McWilliams’ World

Wow…those guys over at yourfree360games.com have really done it this time. You can now get Guitar Hero 2 (360) for free or easily under $20 just by doing 2 offers. That’s a $90 game for next to nothing! Man if I only waited a week or so, I’d have jumped on this for sure!

Other games I’m oogling to get through there (just listed):

• Mass Effect
• Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter 2

I just got some cash from a computer consulting gig I did for a friend over the weekend. Maybe I’ll get these two games. (although Mass Effect doesn’t come out till June – It’ll be on order). Heck, I’ll be better than blowing $120 for the two games. My rule-of-thumb is never pay full price unless it’s not your own money.

But for GH2?! It’s a no brainer, if you’ve been hedging because of price, you have no excuse. It’s simple to do and complete. I’ve done it a ton of times! Do it now!

Wow. I knew that they were going to be releasing downloadable content for Guitar Hero 2 (360) soon after it’s release, but get a load of these prices.

Major Nelson has all the details and conversation.

What’s available? 3 song packs with 3 songs each (and none of the packs are all that great). Each song pack will set you back a cool 500 Microsoft Points which equates to $6.25. Quite steep for 3 songs. If you got all 3 packs (9 songs) we’re nearing $20. Considering if ALL GH1 songs were available, it’d nearly run you $100!

I’m guessing one or two things are at play here: RedOctane/Activision is either experimenting with pricing, seeing where we as gamers baulk or getting greedy or MS is flexing some muscle with publishers forcing them to price their content at certain levels. I don’t like the second theory. I’d like to believe MS is leaving all content and pricing up to the publishers. That was the promise, right? But apparently there are rumors floating around alluding to the fact that MS is doing the opposite. Gears of War makers are also saying that they’ve been wanting to give away a few maps for a while but MS is forcing them to put a price on them as to get gamers into the mindset of paying for additional content. Not good.

Now, I haven’t bought much off Xbox Live Marketplace (other than a few arcade titles). I don’t mind paying for content and I love the fact that we can download additional items for our games but I also know a good value when I see it – and this isn’t one of them.

I’m passing until someone gets their greedy hands out of my wallet.

I’ll post some pictures shortly….

I was third in line at Wal-Mart; probably about 6 or 7 guys showed up and as soon as 12:01am rolled around, we shuffled through and picked up our game packs (I also had to pick up cereal for the munchkins). Quite exciting.

Once I got home, I carefully opened the package and took some pictures and then began setting it up.

There’s been some complaints about the Xplorer guitar as some seasoned vets of the PS2 version complained that the guitar was smaller than it’s PS2 counterpart, the whammy bar was not as responsive and that the guide buttons (start, back, d-pad) are in an awkward place causing one to accidentally hit them during play.

I’ve played the PS2 version on occasion and I can’t tell a difference between the size of the two guitars. I think the Xplorer feels just right. The whammy bar was fine and responsive. I will say, however that the guide buttons are in a peculiar spot and could get in the way depending on how you’re holding the guitar. I like to let the guitar hang low (like all cool rockers do) so the guide buttons don’t get in my way.

I managed to play for about an hour and unlock three achievements:

• 100K Club: Got 100,000 points in a song
• Scoremonger Award: Got an 8x multiplier
• Dimebag Darrell Award: Got a 100 note streak

 I really wanted to crank the volume but at 12:30am, I didn’t think Tracy would like me too much.

So far, I’m extremely pleased with it and can’t wait to get a second controller. I contemplated buying two game packs and then offloading the game on eBay or trade it in. I’d actually come out ahead if I could dump the game for $50 as the second controller alone is $60, but I don’t want to deal with the hassle. Plus, with the game being so new, who’s going to buy just the game but no controller and there’s no point in having and extra copy of the game. Maybe I’ll get lucky and a wireless controller will come out in a few weeks time. We’ll see.

Well it’s late and I need to hit the sack. I’ll post pictures soon.

[UPDATE: Second Controller]

I just scored a second controller for about $48 (shipped) from Buy.com (regular price is $60). Buy.com’s price is $49.99, but they were out of stock so a 3rd party was selling it for $54 with about $3 shipping. I used Google Checkout to shave $10 off so I still come out ahead. Now it’s just a matter of waiting a week or so (I hope).

