Video Games

Aeropause has the latest Rock Band details, via someone at NeoGaf who posted them all.  For those of you who don’t know exactly what Rock Band in, it’s Harmonix’s latest project, which offers the ability to function in a virtual band by allowing up to four players play guitars, bass, drums, and vocals.  Check these details out!

* One disk with 4 separate campaigns. Guitar, Drum, Bass and Vocal. Each can be played on its own from start to finish, in addition, a full band game is designed to allow for one huge co-op playthrough.
* Will feature full support for four player online play on both 360 and PS3. Any combination of on/offline play will work and each player can pick their own difficulty setting.
* Flexible community system will allow you to find bandmates anywhere in the world
* There will be a way for you to share your band’s triumphs with the world, but the details are still under wraps.

* Musical fret-boards are now transparent so you can see more of the background visuals. Guitar is on the left side of the screen, Bass on the right and drums down the middle. Vocals scroll from right to left along the top of the screen.
* Guitars and Bass now have 10 frets. 5 for the regular sections of the game and 5 for the newly designated solo sections.
* Whammy bar is back as is the tilt to activate rock band’s version of star power
* there is a five way switch on the guitar that allows for 5 different self-applied effects to the sound.
* Singing is now more in depth. There is a phoneme detector that will pick up individual vowels and consonants you say. Build up enough highly judged phrases and you’ll be able to sing free-form. If you do well enough in free-form, then you’ll trigger the vocalist’s version of star power.
* Microphone doubles as a tambourine on many songs to combat super long guitar solos where the singer doesn’t have much to do.
* Drums are apparently insane. You use actual sticks and hit one of four colored pads in front of you, in addition to a kick pedal attached to the drumming unit. Drummers will also have the ability to do fills etc. in their own little free-form section, do well and you’ll trigger the drummers version of star power.
* If one person fails, the whole band does not fail, their section simply turns gray and they have to sit out the rest of the song unless one your band mates initiates star power, which will bring you back into the fold.
* If all bandmates can reach the end of a song, you’ll be greeted with one huge free-form jam session.
* There will be a character creation system, and you can create multiple avatars that play different instruments.
* Four themed clothing stores in addition to licensed guitars and pedals and other rock paraphernalia.
* A full set of mo-cap stage movements have been added for each instrument. You can decide whether your vocalist moves like Axel Rose, or stands his ground like Clapton.
* 40 performance venues planned
* All peripherals will be unique to each platform. This isn’t the developer’s decision. Apparently MS peripherals require special circuit boards.
* You’ll be able to craft your own band logo

There’s more…. dear god is there more…
4 songs announced in the article, not sure if this is new or old but whatever.

* Weezer - Say It Ain’t So - Original Master Track
* Black Sabbath - Paranoid - Original Master Track
* The Who - Won’t Get Fooled Again - Original Master Track
* Nirvana - In Bloom - Original Master Track

INSTRUMENT DESCRIPTIONS

Guitars/Bass

* Guitars are an exact 3/4 replica of a Fender Strat.
* Xplorer guitars will work for 360 owners, but you may not be able to pass on all the new stuff this model has.
* Five familiar buttons near the top of the neck, five buttons near the body of the guitar. You will use these new buttons during specially designed solo sections using ONLY hammer ons and pull offs, no having to worry about your strum bar. Signature Fender 5-way switch has been added. By shopping at the in game store you’ll be able to purchase several virtual effects pedals such as Flange, Wah, Chorus and Echo. These can be applied during your song by setting the 5 way switch to the desired effect.

Microphone

* There will eventually be a Rock Band branded Mic
* Other USB mics will be supported, but Harmonix will probably NOT allow the use of the 360 headset due to its low fidelity. Mics will be usable as tambourines during certain songs.

