XLI_MPFW

Welcome to 41 of MPFW. I'm going to waste little time and get right to this one with my review of Guitar Hero: Smash Hits and some coverage of Wizard World Philly 2009. Before that, I got an announcement to make!

Loteria Letal: Video Game Edition - The Announcement

I decided to have a tournament going on this summer where you, the readers, will be voting every week to decide a winner. This is similar to the tournaments at GameFAQS.com, but with randomly paired tag teams of video game characters. Here are the entrants in the tournament:

Mario - Nintendo's flagship character
Sonic the Hedgehog - Sega's flagship character
Solid Snake - Metal Gear Solid series
Link - The Legend of Zelda series
Samus - Metroid series
Ike - Fire Emblem series, and my personal favorite character in Super Smash Bros. Brawl
Travis Touchdown - No More Heroes
Auron - Final Fantasy X
Kazuya Mishima - Tekken series
Big Daddy - BioShock
Kratos - God of War series
Zoey - Left 4 Dead
Sub-Zero - Mortal Kombat series
3 mystery entrants - Wait till you see how it turns out!

I will be doing a legitimate selection of the teams by posting a video on Facebook, so watch out for that. The next MPFW will have the full announcement of the teams as well as the match-ups.

Guitar Hero: Smash Hits review

Yet another Guitar Hero game is here, with Guitar Hero: Smash Hits featuring the greatest hits from the first 3 main installments of Guitar Hero, Rocks the 80's, and one lucky song from Guitar Hero: Aerosmith. At first I didn't like how they began to go down the full band experience avenue. I chose Rock Band 2 over Guitar Hero World Tour, but I did play Guitar Hero: Metallica, and it was fantastic. They added more elements so it's a different experience and a more challenging game.

Since this is a "greatest hits" set up, there were bound to be songs that we loved that weren't included, and songs that we didn't like that were included. The most notable absence for me is "Welcome to The Jungle". From what I've read, there were some politics preventing their music from getting into the game. It's pretty odd that instrumentals like "YYZ" and "Psychobilly Freakout" (there's some vocals, but still mostly instrumental), are included in a full band game. Other than that, the setlist is still great from top to bottom.

The guitar parts play a lot differently than the older Guitar Hero games with the added sustained notes and slide notes, as well as the open strums for bass guitar. The good news is that all of the songs in the game are master recordings, so no having to deal with lousy covers. Some songs play a lot better, but unfortunately some songs are worse. The studio version of "Rock and Roll All Nite" used in this game is not as good as the live version used in Guitar Hero III, and the master recording of "Psychobilly Freakout" doesn't have the added awesome guitar solo that was added in the cover. The drums and vocals also play pretty well, but I haven't gotten to play much of either.

If you want to get this game just for the guitar parts, I would just play the original games since you can get them all for cheap now. If not, it's a good for at least a rental. It's still a fun game, but I didn't find it as fun as the Metallica game.

Wizard World Philly 2009

Time for my new favorite yearly event, Wizard World Philly! I was originally going to go in costume as The Comedian from Watchmen, but I didn't have cash at the time to buy the materials for the outfit. Maybe next year.

I had to walk around first to see how much everything was before I started spending a bunch of money. One of the few people I've actually heard of at this convention and therefore somebody I wanted to get an autograph from, Kristanna Loken from such amazing movies like Terminator 3 and Bloodrayne was charging $40 per autograph. I didn't want to shill out that much money for somebody's autograph unless I really, really, really, really, really like them.

As the day went on, I sat in on a Q&A with Ray Park, the actor who played Darth Maul, Toad in X-Men, and Snake Eyes in the new G.I. Joe film. He is a really cool person and really down to earth. He talked about how he wanted to be a ninja when he grew up, which led to him learning martial arts. For the people worried about the new G.I. Joe film, the actor of the character himself says that Snake Eyes will have no speaking roles in the film.

As the day went on, my pal Yolanda made it to the arena. I was able to walk around with her and go buy some autographs. Jerry "The King" Lawler, color commentator for WWE Raw was their selling some of his artwork. He is a really good artist so look up his art when you get the chance. I got King's autograph, then got an autograph and picture with the greatest Intercontinental Champion of all-time, Honky Tonk Man!

As the show went on, I was finally to get an autograph from Ray Park, I mentioned him earlier, and Peter Mayhew, the man who played Chewbacca! I also bought this plush of Cloud from Final Fantasy VII. It's awesome. I got a few prints from some artists, and that's about it for the day.

That about does it for this edition. The next MPFW will have at least a review of the new Terminator movie as well as more info on Loteria Letal: Video Game Edition. STAY TUNED!