The “Break it Down” Blog

You know who you are… and you can just go straight to hell.

The different between a parent that stays home and misses movies, or gets a sitter and goes to one every few months versus the one that drags their infant, stroller and all, into an R-Rated movie on opening weekend is that one parent wanted to have children and the other parent didn’t and doesn’t like all the things he/she had to give up for it.

If you disagree with this, then chances are you are one of these parents or you are just so goddamn dumb you don’t realize that the 100 other people trying to watch a movie don’t want to listen to your little diarrhea-factory cry and burn up the $20 in tickets we just spent.

Besides ruining everyone’s shit, how does bringing your infant to an R-rated movie (on opening weekend) help anybody? We all know they are going to cry at least once and at most 27 times; it’s going to piss absolutely everyone off in the theater; the theater is cold with giant/scary sounds so the baby doesn’t like it; and it makes everyone hate you by the end of the movie.

How is this different than just hanging out at a swanky bar with your friends with your kid in a stroller? That’s classy… let’s do this, why don’t you go shopping at Wal-Mart and let me know if the mullet-accessories isle is having a 50% off sale on Tuesday. Then you and I can hang out, pound back a few brewskies and marry our cousins; it’ll be awesome.

My car’s in the shop, so let’s take your truck, you know, the one with all the “Amuricah Will Kick Your Ass!” stickers on it and a skull and crossbones decal on the rear window… undoubtedbly because you saw Pirates of the Carribean and liked it so much.

Thanks Up My Own Ass!

You remember that old saying “Follow the money?” whenever you wanted to find the answer to something? It still applies…

For years now PC Gaming has “been dying” and giving way to consoles; the more locked down, publiser/advertiser friendly, vendor lock-in-encouraging devices that have meant to replace the 20 billion PC gamers on the planet.

Yea after year PC Gaming is dying, is dead, died last week or will die in a month… but we keep hearing about it.

Do you want to know if it’s dead or not? Just follow the money.

First we have World of Warcraft, one of the most-played, most successful games on the entire planet… that’s only on the PC. Next we have quite a few of the E3-announced Triple-A titles coming to PC like Fallout 3 from BioWare and lastly is the possible leak that Grand Theft Auto 4 is prepping a demo and subsequent PC-release later this year.

Gaming companies wouldn’t be spending this money on PC development if they weren’t more than recouping those costs to do so; and not just break even, but make a significant amount of money to justify the continued effort. Especially the big-name companies like Activision and BioWare that have been in this PC game for 10+ years and have a hell of a lot of historic data to look at and trends to generate to see how PC sales are trending… if they were trending downwards they would stop investing this money in the PC development side of these expensive titles, but obviously it’s not because they keep releasing.

Lastly you also have Valve, a company that has structured it’s entire existence around the PC Gaming market. It’s true with Orange Box Valve finally took their titles to the consoles, but instead of an act of desperation I think that was an act of supplementation (I just made that word up); they aren’t stupid, the console market is red-hot and having your titles and middleware (Source Engine) on those console is important not only for your future titles and game sales, but also for your milddleware income and license agreements around the Source Engine; you need to prove to potential buyers that your software works on all the consoles and does it well.

You also have Valve creating an entire distribution channel, Steam, around the PC Market as well. Steam effectively being what Playstation Network or Xbox Live is, but to the PC market instead of the console market.

Then you can look at the 3D hardware market, ATI and NVIDIA, while a bit slower this year, are still releasing expensive top-tier 3D cards for the PC game market… again two companies that would have plenty of historical trend sales information to see if they should keep putting R&D time into the PC market or try and redirect a lot of that effort to wards embedded or mobile development instead.

Obviously they are still selling significant amounts of hardware to justify keeping their primary sound of R&D and sales focused on the PC sector.

Between all these data points, the actions of these software and hardware companies speak a lot louder than the rumors or analysts saying that PC game is dead and gone and we should just move on.

Remember 10 years ago when voice-recognition and Dragon Naturally Typing was going to replace the keyboard? Yea that didn’t quite pan out how we all thought…

I think at some point we were going to replace the mouse with eye-tracking lasers on the monitor and then some sort of brain-tie-in that would tell when you “clicked” something, but that never happened either.

Apparently analytist think it will happen this time… for double-realsies and it’s all the touch screens and “facial recognition” that will do it. They claim that the iPhone (touch screen) and Nintendo Wii (Wiimote) are opening the doors to alternative manipulation devices that will usurp the mouse. The analysis did concede that the keyboard wasn’t going anywhere anytime soon though.

This reminds me of the days when we all had CRTs and would freak out when someone would come over and smear their greasy hand down your monitor trying to point at something. Am I really going to be picking my hand up off the keyboad and shoving it into my monitor’s eye to work my way around a UI?

Am I going to take my hand off of my keyboard and pick up a Wiimote-esque pointer to “waggle” it at the monitor that is sitting a foot from my face to draw something or throw my IM window around the screen?

Probably not…

I think these new technologies open the doors to interesting applications inside specific pieces of software (like Google Maps with a touch screen or Photoshop with a Wiimote) but ever time I have ever seen a fundamentally new mechanism for controlling current computer systems they never catch on.

