This weekend, we shifted a bit: we only did a little Rock Band, and without the full group, but still fun. Unfortunately, our Rock Band guitar’s strum bar is sticky, and has to be pushed down very hard to register — this makes fast notes nearly impossible, although up-strumming still works fine.  This is enough of a barrier that we quit playing for the night.  We’re going to look at it — but does anybody know how the warranty info for these works out? I remember seeing something about returning instruments directly to Harmonix, instead of the retailer.

Anyway, SexyWife got Juiced 2 from GameTap, and I was seriously underwhelmed by all but the Barbie aspects of the game, some of which seemed stupid.  Why do I care what my driver looks like? It was almost as complicated as Oblivion, and I didn’t know why (and then couldn’t find similar controls for the cars).  SexyWife pimped her car out, but I was having trouble getting excited by driving small economy cars around an annoying track.

We had real trouble with the drifting tutorial so I suggested we get a used copy of one of the Burnout games.  Not Paradise, whose open world is more of a hindrance than a help, but Takedown — which is a compatible XBox game — and Revenge which is for the 360, and thus has crackachievements.  I loved these games on the PS2, but we haven’t turned on our PS2 since we got tired of Persona 3, and bought the 360.

In a fit of “I want to play something different,”  (before we went to GameStop), I played Psychonauts again.  It just makes me lust for Brutal Legend, but it’s amazing to me how well it holds up on the 360.  Most of the games I have left over from my XBox days either don’t play (SSX Tricky *sniff*) , don’t play right (Munch’s Odyssey *sniffle*), or look crappy (pretty much everything else). 

Pyschonauts’ consistent art style still manages to look decent on the newer machine.  I don’t have an HD, of course, so I can’t compare there.  But this game clearly understand that naturalistic looks and hyper-realism limits a game.  If you’re a game of the week, that’s no big deal, but Psychonauts is worth playing through more than once (this is my third or fourth go at it).

The Wii is still at Girl’s house, happily looping Okami animations.  We did the quizzes over the weekend, and negotiated when the Wii would return to its One True Home.  Satisfied I could play Okami to my heart’s content in a month, I restarted No More Heroes in Mild mode.  Evidently “Mild” is harder than “Sweet.” I evidently missed this on the first play through, so this one is a bit more challenging, so perhaps I’ll finish it this time.

Going back to the lack-of-playing-the-PS2, I see a lot of people talking about the change in palette in Okami.  We can’t tell.  Maybe we’ve got crappy TVs or bad memory, but it looks basically the same to us.  Of course, we haven’t looked at the PS2 version is a really long time, and I’m not turning it on just to do ‘Picture 1′ or ‘Picture 2′.  The game is still fun, although Girl half-complains that it’s easier.  I think it’s just less annoying.  But then we know which one of us is the Zelda Fanatic here. *cough*cough* (not me)

When I picked up Burnout (deciding to buy both Takedown and Revenge), GameStop was having a buy 2 get 1 sale.  We looked at a bunch of stuff, and I wound up buying Enchanted Arms, because with the sale and my discount it was cheap enough to justify, even if it wasn’t great.  And it’s not great, but with movie-based budget considerations, I’ve gotten my money’s worth out of it.

So far I’ve

1. Been asleep on the special day (In class, the day of the festival)
2. Accidentally awakened the Great Evil™
3. Escaped my home town (which was a whole city) after it was destroyed by the Great Evil™
4. Then I was thrown in jail as part of cutscenes that let me to the next city.
5. That’s ok, because I escaped into the sewer
6. Aided by rebels, of course.  Who are led by a noble lady.

Lots of cliche’s here, but they all have a slightly different spin than I’ve seen before.  The lisping gay guy who was all over my (now apparently dead or kidnapped) best friend meant I’d never take this very seriously.  Also involved in that was the main character’s voice, whose tone and intonation is almost exactly like Galstaff, Sorceror of Light.  (and always have to mention this: Mordenkainen’s Faithful Hound is not a first level spell)

Anyhow, I never got around to playing Burnout but the wife has, and she’s enjoying it.  Which is cool, ’cause now I want to play.  And so I’m gonna go do that now, if it please ya (or if it don’t)