Krunk4Ever!

So yesterday while playing Beatles Rock Band with friends, I noticed stepping on the drum pedal felt a bit weird. Upon closer inspection after our gaming session, it looked like the drum pedal was beginning to crack about 1-2″ above the bottom hinge. If I recall correctly, Harmonix was replacing them even out of warranty. So I began the hardware warranty process (page which for some reason doesn’t render under Firefox 3.5; had to switch to IE).

I was reading the requirements of the RMA, even though I mentioned I had a Rock Band [1] drum pedal, it mentioned that in the RMA I needed to include a proof-of-purchase within 60 days:

STEP 3: Providing Proof of Purchase
Because our Limited 60-day Hardware Warranty requires that you are within the first 60 days after purchase, we will need a legible copy of your original sales receipt to determine eligibility. The sales receipt must clearly show the following information:

1. Item Description
2. Purchase Amount
3. Date of Purchase
4. Point of Purchase

They didn’t mention any specific exception for the Rock Band pedal. So I decided to contact their support:

Hi, I purchased the full Rock Band kit back in Feb. 2008 and my friends and I play about twice a month. Recently my pedal began cracking, about 1-2″ from the bottom hinge.

I recall that Rock Band was replacing pedals even beyond the 60 day warranty period for defective pedals and was wondering how I can start that process.

Thank you.

In the meantime, I found a small flat piece of metal (wrench that came a the toolkit used for building some furniture) and duct taped it to the cracking area, hopefully to prevent further cracking until I can get it replaced.

Got a reply this afternoon:

Thank you for contacting Rock Band Warranty Support!

I apologize about the trouble you are having with your drum pedal. We will certainly be happy to get you a replacement.
To start the process we have two different shipping methods for you to choose from:

With an express order you will receive the new item within five to seven business days, but we do require a $125 pre-authorization hold on a credit card. This is not a charge, simply a hold to ensure that we are going to get the broken item back. When you receive the new item, it will come with a pre-paid shipping label for you to send back the broken item. As long as we get the broken item back within 28 days, we will release the hold from your credit card and you will not be charged.

If you would prefer not to use a credit card, the second shipping option that we have is the standard shipment. With this option we will send you an empty box with a prepaid shipping label that you use to send us your broken item. Once we get this and scan in the label, we will send you your new item

If you would like to do an express order, please give us a call at (650) 628-1001 as we cannot take credit card information over email. Otherwise all we need is your shipping information. We look forward to assisting you!

Please let me know if there is anything else we can assist you with! Additional support can be found on our help site located at http://support.ea.com/cgi-bin/ea.cfg/php/enduser/rockband.php or if you would like to speak to a live agent, please call (650) 628-1001.

Thank you,
Teddy
Rock Band Warranty Support
Electronic Arts

Looks like I’ll have to call in to start the RMA process, which I can then confirm that 60-day proof of purchase is not a requirement to get my drum pedal replaced. w00t!

Who knew the best remark about political correctness would be from Zero Punctuations:

A society where anyone can make jokes about anyone else and everyone laughs is a truly tolerant society. Political correctness charged censorship only serves to engender resentment and distance between social groups. – Ben “Yahtzee” Croshaw

I had originally wanted to tweet this quote, but unfortunately it was 77 characters too long.

His whole spiel about racism and having to make a disclaimer about treading on dangerous territory are all things I agree with what’s wrong with how people believe racism should be fixed.

Oh yeah, he does eventually do a review on some game, but that part wasn’t too interesting.

So I finally remember to ask the Xbox discussion about the issues I was hitting with Lips.

It turns out that all my issues stem from the fact I have a USB microphone connected to my Xbox 360. Somehow microphone registration gets all screwy because of that. In my case, I have my Rock Band microphone plugged into the Xbox 360 at all times. The fix is to unplug the USB microphone when you’re playing Lips. Apparently this will fix both the 2nd microphone lighting issues as well as the static noise, video and audio out of sync issues, as well as the freezing issues.

Other good news is that Harmonix (creator of Rock Band) is going to patch up Rock Band so it can use the wireless microphones! From MTV Games:

We broke the news that the highly regarded microphone bundled with Microsoft’s “Lips” karaoke game would not work with “Guitar Hero” or “Rock Band” at launch.

Harmonix and MTV Games have now addressed gamers’ concern over the lack of compatibility, and there’s good news to be shared.

“Microsoft and MTV Games are working together to ensure that consumers will be able to use the wireless mics from ‘Lips’ with ‘Rock Band 2’ after launch,” said the companies in an e-mailed statement. “More details on timing to come. Harmonix and MTV Games strive for all third-party controllers to work with the ‘Rock Band’ games, fitting with Harmonix’ open-platform philosophy for controllers.”

Sounds like we’ll have a patch in the coming weeks! Will you use the “Lips” mic?

