rocker of the day

In a moment of brilliant epiphany, Gabriel decided to change his entry in last week's contest from Kyuss to a far superior band. And with that choice, Gabriel has won the giveaway!

This band not only rocks, but their style perfectly fits Brütal Legend. Metal anthems, a feel of medieval fantasy, skilled musicians, a dark doom about them, and one of the better names I've heard for a metal band. Did I mention I'm a sucker for harmonized guitar?

So, in the immortal words of Jack Black, let us raise our goblet of rock to...

Hammers of Misfortune





Congratulations, Gabriel! Be sure to email me at hallower1980@gmail.com so I can send you your prize.

Thanks to everyone for the band recommendations. There were definitely some good ones.

rocker giveaway

In tribute to Brütal Legend, a biographical account of my youth, I'm offering this Audio V Rocker free to whoever introduces me to the best under-appreciated rock band. It's a futon chair with speakers near the head rest. If it's too loud, you're too old.


The chair is being provided by Mounts and More, a CSN store that specializes in TV mounts, projection screens, audio and video cables, and other electronics accessories. Since different people need different size mounts and screens, CSN generously offered this audio chair from another of their stores.

Due to shipping restraints, you must be in the United States or Canada to enter this giveaway.

This is how the giveaway works. Introduce me to a rock band, of any style and any era, that never received the popularity it deserved. It doesn't have to be completely obscure... just a band that many people haven't heard of, but one you're sure has earned its axe in Valhalla. For example, I'm a big fan of Corrosion of Conformity (COC). Another band I like that would qualify is Badlands.

Whatever band you choose, you must provide a link to the band's music so I can hear them. I listen to just about every style of rock. I like both heavy and light stuff. But, to guide you, my favorite music is stuff from the late 80s and early 90s: Metallica's black album, Pantera, Alice in Chains, Guns 'n' Roses' Appetite for Destruction, Anthrax's Sound of White Noise, Soundgarden, Pearl Jam, The Scorpions, Skid Row, etc. It can be dirt simple too, like Gruntruck or Helmet. It can be as laid back and light as Steve Miller Band or as rough and heavy as Down and Children of Bodom. I do prefer stuff with some melody, though.

I'll pick the winner next Monday, May 11. You must be willing to email me your address, so I can pass that info along to Mounts and More and they can ship you your rocker for free. I'm looking forward to hearing what y'all come up with!

You can email me at hallower1980@gmail.com, but post your recommendation as a comment here as well so everyone can hear the bands.

Rock on!

100 DVDs of ghosts and lasers

The guys at EA building Dead Space have come up with a pretty sweet sweepstakes. If you're willing to receive the game's newsletter, then you can enter a drawing for their collection of 100 sci-fi and horror DVDs. The team watched all those movies to study and learn from what's been done before -- an admirable effort to make a quality game.

I've included a list of the 100 movies below. Remember... until someone wins, EA's intern must stand there day and night, without food or water, to ensure the DVD tower does not fall.



1. 12 Monkeys
2. 28 Days Later
3. 2001: A Space Odyssey
4. The Abyss (Special Edition)
5. Acacia
6. Alien
7. Alien vs Predator
8. Aliens (Collectors Edition)
9. Altered States
10. The Amityville Horror (1979)
11. The Andromeda Strain (1971)
12. The Audition (Special Edition)
13. Bad Taste
14. Basket Case (Special Edition)
15. Battlestar Galactica Mini Series
16. Alfred Hitchcock’s The Birds
17. Blade Runner (4 Disk Collector’s Edition)
18. The Brood
19. Cemetery Man
20. The Changeling
21. The City of Lost Children
22. A Clockwork Orange (Special Edition)
23. Close Encounters of the Third Kind (Ultimate Editition)
24. Creepshow
25. Cube
26. Dawn of the Dead (Ultimate Edition)
27. Dead Alive
28. Deep Rising
29. Le Dernier Combat (The Last Battle)
30. The Descent
31. David Lynch’s Dune (Extended Edition)
32. Event Horizon
33. Evil Dead (Ultimate Edition)
34. eXistenZ
35. The Exorcist (The Version You’ve Never Seen)
36. The Eye
37. The Fog (1980)
38. Freaks
39. Friday the 13th
40. Gozu
41. Halloween (Need Date)
42. Halloween 2
43. Haute Tension (High Tension)
44. Hellraiser
45. The Hills Have Eyes (1977)
46. Hostel
47. House of 1000 Corpses
48. I-Robot
49. Ichi the Killer (Special Edition)
50. Inferno
51. In the Mouth of Madness
52. The Iron Giant (Special Edition)
53. Invasion of the Body Snatchers (Collector’s Edition 1978)
54. Jacob's Ladder (Special Edition)
55. Jeepers Creepers
56. Ju-On
57. Logan's Run
58. Metropolis (1926)
59. Minority Report
60. Night of the Living Dead (30th Anniversary Edition1968)
61. Nightmare on Elm Street
62. Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors
63. Oldboy
64. The Omen (1976)
65. The Orphanage
66. The Others
67. Pan's Labyrinth
68. Phantasm
69. Pitch Black
70. Planet of the Apes (1967 Collector’s Edition)
71. Poltergeist
72. Predator
73. Psycho (1960 Collector’s Edition)
74. Re-Animator (Limited Edition)
75. The Ring
76. The Running Man (Special Edition)
77. Saw (Saw Trilogy)
78. Saw 2 (Saw Trilogy)
79. Saw 3 (Saw Trilogy)
80. Scanners
81. Serenity (Collector’s Edition)
82. The Serpent and the Rainbow
83. Session 9
84. Seven (Platinum Series)
85. Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining (Special Editions)
86. The Sixth Sense
87. Slaughterhouse Five (1973)
88. Solaris (1972 Criterion Collection)
89. Soylent Green
90. Stephen King's IT
91. Sunshine
92. Suspiria (Special Edition)
93. A Tale of Two Sisters
94. The Terminator
95. The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974 Ultimate Edition)
96. They Live
97. The Thing (Collector’s Edition)
98. The Time Machine (1960)
99. Total Recall (Special Edition)
100. War of the Worlds (Spielberg)