The only way I see this stuff replacing the mouse is if the way data is presented and interacted with is fundamentally changed… and if you are going to do that then, you will have new input systems because you have new systems; so not much of a surprise there.

In the mean time, I think the mouse and keyboard are going to be with us for another 15 years. 10 years for OS manufacturers to realize that we don’t have to keep using the Windows 3.1/Macintosh paradigms from the 80s and can actually do something different, then 5 years for it to catch on to any degree.

Introduction

The purpose of this post is to take a look at a phenomenon I saw in my life and I think some of you might see in yours: chronic almost-achievement.

The ability to give every task 95%, but avoid giving anything 100% like the plague for fear of failure and self-disappointment.

Outline

• What’s a 95%-er?
• Why is 95% Bad?
• Why Do People Do It?
• Am I an Almost-Achiever?
• How Do I Stop Almost-Achieving?
• Why Should I Listen to You?

What’s a 95%-er?

I had a disturbing revelation over the last while that came to a head when I was watching The Hammer. The premise of the movie is that a washed up ex-champion boxer gets a second chance, at 40, to fight in the Olympics because of his natural boxing talent.

There is a part about 1/2 way through the movie where Jerry (Adam Carolla) is talking with the team coach and the coach says:

I’ve seen guys like you before; you’re a 95%-er. You never give 100%.

… and for some reason that resonated with me big time.

In each activity I do now, I can’t help but have that sentence go through my head: “Am I giving this 100% right now?” and that simple assessment, multiple times throughout the day has changed my approach to a surprising number of things.

One of the biggest changes I noticed is my overall level of happiness and satisfaction is much higher, which seems strange even though it’s only a 5% difference in effort… there is a satisfaction that I did my best and succeeded.

Why is 95% Bad?

95% is almost 100%, right? Why is that so bad?

Looking at my own life, I would have to say it’s bad because it creates a mode of living that is equatable to being in cruise-control.

You are good enough at most things but excellent at nothing. You rarely have to bust your ass at something, and when you do, it’s a lot harder than you thought it would be, further discouraging you from doing it again.

Another comparison would be to your fitness level. Let’s say at some point in your life you were in really excellent shape for an extended period of time. Let’s say you are getting older now and still hold on to your hay-days in your head when you are watching other people do things that are physical and think to yourself:

I could do that no problem! OR I used to do that all the time, no problem!

The problem is that as the years pass and you get in worse and worse shape, you hold on to the belief that you could, if you had to, still do all those things. At some point you create such a strong association between your self-worth and being able to perform whatever task it is that you believe you still can (e.g. lifting heavy weights, running fast, swimming fast, gymnastics, etc.) that your subconscious exists only to maintain that association you have hammered into your psyche.

In order to maintain that reality, you avoid the task you think you can still do at all costs to avoid facing the possible reality that you cannot still perform it. Or you may not avoid the task entirely, but when you do involve yourself with it you do it half-assed. In no time at all you are doing everything at 95%.

An example of this might be avoiding joining a running club because you used to be an amazing runner but now you just jog and you’d rather not find out that you aren’t as fast as you thought you were. Or maybe when you play sports you avoid scenarios where you will have to go full-out and instead schluff the point and let the other team score.

I think once you start down that path, as you get older 95% turns into 85% and the 75% and so on; until you get to the point where you loath yourself and can’t quite pin-point why. You just know you hate yourself and it manifests itself in a bunch of bad ways, e.g. bad habits, drinking, over-eating, cursing, anger, violence,etc.

Why Do People Do It?

Fear of failure; ultimately the fear that if they gave it 100% and still failed, that they do suck and they just confirmed that they sucked by failing at that task. Even more than that, the fear that they can’t be better, even if they wanted to and that their 100% just isn’t good enough.

Some people do it to shirk responsibility. If they never give something 100%, then when they fail it’s not their fault, cause they weren’t “really trying that hard”. This can be another form of masking fear-of-failure though.

I have a fortune from a fortune-cookie taped to my monitor that I got one night after Chinese food that reads:

Not having a goal is much scarier than not reaching one.

That is there to remind me at all times to not give up hope if things seem like they aren’t all a giant ball of success and just to make sure I have a goal and working towards it no matter how mad, tired or pissed off I am.

Sometimes life is full of success… everything is working out, I’m firing on all cylinders and nothing could make it better; those are easy times to get through. It’s the times where things seem shitty, you are stressed out and just want to punch a kitten that you have to hang in there, and drag yourself through towards the light at the end of the tunnel. Things will always get good again for people willing to do that.

It is worse not to have a goal and not be working towards anything.

Am I an Almost-Achiever?