That’s great news! Being able to play Rock Band with a wireless microphone would be neat! Then I can scrap my Rock Band microphone and not hit into these issues anymore!

I don’t actually own the game yet, but I’ve played the demo and I found it to be a lot of fun. You may then be wondering why I have a whole blog post dedicated to Mirror’s Edge. The main reason is because it ties in with a couple things I wanted to blog about but doesn’t deserve their own post at the moment.

I got the demo a few weeks back and it was extremely fun. As one of CAD’s sillies state: “I have never felt this much like an acrobatic asian chick in my entire life.”

On the same lines, Penny Arcade also made a comic strip about Mirror’s Edge, but I didn’t really have much problems with the headaches, given that I’m pretty sure I’m quite susceptible to 3D motion sickness. For example, I was playing Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare on Saturday and after just 2 missions (~30 mins or so), I felt a slight headache and had to stop playing. It could be that the demo was short and it didn’t have to time to get to me yet, but even with COD4, I was pretty sure I’d get a headache within minutes of playing the game, which I didn’t really get with Mirror’s Edge.

I was planning on getting it for the Xbox 360, but it looks like it’s going to come out on the PC in January, so I might pick it up then. PC games are usually cheaper to get and I’m not sure I’m willing to drop $50 on it quite yet, given that I heard it’s a rather short game.

Speaking of which, have you seen the trailer? Check out these trailers just to see how fun they look!

You can find more trailers here: Gametrailers.com – Mirror’s Edge: Reviews, Trailers, and Interviews

The music you’re hearing in all of the trailers are remixes of a song called Still Alive by Lisa Miskovsky. No, this has nothing to do with the Portal song by Jonathan Coulton.

You can also watch/download the HD version on Gametrailers.com. Someone also posted the mp3 for you listen: Still Alive.mp3 (Still Alive by Lisa Miskovsky – 4MB). I personally think the song’s amazing, especially with the piano keys, which for some reason makes me think it has some Asian background. I wonder if that has to do with the fact the main character you play as is Asian.

I hope everyone had a wonderful Thanksgiving. I assume some of you are still recovering from being overstuffed.

Thanks to Carolynn for planning out this year’s Thanksgiving dinner. It was a lot of fun helping prepare the food. Of course it was also fun eating it. There was a pretty good show up this year: Carolynn, Joe, Perry, Sathana, Felix, Tom, Jim, Saran, and Pita (sorry if I misspelled your name). Valerie also showed up later to join in the festivities. We had turkey, stuffing, green beans with onions and bacon bits, mashed potato, yam and marshmallows, pumpkin pie. The stuff was delicious. Now I’m hungry just thinking of it.

After eating, we played some Xbox 360: PES 2009, Rock Band 2, Lips, Gears of Wars 2, and even some 8 person Halo 3.

I took some photos which you can view in the photo album:

Thanksgiving 2008

I even recorded a few Rock Band Sessions (posted with permission):

Unfortunately I ran out of disk space during Perry’s and Pita’s performance.

I picked up Lips earlier in the week at the company store, here’s my semi-review. Since I’ve been an semi-avid Rock Band player, I’ll probably be making many comparisons to it.

The game comes with a good selection of songs. All 40 songs are unlocked at the beginning, so you don’t have to go through some tour mode to unlock them. Given that, we’ve found that even though there were 40 songs, not every song was something people wanted to sing. Unlike Rock Band where singing is optional (where you can choose to play guitar or drums), Lips requires someone to actually sing, and people always have a fear of singing songs they’re not too familiar with, especially when you only know the chorus.

You can’t actually fail in this game, but since you’re the center of attention, people become self conscious. It helps if 2 people are actually singing or if the whole crowd joins in like at a real karaoke.

Additional songs can be purchased at 160 points (about $2) each, but the selection is pretty weak right now, but more are supposed to be coming.

It comes with 2 wireless microphones, which is really neat. However, it’s sad that the microphones do NOT work with Rock Band, which apparently requires a patch from Harmonix. It’d be sweet if I were able to use the wireless mics with Rock Band sometime in the near future. The wireless microphone includes motion sensors similar to the Wiimote and you can use it to swing and make noises and so on. It also required to enable star power or overdrive or whatever Lips calls it.

The singing part uses the the center area for lyrics in big text and jumpy balls like at karaoke, and on the top and bottom are the pitch lines for 1st and 2nd player, which includes another set of lyrics, similar to Rock Band. However, different than Rock Band is that the lyrics move along with the pitch lines vertically, making it hard to read ahead. I can look at the lyrics in the center screen, but then my eyes have to jump back and forth between the lyrics in the center and the pitch lines above. Another pet peeve I have is pitch marker. In Rock Band, there’s this triangle that tells you exactly where your current pitch is. In Lips, they have a ball which is very hard to see, making it difficult to judge if I should increase or decrease my pitch in an instant.