Drums

* It consists of four pads, a kick pedal and legs for the enire unit to stand on. Think of it as a TV dinner tray stand only cooler
* Leftmost pad (red) is your snare drum, everything else doubles as toms and cymbals depending on the song.
* A set of real wooden drum sticks will ship with the unit.
* A piece of the stand can be taken off so that the unit can sit lower, or on a coffee table.
* There is a kick pedal
* If you play drums in this game on hard or expert, then you’re really playing the drums. Apparently you could sit down at a real set and play the same songs.

Hitting 505 screens last weekend, Dead or Alive raked in a paltry $232,000 over the 3-day weekend.  That’s just over $150 a day per screen, which means that approximately 15-25 people were watching each screen that was DOA-dedicated.  This is yet another indication that film adaptations of video-games are following in a tradition steadily-decreasing quality.  Although the average rating of DOA on IMDB is 4.8/10, I highly doubt that half of the people who have seen it are genuinely satisfied.

Following the release of DotA 6.44, the good folks over at dotaportal have released a newer version of DotA: version 6.44b (not AI). Of course, I guarantee that within 2 weeks there will be at least a DotA 6.45. You can download the latest version (6.44b) of DotA Allstars HERE. The changelogs of DotA 6.44 and 6.44b are as follows:

6.44b Changelog:
================
* Fixed Pit of Malice tooltip
* Fixed issue with Templar taking Geomancer’s spot as an Agi hero in -allagi
* Fixed a bug with Storm’s Overload that made its attack counter inaccurate at higher attack speeds
* Fixed the issue that caused a checksum error to appear
* Killing a courier’s image no longer announces the message as if it was real
* Fixed a bug with respawning that would respawn you faster if you had boughtback right before dying again
* Clarified Plague tooltip
* Fixed Cleave, Scattershot and various other spells from affecting Psionic Traps
* Fixed Boots of Travel working on Psionic Traps
* Fixed Vacuum from working on various exploitable areas
* Improved Plague visual effect
* Nerfed Plague damage amplification by 5% and changed the duration from 7/9/11 to 7/8/9 seconds
* Reduced Reverse Polarity mana cost and cd per level
* Lowered hp/armor on Raise Dead summons and increased bounty a little
* Fixed a bug that caused Plague to slow more than intended and said in the tooltip
* Displayed the player name when a tower is denied instead of his team name
* Clarified Life Break tooltip
* Nerfed str gain on Dirge
* Reduced Dirge model size very slightly
* Fixed Electric Rave from triggering Essence Aura, CotS
* Fixed Plague from giving the kill credit to the Dirge instead of the damage dealer
* Improved Luna base damage
* Fixed some issues with Meld
* Clarified Soul Rip tooltip
* Inner Vitality manacost is the same at all levels now (a nerf)
* Rebalanced Dark Portal. Aside from stat changes such as manacost/channeltime/duration, it cannot be cast from/to base and you can only transport through it once, not back and forth.
* Reduced the pause effect on vacuum considerably
* Added visual effect to transporting units through Dark Portal
* Changed the Storm soundset
* Fixed misc other minor issues
6.44 Changelog:
================
==[Heroes]==

