Yep, it's been a while. Sue me, :-). Liz and I have been pretty busy with work and life in general, so that explains the lack of updates (but it doens't excuse them, hehe).
By far the most major development since you last read us is that we're taking
Intro to Japanese at
NYU's School of Continuing Education. It's two hours, once a week, so it's not incredibly time-consuming (though our homework has been taking progressively longer every week). Today will be our fourth class, and I think we've actually learned quite a bit! We know a handful of useful expressions, have learned 15
hiragana (the character set used mostly for Japanese words, as opposed to
katakana, which is used for foreign words/expressions), can count, know the days of the week, the months, etc. It's obviously still confusing, but so far so good!
The main thing I wanted to share with everyone is that in just under four weeks
Guitar Hero 2 comes out. Yup, you heard me right, :-).
The main songs of the game have been confirmed, and there will be 8 tiers with 5 songs each, for a total of 40 songs. There'll also be 24 unlockable bonus tracks, and unlike the first Guitar Hero these won't be all indie rock bands that we've never heard of. I hope to be pleasantly surprised by most of them! It's a bummer that there won't be Led Zeppelin or Metallica in the game (licensing issues, though I guess there's a chance that there'll be some song of theirs in the bonus tracks, but maybe that's hoping for too much), but I'm quite happy with what we're getting (the list was officially announced yesterday, though some tracks had been announced piecemeal):
1. Opening Licks Motley Crue - Shout at the Devil
Danzig - Mother
Cheap Trick - Surrender
Wolfmother - Woman
Spinal Tap - Tonight I'm Gonna Rock You Tonight
2. Amp-Warmers Kiss - Strutter
Nirvana - Heart-Shaped Box
Police - Message in a Bottle
Van Halen - You Really Got Me
Kansas - Carry on Wayward Son
3. String-Snappers Foo Fighters - Monkey Wrench
Alice in Chains - Them Bones
Iggy Pop and the Stooges - Search and Destroy
Pretenders - Tattooed Love Boys
Black Sabbath - War Pigs
4. Thrash and Burn Warrant - Cherry Pie
Butthole Surfers - Who Was in My Room Last Night
Mathew Sweet - Girlfriend
Rolling Stones - Can't You Hear Me Knockin'
Guns N' Roses - Sweet Child O' Mine
5. Return of the Shred Rage Against the Machine - Killing in the Name Of
Primus - John the Fisherman
Sword - Freya
Thin Lizzy - Bad Reputation
Aerosmith - Last Child
6. Relentless Riffs Heart - Crazy on You
Stone Temple Pilots - Tripping on a Hole in a Paper Heart
Stray Cats - Rock This Town
Allman Brothers - Jessica
Jane's Addiction - Stop
7. Furious Fretwork Anthrax - Madhouse
Living End - Carry Me Home
Lamb of God - Laid to Rest
Reverend Horton Heat - Psychobilly Freakout
Rush - YYZ
8. Face-Melters Avenged Sevenfold - Beast and the Harlot
Suicidal Tendencies - Institutionalized
Dick Dale - Misirlou
Megadeth - Hangar 18
Lynyrd Skynyrd - Free Bird
There are a bunch of tracks I don't know, but in just a day I've been able to download almost everything I didn't already have, so I'm currently listening to my GH2 playlist on iTunes with 36 out of 40 tracks. Yeah, I love this game that much (and it's not even out yet!).
Additionally, there was a GH2 demo disc available with the November issue of
Official Playstation Magazine, so I obviously got that as soon as it came out. It included four tracks (on all four difficulties): Shout at the Devil, Strutter, You Really Got Me and YYZ. All of them were fun to play, and YYZ was a real bitch on Expert (I managed to just get through the solo and finish the song on my first try, but it wasn't pretty). The big surprise were 3-button chords, which I knew about, but they still take you by surprise when playing a song for the first time. I think they only appear on Expert, which means that the progression is probably as follows:
- Easy: only use the first three buttons (Green, Red, Yellow)
- Medium: add the fourth button (Blue)
- Hard: add the fifth button (Orange)
- Expert: add 3-note chords
It's apparently also possible to play Co-Op mode on the demo, which lets the second player play either bass or rhythm guitar (depending on the track), but you need a second guitar, so we haven't been able to try that yet.
Can you tell I'm excited? Liz is, too, but I don't think quite as much, :-). A potential problem is that
Final Fantasy XII comes out on October 31st, so that means that as soon as GH2 comes out a week later the two will be jockeying for my attention. Since the FF series are my favorite games ever, but GH quickly became my second-favorite, I'm curious to see what'll end up happening...
Not much else is going on right now, other than that my sister finally found an apartment out in Park Slope. It's official: the Newman invasion of NYC is in full effect!
Ok kiddies, back to work. You'll definitely be hearing more in the weeks to come...
Luis
P.S.- by the way, what are people doing for Halloween?