There’s also a mode where you can connect a music player (i.e. iPod or Zune) where you can play your music and sing along to it. I haven’t tried this mode yet, but apparently it also does the pitch lines, but without the lyrics, it becomes hard since most people don’t really know the words outside of the chorus for most songs.

Issues with Lips
I’ve hit into a lot of issues with Lips and I haven’t been able to find anyway to troubleshoot the issue. If anyone’s experience the following issues, I would like to know if you have a way to get around it. I’m pretty sure it’s an issue with the game itself, since I haven’t hit into any of these issues with the other games I play, but it could be that my Xbox 360 is finally dying.

• When playing 2 players, one of the mic’s lights do not blink according to the music. I’ve tried changing the batteries, resyncing the mics, but the lights will not come on. If I hold the power button, the lights will blink, but supposedly they’re suppose to blink according to the music’s rhythm during game play.
• Once in awhile, the music becomes out of sync with the game. Other times, there’s a lot of static in the music. And both of these are precursors to the game freezing, which I would then have to reboot. I verified it’s not actually the song or using custom videos as replaying the same song in the same mode has no problems after a reboot.
• There’s probably a way to get around this, but I haven’t figured a way yet. Once in awhile, I add a song in Sing mode and decide not to sing it, and I can’t seem to get rid of it. Every time I finish singing a song, instead of returning to the main list, it shows this song. Does anyone know how to remove that song so after singing, it returns me to the main list?

On Saturday, I caught dinner with Andrew and watched Milk. The movie was decent. Interesting information about gay history which I never knew about, but it was quite clear who their targeted audience were. I do have to say Josh Brolin once again outdid himself and gave an amazing performance. I didn’t realize it was him until halfway through the movie. After seeing him in No Country for Old Men and W. and now Milk, not only can he act like the person he’s portraying well, but he can LOOK like the person he’s portraying well. Andrew also mentioned, it would’ve been interesting to hear Dan White’s side of the story on this whole affair. Apparently Dan White was the first one to use the Twinkie Defense.

Wow! It’s been quite awhile since my last post. Things have been quite busy at work and with the darn construction going around here, I’ve been waking up at 9am. I haven’t gotten a chance to blog about Joe’s Birthday BBQ or my recent camping trip. Hopefully my workload won’t be as bad in the coming weeks.

Anyway, the following deals are time sensitive, so I thought I’d blog about them now before they evaporate. Amazon.com has a few Xbox 360/Rock Band deals going on this weekend:

Xbox 360 Live 4000 Points for $40 or Xbox 360 Live 1600 Points for $16. These are normally $50 and $20 respectively. You’re basically getting a 20% discount making it 100pts/$1 instead of 80pts/$1. Pretty good deal considering Live Points don’t usually go on sale and if you order $25+, you get free shipping and since these are considered “gift cards”, they’re not taxable (even in WA).

If you’re seeing a different seller on the main page, please look on the right side, and you should see Amazon.com as seller and the lower price. Given that this deal started earlier this weekend, it’s currently back-ordered, but you’re still allowed to purchase it at the discounted price.

If you’re wondering if it’s better to get the 1600 points or the 4000 points, the better deal is the 1600 points because at 4000 points, you save about 5 cents, but the savings are pretty negligible. I would recommend buying 2×1600pts to qualify for free shipping.

Buy Rock Band 2 for the Xbox 360 and get a 1600 Live Points Card

Here’s your chance to add the new Rock Band game to your collection and set yourself up with 1600 Live points. That means the 84 tracks from the game plus about 10 downloads with your points. This deal will keep you rocking for a while! Offer limited to products shipped and sold by Amazon.com. Promotion ends on October 4, 2008 at 11:59PST. Offer good while supplies last. Limit one per household. See Details.

*Details

Order the standalone version of Rock Band 2 for the Xbox 360 and the Xbox 360 Live 1600 Points card by October 4, 2008 in our Video Games Store and receive the Xbox 360 Live 1600 Points card free. To redeem this offer place both participating products in your cart and proceed through the check out process. At the end of your order the cost of the Xbox 360 Live 1600 Points card will be deducted from your total order. This offer applies only to the purchase of the standalone version of Rock Band 2 for the Xbox 360 and the Xbox 360 Live 1600 Points card offered by Amazon.com and does not apply to products sold on our site by third-party merchants or through third-party areas such as Amazon.com Marketplace or Auctions. Limit one per household.