* Added a new Scourge hero: Dark Seer
* Added a new Scourge hero: Pit Lord
* Added a new Scourge hero: Undying
* Added a new Sentinel hero: Storm Spirit
* Added a new Sentinel hero: Templar Assassin
* Added a new Sentinel hero: Sacred Warrior (39888)
* New heroes are disabled in -lm/-xl
* Queen of Pain -> Reduced attack range from 600 to 550
* Queen of Pain -> Rebalanced how Shadow Strike levels up
* Dwarven Sniper -> Slightly increased base mana
* Ursa Warrior -> Is now a proper melee hero (recent patch fixed the issue, 137702)
* Shadow Priest -> Removed the duration nerf on Shallow Grave (it will now last until the target dies). Reduced cooldown. The respawn speed is nerfed instead.
* Troll Warlord -> Removed Berserker Rage mana cost
* Alchemist -> Increased casting range on Unstable Concoction a bit
* Alchemist ->  Improved level 1 Chemical Rage health regeneration by 5
* Alchemist -> Minor buff to the damage on Unstable Concoction
* Doom Bringer -> Reduced Doom’s Scepter upgrade duration by 2 seconds
* Moon Rider -> Eclipse no longer depends on Lucent Beam level
* Chen -> Increased movement speed from 290 to 295
* Spiritbreaker -> Nether Strike no longer depends on Greater Bash
* Bristleback -> Reduced max Quill Spray damage stack
* Bristleback -> Reduced movement speed by 5
* Bone Fletcher -> Changed Searing Arrows cooldown from 4/3/2/0 to 4/3/0/0
* Magnataur -> Improved his cast animation time
* Doom Bringer -> Due to popular demand, Level Death deals it’s bonus damage on level 25 as well
* Syllabear -> Level 3 Spirit Bear has regained Entangle
==[Misc]==

* Various minor terrain improvements requested for league play
* Added hotkeys for all basic items (only a few had them before)
* Changed piercing damage to heavy armor to 75% from 100%
* Added -roll command (133304)
* Added a few new weather effects (-weather moonlight/wind)
* Added -weather random that will randomly change the weather for you (and only you) every 5 minutes
* Rewrote some item manipulation code to fix some exploits
* Added creep spawn modes -notop/-nomid/-nobot (-nt/-nm/-nb)
* You can now team kill units in other damage over time abilities like Curse of the Silent and Shadow Word
* You have to be below 25% health for an ally to be able to start denying you (assuming you can be denied of course)
* Removed the last melee creep count upgrade (the rest of the changes from last version are still the same)
* Recoded various resource intensive abilities for increased map stability
* Added new command -noswap (-ns)
* Satyr Trickster -> Increased movement speed
==[Item]==

* Wards -> Reworked Observer and Sentry wards again
* Bottle -> After rune usage, it returns a 2/3 Bottle instead of a fully refilled one
* Tango -> Price from 80 to 90
* Flask -> Heals over a period of 10 seconds instead of 20
* Flying Courier -> Removed Boots of Speed from requirements
* Flying Courier -> Added new ability (Courier Shield) and lowered vision
==[Cosmetics]==

* World Tree -> Added a new model (provided by Janzak @ janzak.deviantart.com)
* Chat messages now show hero name
* An announcement is now made when a tower is denied
* Considerably improved End Game Scoreboard and Observer Scoreboard presentation and content (total gold row coming in near future)
* Wrote gold cost on basic items like they are on recipes to allow for price checking before you go back to base
* The game now displays a kill message when a chicken dies
* End Scorescreen now lets you know when someone is no longer in the game
* Scoreboard now colors players differently if they have left the game
* Slithreen Guard -> Added new Sprint visual effect (126186)
* Goblin Techies -> New Remote Mine model (130285)
* Flying Courier -> Added unique scourge flying courier model
* When a team mate denies an ally, it now says his name (127161)
* Crystal Maiden -> Crystal Maiden’s Scepter upgrade now gives a unique visual effect (128977)
* Chaos Knight -> Chaos Bolt now shows the random stun duration (130088)
* Keeper of the Light -> Added a new and more accurate Illuminate Wave effect provided by eva00r
* Shadow Fiend -> Added a special effect when Nevermore gains a soul (132731)
* Morphling -> Added text overhead to show the damage dealt by Adaptive Strike
* Camera now moves to the throne/tree when it dies. Added 1-2 second delay before scoreboard appears to show the death animations
* Added more flavor text to various items (130384)
* Added new icons for Freezing Field, Viscous Nasal Goo, Drow’s Silence, Lightning Storm, Blur, Global Silence, Plague Wards (thanks snork and switch)
* Added new icon for Mirror Image (73303)
* Changed second secret shop name
* Improved visibility of scourge fifth recipe shop when not in base
* Improved movement speed items’ tooltips (130948)
* Courier -> When purchasing a courier, Sentinel will get a random selection of Chicken, Raccoon or Penguin, while Scourge will get a random selection of Carrion Beetle, Dune Worm or Fel Boar.
* Listed damage type for Arcane/Impetus/Glaives
* Improved Demon Witch’s Impale tooltip (107362)
* Changed the default missing icon on the scoreboard from the eye to another one
* Battle Fury -> now lists it as a melee item (139040)
* Sanity’s Eclipse -> The damage dealt to units is now listed as an overhead text
* Added more flavor text to various abilities
* Improved various item tooltips to make it more user friendly
* Added reminder in -mm regarding hero switches
* Updated Bottle Tooltip to make it more obvious that rune bottle refilling is not a bug!
* Reduced how long the warning about disassemble lasts on the screen
* Improved dozens of tooltips
* Thanks to Eva00r and JetFango for various icons/effects
==[Various fixes]==