I'm going to add some of those to my Blockbuster queue. What are some other good horror or sci-fi flicks?

Bad Company contest winners!

The time has come for the winners to start blowing stuff up! In the end, there were about 60 entries and a lot of cool ideas. If your idea didn't win, that doesn't mean I don't like it. I had to go through four phases of culling. These are the criteria I used to judge (which, in hindsight, perhaps I should have listed before):

• FUN: Obviously, this is the most important. Would the inclusion of this weapon/vehicle have players giddy with excitement and shouting triumphantly at the screen? Would players be talking about their experience long after it was over?
  

• FRESH: Innovation is appreciated, but I was asking more - Is this something gamers haven't experienced before? Would it feel like only a small spin on an old design or like a new type of gameplay? Remember, I mentioned the Halo sticky grenade as a great weapon, because being able to laugh as your enemy runs around screaming with terror in those seconds is priceless, as is watching that enemy run into a crowd of other players before exploding.

• BALANCED: Is it too powerful? Is its power offset by its limitation(s)? If there are 20 players on the map and 6 of them choose your weapon over other options, would that disrupt the battle?

• DYNAMICS: How much depth and variation does the idea offer? All you can do well with a sniper rifle is snipe, right? But finding good sniping positions, sneaking to those positions, combating the gun's unsteady aim, and choosing whether to wait for the headshot or shoot before the enemy moves... these variables surround the weapon and ensure that you can use it repeatedly and still have fresh, unique experiences. You can use the same gun 20 times and have 20 unique experiences. That's a dynamic weapon. Dynamics prolong a game's life, make experiences more memorable, and give players personal stories to share.

• DIFFICULTY TO IMPLEMENT: So the idea sounds fun... but would it be hell to design and balance? Most developers are willing to put a good bit of elbow grease behind a weapon's inclusion in their game, but some ideas have so many complications or require so much adjustment of the game's other weapons, maps, and other features that the idea just isn't cost-efficient. An idea that developers can implement quickly and easily for relatively great effect is an invaluable contribution, because that clears up their time and money to work on other parts of the game and make the whole product even better.

Looking back at the idea you submitted, perhaps you see how it would score well in one of these five areas and not in others. If the idea you entered isn't listed as a winner below, feel free to share it as a comment here. I'll list just a few of the good ideas that didn't win at the end. Anyway...

Here they are, THE WINNERS! and in no particular order:

Chris suggested a portable mortar. Trajectory-aimed weapons (you have to estimate the angle due to the pull of gravity) are a very unique and fun type of gameplay. This one can be carried and moved on your back, but can only be fired from a stationary position. It can destroy light armored vehicles and infantry. A player could fire it from behind buildings or other visual impediments. Though hidden, the user can be tracked by the following the mortar's trajectory and he would be vulnerable during the launcher's use.

Bryce suggested a gun for hallucinogenic darts. The beauty of this idea is that the hallucination is crippling but not completely incapacitating, but can offer far more dynamics than a flashbang or stun grenade through a variety of possible hallucinations. For example, the affected enemy's screen might temporarily display false damage indicators (shows he's getting hit from somewhere when he really isn't) or a false map. Something might obscure his vision... perhaps even something strange and amusing, as Bryce proposes. The basic concept was proven fun by the tranquilizer dartgun in Perfect Dark 64, and this takes that concept much further.

David suggested a gun with highly magnetic ammo, set by the player to a positive or negative charge, and meant to magnetize other objects. This idea has a lot of possibilities for dynamic use. Deflect or weaken a sniper's shot by spraying metal-repellant rounds between you. Magnetize two heavy objects to bring them together like a massive hammer. Shoot at an enemy above to push him off his perch. Or disrupt a vehicle. There are many possible uses for players to discover, though this one could be tricky to balance.