How to Qualify for the Rock Band 2 Points Card Promotion:

-This offer applies to qualifying purchases made before 11:59 p.m. PT on October 4, 2008 while supplies last on the “the standalone version of Rock Band 2 for the Xbox 360″ and “the Xbox 360 Live 1600 Points card.”
-Offer does not apply to out-of-stock items.
-The cost of the Xbox 360 Live 1600 Points card will be deducted from your total order at the end of the check out process.
-Offer can only be applied to orders placed after 12:00 AM PT on September 21, 2008, and before 11:59pm PT on October 4, 2008.

Since I was planning to pick up Rock Band 2 already (just didn’t want to pay retail), getting a free $20 worth of Xbox 360 Live Points made a pretty sweet deal. Too bad I had to pay WA sales tax, but even considering that and the fact that the 1600 is really worth $16 this weekend, I’m still saving over $10.

Finally, this probably isn’t time sensitive, but Xyon informed me there was a new free Rock Band song: Stephen Colbert DLC hits Rock Band. The song is called Charlene, a pretty short and hilarious song by Stephen and the Colberts. Those flawless expert achievements are finally within reach!

I ordered some Xbox 360 green replacement cases off eBay, because some of mine were damaged and I’d like to keep the same green look in my library collection. I received my package today and I was surprised to find out that in every single case, there was a DVD movie. The first thing that popped into my head was seller mistake? Then I thought maybe that’s why green dvd cases are more expensive than regular dvd case, they’re code for bootlegs!

At first I didn’t realize these were fake as they looked quite real. The DVD cover art was nice and the back of the DVD was silver. However upon further inspection, you can tell that the cover art is actually a DVD sticker label.

Not only were these not bootlegs, these were not even real DVDs. I tried placing a couple into my DVD-ROM drive and none of them were readable. Looking closer at the back of the DVD, they did look funky:

Anyway, I’m not sure why these were included with my shipment. Maybe they were there in case you weren’t sure how to use a DVD case. I just know I now have a stack of coasters.

Got this via the Xbox.com Marketplace RSS feed: Celebrate Bungie Day!

Grab this new multiplayer map free.

Cold Storage Map

Once, the Cold Storage facility was a vibrant, active research center on Installation 05. An accidental contamination resulted in an unforeseen outbreak, which compromised the Forerunner center. Now, emptied and silent, watched only by a local caretaker, the abandoned structure serves as a reminder of how something as powerful as science is ultimately beholden to nature. This new map is available free starting on 7/7.

Downloaded it a few days ago. Haven’t got a chance to try it out yet.

Time to jam.

Just got alerted that there was a new free track for Guitar Hero III: Guitar Hero III July Song Track Releases:

Top Gun Anthem Single Track (available July 3)
Price: Free
Songs: “Top Gun Anthem” written by Harold Faltermeyer as featured in the famous movie starring Tom Cruise.

I guess it’s a freebie to celebrate the 4th of July. You can listen to the music on YouTube: TOP GUN ANTHEM

Since I was on Xbox Live downloading this free track, I decided to see what other DLC (Downloadable Content) was available for games that I own. Apparently they released new costumes for Ninja Gaiden 2 for 200pts each. I really have no need to pay $2.50 to get a new costume for Ryu Hayabusa.

Anyway, it turns out that Rock Band is also release a new free track. According to *** DLC Week of July 1st – Crüefest Pack plus free song!:

Hey everybody, next week for DLC we have the Crüefest Pack for $.99 per track (80 Microsoft Points) and a track from the movie “The Rocker” by Vesuvius absolutely free! Also check back on Monday and I may have some other news-type-stuff for you.

[...]

“Promised Land” – Vesuvius
(All tracks utilize the original master recordings)

[...]

“Promised Land” – Free!

You can go listen to Promised Land and watch someone play on YouTube: Promised Land- Vesuvius Rock Band Guitar Expert. Sounds like another song celebrating July 4th, Independence Day.

So I finally logged into Xbox Live today to accept Xyon’s friend invitation (apparently he’s now addicted to Rock Band and went out to purchase an Xbox 360 and the Rock Band Special Edition).

Anyway, while I was browsing through the Inside Xbox videos and noticed that there was a new free track for Guitar Hero III: I Am Murloc

From OXM’s World of Warcraft meets Guitar Hero:

Thursday 26-Jun-2008 9:52 AM “I Am Murloc” available to download for GH3, which is great if you actually know what it is.

Fans of Guitar Hero III and free stuff can download “I Am Murloc” today, a World of Warcraft song by Blizzard’s in-house band, Level 70 Elite Tauren Chieftain.

This promotional exercise is supposed to build hype for a big announcement ahead of the Activision and Blizzard merger finally taking place. It could be an announcement that World of Warcraft is heading to consoles (which makes sense given the console DLC and merging) but it’s more likely to be something in the vein of Diablo 3 being announced.

As for the song itself, here it is. Erm… what?

Looking up on YouTube, I found the song and music video: I AM MURLOC – L70ETC.

Enjoy!