* Fixed the desync bug that happens when observers leave a game, causing some other players to disconnect
* Fixed another very rare respawn glitch
* Fixed Ignis Fatuus scepter upgrade not being on autocast by default
* Fixed a bug that caused sprout trees to sometimes respawn trapping the hero again
* Fixed Lothar’s Edge icon(132136)
* Fixed a bug with custom replay data winner field
* Fixed Holy Persuation not showing level in tooltip
* Fixed Midnight Pulse killing mines
* Fixed Clarity Potion buff icon bug
* Fixed Mask of Madness buff icon (126834)
* Fixed Drunken Haze tooltip typo
* Improved some internal Observer Mode code
* Fixed Wrath of Nature typo
* Fixed a bug with Black Hole pulling in mines
* Fixed some memory leaks with Time Lapse and Poison Nova
* Fixed a rare bug with Toss
* Fixed Chronosphere tooltip
* Clarified some TDA quest menu rules
* Compressed various icons (thanks PGRu-Unexpect3D)
* Fixed a bug with Phantom Edge giving extra evasion
* Lots of optimizations to how Impetus/Glaives/Arcane abilities were coded
* Fixed Helm of Iron will giving 2 hp regen and not 3 hp
* Fixed the game clock continuing after the game has ended
* Fixed a rare bug with Adaptive Strike
* Fixed Rampage buff tooltip
* Fixed a rare bug with Greater Bash
* Fixed some bugs with -dm and various abilities that depended on unit state
* Fixed Silencer from stealing an INT from an ally deny
* Fixed Shockwave from hitting wards
* Gave unique codes to the following abilities make replay processing more straight forward: Phantom Assassin’s Shadow Strike, Venomancer’s Shadow Strike, Queen of Pain’s Shadow Strike, Stealth Assassin’s Blink Strike, Chaos Knight’s Blink Strike, Lion’s Voodoo, Rhasta’s Voodoo, Razor’s Frenzy, Viper’s Frenzy, Sven’s Storm Bolt and Leo’s Storm Bolt.
* Fixed some item buying cooldowns that were still at 5 sec instead of 1
* Fixed Necromastery tooltip
* Fixed various other buggy tooltips 

As usual, I’ll keep you guys posted on the latest DotA details: where, when, and what’s going on with your favorite WC3:FT custom map.

The Wii port of the Gamecube version of Resident Evil IV, which consists of modification of the game to fit the new console, has arrived in stores.  This means that the controls have been remade to fit the demands of a wiimote, and that the game now features widescreen support.  However, the most interesting thing about Resident Evil 4 for the Wii is that the graphics are almost exactly identical to those of the Gamecube edition.  Take a look at this screenshot:

Anyways, the Wii version of the game is only $30 (read: cheap), so you might want to check it out, just to see how it feels to go on a zombie-killing rampage with your wiimote in hand.  Here’s the official press release.