Luke suggested a G-Force grenade. It's a non-lethal grenade with enough kinetic force to send people flying, disrupt vehicles, clear an area, aid an escape, or help the player leap to a rooftop (like a Halo grenade, but without the damage).

Joseph suggested a gun that causes the shooter and hit enemy to switch places. He knows this weapon needs some restrictions, like limited ammo, and map design would be complicated. Like the other ideas, it opens up many possibilities. I picture a veteran player jumping off a cliff and then shooting an enemy before he falls. :)

Dag dag suggested a gun with the "replay" feature from The Fifth Element. Such a weapon would be dynamic, offer a fresh type of gameplay, and is probably easy to balance by giving it a short range and perhaps tweaking the bullet damage.

Daniel suggested the bouncing betty, a jumping landmine. Dying by mines would be much more dramatic (fun) if they shot two meters into the air before exploding. It also widens the likelihood of being non-fatally injured by shrapnel, and creates the possibility of being injured from across a waist-high wall or other barrier.

Kickflipfreak and darkman both suggested (and both will receive codes for) the CornerShot. It's a real gun that can shoot around corners by bending and offering vision through a camera.

And finally, Tom suggested the Mole Cannon, a user-guided subterranean explosive device. It's powerful but, because guiding it requires the user's whole screen, it leaves the user completely vulnerable during use. In fact, if its trail can be seen like a mole's trail, enemy players can track it; thereby forcing the player to constantly move. It could knock players upwards, over ledges, or even through windows. This seems like basically an improved, more balanced version of the Farsight concept in Perfect Dark 64 (which I'm surprised to mention twice in this post). Like the others, it provides dynamic fun.

Congratulations, all! I'll start emailing your codes right away.


There were five ideas that were each suggested by more than one person. Those popular ideas were an amphibious vehicle, the Corner Shot, a sniper rifle with explosive bullets (take out the cover with the explosive bullet, then kill the enemy with a normal bullet), a weapon or device that lets you permanently tag an enemy so they show up on radar (at least until killed), and (strangely enough) a weapon that changes its ammo or enemies into whatever is sampled from the environment (plastic, wood, metal, etc).

A sample of other good ideas: an APC with blind-firing, a gun-controlled sonic blast, an E-SMAW, a defibrillator, an entrapping but breakable force field, a shrapnel arrow, a wench gun, a SPAS-12, a throwable-retrievable bayonet, and a tag that emits colored smoke only when the enemy is in close proximity with other players (revealing where they're hiding or where the battle is). There were many more cool ideas.

I hope y'all agree with at least some of my choices.

play Battlefield: Bad Company early!

Much to my surprise, EA has given me 10 codes that unlock the Battlefield: Bad Company demo on Xbox Live and PSN. The demo will be available to everyone on June 5th, but here's your chance to download it and starting blowing stuff up a week early!



I've come up with a little contest. Because of the short notice, I'll simply give the remaining codes away if too few have entered the contest by Friday at 7:00 p.m. (Central time; GMT minus 6 hours for you non-Americans).

To enter the contest: All you have to do is to submit your idea of a cool weapon or vehicle that you've never seen in a game but think could make for some great fun. If you want to point to a real weapon that just hasn't showed up in a game yet (an FSF-1 Sea Fighter, for example), that'll work; but preference will be given to original ideas. The best ideas are things that can single-handedly change gameplay, like the sticky grenades in Halo or the FarSight in Perfect Dark 64. Email your idea (one per entry; one entry per person) to me (Aaron) at hallower1980@gmail.com. On Friday night, the 10 winners will be emailed their codes to unlock the demo and the best weapon/vehicle ideas will be posted here on my site.

Again, this contest is only open until Friday at 7:00 p.m. CST, at which point all of the codes will be awarded. In the case of too few entries, remaining codes will be given away. So, for example, if only eight people enter the contest by Friday night, then those people will automatically win codes and I'll give the other two away.


The demo includes an early look into the single-player quest for Gold with Bad Company and, of course, multiplayer. Multiplayer takes the form of Gold Rush mode on the Oasis map (featuring land, sea, and air vehicles). It includes the ability to reach rank 4 and unlock an exclusive in-game weapon.

In case you've forgotten or haven't been watching it, Battlefield: Bad Company is a game by Dice that allows 24 players online and is all about destructible environments: "Create sniping positions by blowing out a piece of a wall or drive your tank straight through a small house."

War in a sandbox. Blow up the box. :)



Clarification (edit): I'm not a DICE or EA developer. EA was just generous enough to give a simple blogger like me the opportunity to host this contest.

And your weapon/vehicle idea doesn't have to be for Battlefield: Bad Company specifically... just something that a similar war game could use.