Meanwhile little old New Zealand and big old Australia are still waiting for a release date and pricing for the original Rock Band, which released in the States last year.

Back when EA announced that it had decided to rip off U.K. gamers with Rock Band, I hinted that the game might never make it to our shores… and that is seeming even more likely now. With Rock Band about to be superseded, why bother? And why will Rock Band 2 be worthy of release if Rock Band wasn’t?

Activision might well find an exclusive market for its upcoming band game Guitar Hero: World Tour if EA continues to neglect the Australasian market.

Check out the official site for trailers etc.

We’ve pencilled it in for late 2009 at this stage, and you can pre-order now.

Now, talk of Guitar Hero: Metallica is no longer a case of wishful thinking or idle speculation–it’s fact. When sifting through an SEC filing of Activision’s over the weekend, Wedbush Morgan Securities analyst Edward Woo–associate of the highly visible Michael Pachter–uncovered a gem in the section where the Santa Monica, California-based publisher discussed its upcoming game slate.

“In fiscal 2009, we plan to publish Guitar Hero: On Tour for the NDS; Guitar Hero: Aerosmith, Guitar Hero: Metallica, and Guitar Hero IV across multiple platforms,” the company said in its report. Activision’s fiscal year ends on March 31, 2009, which means that the game will likely follow the holiday release of Guitar Hero: World Tour (nee Guitar Hero 4).

Thanks, GameSpot.

I spent a good few hours (too many, perhaps) this past weekend playing the new Xbox Live Arcade* game Penny Arcade Adventures: On the Rain-Slick Precipice of Darkness, and have just wrapped up the story this evening.

The game is being released in episode form (think Sam & Max) so the first edition is short, clocking in at probably six hours or so. The environments are limited, but the game does pack a fair bit of action into its two major settings. The questing is fairly standard adventure/RPG stuff; you’ll trek around gathering clues, smashing open crates for items, fighting baddies and gaining experience and levels and such. Nothing too exciting or revolutionary here but for this type of game it gets the job done.

What does make PAA: OTRSPOD (cripes) worth playing though is the trademark Penny Arcade humour and, most impressively, the battle system.

The battles are probably best described as Final Fantasy with action timers. Essentially, once an action is performed there is a cool down period before you can use another action, and each character in your party has their own set of timers. The timer for item use fills up more quickly than the attack function, and the special attack fills up more slowly again. Additionally, you are able to block incoming attacks by timing a button when the enemy strikes; so you’re required to think about several things at once and the system really does work very, very well.

The enemies are limited but each has its own humourous charm: you’ll fight drunken hobos, fruit… err… fornicators, clowns, mimes and even barbershop quartets. Each enemy has its own strengths and weaknesses which add a bit of planning strategy.

Graphically, it’s exactly what you’d expect. Pre-rendered scenes and cartoon characters. The cut scenes are in the style of the comic strip and there’s speech bubbles all over the place. It works.

The humour translates pretty well from the strip too. Thankfully the creators didn’t try to do voiceovers for Gabe and Tycho, so everything funny is in text form and that’s exactly how it should be. It’s a little hit and miss at times but nothing is cringeworthy and there’s a lot of cleverness overall.

So then, it’s certainly worth a look if you’re a fan of the comic – and even if you’re not you’ll probably enjoy the battle system. Good stuff and an impressive first offering.

On the Rain-Slick Precipice of Darkness can be purchased online for PC platforms from Greenhouse, whilst the Xbox version can be found in the Xbox Live Marketplace. No word on a retail version as yet.

* The game has also released for Windows, Linux and Mac; I chose Xbox over Windows for the achievement factor.

• You install the game from the DVD-ROM; (This is the last time that you will need the DVD, which is nice.)
• Each time you play Mass Effect, it will connect to EA to authenticate your CD key. If successful, this authentication will allow you ten more days of play time.
• After those ten days are up that you will be required to authenticate again – in other words, if you are not connected to the Internet for nine days after your last authentication, you’re fine, but if you’re still not connected on the tenth day, you will not be able to play the game.

The BioWare representative also mentions that Spore will be employing this method.

Now, I’ve outlined my views on piracy measures in a previous post, but this is ridiculous. Assuming the system is flawless, this would probably not affect me because I have an always-on Internet connection plugged in to my gaming PC, but why should I have to report back to headquarters every 10 days to prove that my game is legit? Why shouldn’t I be able to play the game after ten days without Internet if I took my laptop on holiday? Why the hell is my legitimate copy inferior to a pirated copy!?

This move is going to anger a lot of the “hard core” gaming market, who also happen to be Mass Effect’s target audience. I expect that our customer service department will be actioning some cancellation requests over the next couple of days.

Copeland’s poor arguments for his cause will likely be enjoyed by gamers, as he advises multiple times that the game has “no redeeming features” and suggests that it is a simulator for learning how to kill in a similar way that a simulator trains astronauts to go into space.

Interestingly he doesn’t call for any other R18 material to be banned, despite his claims that children getting their hands on the game are his primary concern and there is certainly a lot of material out there which is inappropriate for children. Oh, and he also calls the game “Grand Auto Theft Number 4″ at one point.

You can listen to both interviews over at Gameplanet.

It was with great interest therefore that I read EA’s announcement yesterday that Rock Band would finally be releasing on May 23rd in the UK after having been unavailable anywhere but the USA since last year. I’ve spent countless hours playing the Guitar Hero series and have been looking forward to Rock Band for a long time.

So that’s the good news, because purely on that information it means that NZ might have a chance of seeing the game before the end of next month.

The bad news however is that the game has been priced at a whopping 180 pounds. Once converted to US dollars, that is more than double the price that US consumers have been paying. What a shocker. That potentially puts the New Zealand price up over $400 and possibly even as high as $500; and the higher the price gets the less likely the game will even make it to NZ. I’m suddenly wondering if our market is big enough for Rock Band… and I won’t be surprised if it isn’t.

Fingers crossed I’m wrong.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=wRTWgpifsFc

Noting that sales of last year’s Need for Speed ProStreet didn’t live up to EA’s hopes for the game, Gibeau said he thinks it was because the series drifted too far from what consumers expected. ProStreet had dropped the tuner culture and police evasion aspects of previous installments in favor of perfectly legit closed track racing. For the next Need for Speed, Gibeau promised that the series would be getting back to its roots with a number of features, including open-world racing and a new highway battle mode.

Personally I wonder if the drop in sales is more to do with the fact that EA has released one or more new NFS title almost every year since the series debuted way back in 1995 – the only years without a release were 1996 and 2002.

Face it, guys – you’ve been milking the franchise for so long that its nipples are sore and swollen. It’s time to give it a rest. Move the schedule to a new game every two years, make every new release worth its asking price and restore some confidence in your brand amongst critical gamers.