. MAKE. SENSE!

We also went out and got Singstar for PS3. It's not too bad. Essentially instead of rendering your character rocking out like Guitar Hero or Rockband, they play the music video with the notes overlaid on top. I prefer Rock Band because the words match up more closely with the notes like so (it's hard to see but it's at the top):

vs. Singstar

Also in each games there are sections where it judges you on speaking the words (mostly rap songs). Rock Band isn't as strict on this. "Epic" by Faith No More is in both games and in Rock Band I can get 100% on Easy, in Singstar the rapping part of the verses grades me as awful on Easy. Rock Band 2 is supposed to have even better recognition. I can't wait to get my hands on that. They have "Master Exploder" by Tenacious D on there. I would rule that song ! :)

The good things about Singstar are that:

-You can load songs from any of the other Singstar games, many of which are sitting at Gamestop used for $15-20. (You can do this with Rock Band as well, but the discs cost more)

-People can upload videos of themselves performing. This is mostly for your amusement, not for your use, because people will laugh at you if you do it :)

-The downloadable content is slightly cheaper, however it's limited to a lot of Sony's artists and personally there's nothing I'm too crazy about, but there's about 450 songs for download right now vs. 100 something for Rock Band

Anyways, that's been keeping Pam and I busy, so yes I still haven't tried out Home yet. It's on my to-do list for the weekend. I'm hoping by then I may have all the trophies in Fallout 3 and then can concentrate on something else.

Well, duty calls, so I'm off to say the day!