[UPDATE: Second Controller - 4.6.07]

I had a sinking suspicion that the Buy.com order was going to be canceled and last night proved me right. But, hope springs eternal as I just secured one for $49.99 at Target in Appleton. I’ll be rushing up there on my lunch break to pick it up (they thankfully hold the item for you). I just hope that it’s not susceptible to all the issues others have been reporting (whammy bar issues).

Okay, I struck out Saturday night when I attempted to get GH2 from Wal-Mart. A fairly bright, and polite guy was there and informed me that although they have 10 or 12 copies in the back, he couldn’t sell them till April 3rd. I pleaded that it’s in the Sunday ad and that 3 different employees (obviously unaware of street dates) said that I could stop in and pick one up. Well, I couldn’t. Bummer.

Either way, I’ll be there tonight, at midnight to get my copy. Now it’s a matter of finding another controller. I’ve called around and no one seems to know if they’ll have additional controllers right away. So I may be forced to order one. Which kind of ticks me off since the hardware manufacturer, RedOctane, was selling a multiplayer pack (game and two guitars) plus free shipping and a free gig bag if you pre-ordered, but since I get a 10% discount at Wal-Mart, I figured I’ll just save a few bucks and get it at release. Oh well, what can you do?

I’ll post some pictures once I get it.

The moment I’ve been waiting months for is just about here; Guitar Hero 2for the XBox 360 is due for release on April 1, 2007 (official release is April 3) and I can hardly wait. It’s my hope that Wal-Mart will have extra controllers in stock on day one, as I plan to get the main pack (game and controller) and a additional controller so two of us can jam out at home (Parker-Jon and I rock on Freya!!!!). Why wait for Wal-Mart? Tracy gets a 10% discount, so I’ll save about $15 when I buy both.

Just about every day I ask Tracy if she spotted any piles of GH2 sitting in the back – but as of this moment she hasn’t spotted anything. Only thing I wish Wal-Mart did was offer pre-orders or reserves. I remember when games like Madden and a few other popular games came out; they had reserve cards securing you a copy, but I haven’t seen anything like that recently.

So what’s my plan come next week Tuesday? Maybe I’ll go in early before work and pick it up. Yeah…that’s the plan, I’ll just hit Wal-Mart at 7am and get it over with and secure my copy.

5 more days!

UPDATE: I just called my local Wal-Mart (to verify what they know) and they stated that GH 2 (360) is featured in their April 1 circular so it’ll be available on Sunday, April 1st! Ooooh boy! Now I’ll get up nice and early on Sunday morning and race in to pick it up. A whole weekend day devoted to playing! Now I absolutely can’t wait!!!

Just noticed that EB now has a sku for the standalone Xbox 360 Guitar Hero controller. Priced at $59.99, total cost of ownership (if you want co-op) is going to set you back about $150 ($90 for game/guitar bundle + $60 extra guitar). I’m cool with that since the game is soooo worth it. I have all the money already stashed away already (some from Christmas – thanks Mom and Dad and some from a recent computer fix-up gig). So I’m all set. Now I just need the months of February and March to zip by super fast!

On a related note, Tracy and I had a dinner date thanks to her folks wanting to watch the kids for us. Afterwards, we ran over to GameStop and played some Guitar Hero 2 (on the PS2). We played about 4 songs together and we had a blast. We probably looked like idiots in the store but I didn’t care, I just wanted to rock out – and we did.

I.Can.Not.Wait!!!

Some dudes rockin out to Guitar Hero 2 made this hilarious video.

Check it out. Stick around at the end for some funny out-takes.

Content Warning…it shows a dude sitting on the can with a guitar at times (no you cannot see his “nether regions”).

I’m soooo ready to get Guitar Hero 2 (360) I can taste it. Parker’s friend stayed over again this past weekend and we all had a blast playing Guitar Hero (with the volume turned to 11). I played a few songs on Hard (which were pretty dang hard!). Jonah suggested I try out Ziggy Stardust. I avoided that song since the sample that plays when you select it sounded boring but when I finally played it, it was quite fun. It has that great 70′s rock feel – nice and sweet then it kicks in. Fun!

Anyways…the ever moving target; the release date for the 360 version keeps fluctuating. First I heard early March. EB and GameStop both had it pegged for 3/2/07. A week or so later I saw Buy.com had it available for pre-order with a release date of 3/27/07. Now I checked EB and they now have it for 4/2/07!!! Come on! They really need to nail this thing down. I wanna RAWWWWK!