I think you can probably answer this one on your own… things I would suggest looking for are:

• A constant nagging sense that you could have done better at tasks you complete.
  • Ex: If I had started earlier, I could have done a better job on that report.
  • Ex: If I had made more time to plan, this trip would have been better.
  • Ex: If I had practiced 1 more week, my tennis/golf game could have been so much better.
  • Ex: If I had just focused more I would have lost more weight.
• A nagging or subtle feeling of knowing you could of done better at something, but for some reason you didn’t.
  • Ex: I know I could have beat John at racket ball… how does he keep beating me?
  • Ex: I know I could have given a better motivational talk to the group, why was I so scatter-brained?
• You are a great starter but a terrible finisher
  • Ex: You start projects all the time, but rarely finish them, or half-finish them.
  • Ex: You have no problem promising things to people, but rarely deliver.
• You are never completely happy with your own efforts completing things.
• You are frustrated with yourself often about things you should be doing, but aren’t for some reason.
  • Ex: I should be at the gym right now.
  • Ex: I should be studying for that exam.
  • Ex: I should call the guys and schedule a night out for fun so we can all get together.

The theme here is that you are most likely aware of frustrations you have with yourself regarding how you execute tasks.

How Do I Stop Almost-Achieving?

You just stop. Seriously.

It’s a conscious decision, don’t be scared of it, it feels good, even when you fail.

You just decide that you are done half-assing things. Next time you are playing a sport or working on something, think to yourself:

Am I giving this 100%?

You’ll know the answer right away. If you have that ball of guilt start to build up in your stomach, then you aren’t.

If you aren’t, then start. You’d be surprised how small the distance (in units of effort) between 95% and 100% are. You’d be surprised how little it takes to go from hating yourself to being genuinly impressed with your efforts. You’d be surprised how good it can feel to succeed, but also fail, once you know you are giving it 100% and can always work to improve and get past failure.

An example of this that happened just now is that I thought I was done with this post, so I was about to hit the Publish button then had the following dialog with myself in about 3 seconds:

• 100% Me: I should proof-read this… I’m not that good of a writer.
• 95% Me: Uggg, it’s good enough, just publish it, let’s go to bed… I’m tired.
• 100% Me: How ironic that I’m trying to cut-corners writing a “don’t cut corners post”… I have to proof this.
• 95% Me: Ok but skip the first 4 paragraphs, they were pretty good, no need to re-read them.
• 100% Me: Shut up, we are proofing the entire thing.

This happens all the time, every day to me. It’s not like my 95%-side disappeared, I’m just more aware of exactly what it is, what it wants and how I can combat it.

Why Should I Listen to You?

You don’t have to, you could your browser right now and ignore everything I wrote.

I really hope you don’t though…

If you got down to this section I have to imagine something written above resonated with you? Maybe you have been here too and have tips of your own that helped you? Maybe there is something I missed that is a big culprit for causing Almost-Achiever-Syndrome?

I’m just excited about a near leaf I’ve turned over and wanted to share it with folks if it helps. I feel like this has been the source of so much frustration and annoyance in my life since god-knows-how-long and now that I’m finally aware of it, and actively trying to change it things have been noticably more enjoyable for me. I hope they can be for you as well.

I would love to hear any comments, feedback, etc. on the topic. I know there are people out there, reading this, that are smarter and more qualified than I am that might have some excellent tips or comments to share.

Wired is reporting that at E3, Guitar Hero director Brian Bright confirmed that Rock Band (the original one) instruments would not only work fine with Guitar Hero: World Tour, but that you could use any electronic drum set with the game as it will ship with a MIDI connection on the back of the drum kit.

This also allows for the addition of another bass pedal if you want to play dual-bass drums. This news flying in the face of Rock Band 2’s almost unchanged drum setup that will allow for 2 cymbals to be added for another $30 or 40 fee for the accessories post-purchase.

Thanks Laurence Hartje and Wired!

How is Manhunt 2 forced to revise the gore and violence on their game, but this is all good and well… especially on the Wii?

Maybe it’s because it’s presented as a gameshow in this game and in Manhunt 2… it was in a hospital… but Manhunt #1 was a gameshow too so I guess the “Gameshow murder porn” setting is cool, just don’t make it a hospital. Got it!

Thanks VE3D!

It’s a pretty long video, if you want to see the “sweet stuff” skip to the half way point, that’s when they show the polished super moves that look wicked-sweet:

Thanks VE3D!

Publishers rejoice, WordPress 2.6 has been released and while I initially anticipated it to be a bug-fix release to follow 2.5.1, it looks like the WordPress team has snuck in quite a few sexy features. We’ll take a look at each below piece-by-piece which are reviewed in the WordPress 2.6 feature movie here.

Outline

• Gears - Turbo Charged Caching
• Post Revisions, Comparisons and Restore
• Press This
• Image Captions
• Drag and Drop Image Management and Ordering
• Live Theme Preview
• Enhanced Avatar Support
• Enhanced Plugin Management
• Word Count
• Conclusion

Gears - Turbo Charged Caching

Gears is a new feature in 2.6 that once installed, will allow you to cache all resources from the interface locally in your Firefox 2, Firefox 3, Internet Explorer 6, Internet Explorer 7 and soon Safari 3 cache including images, JavaScript and CSS files to make working with the admin interface snappy and not waiting for load times if you are doing a lot of admin work.

This seemed like a really forward-thinking feature to add to WordPress and I thank the team for doing it. Not everyone is hosting their WordPress-based site on a super-server so load times for these really complex admin pages can be daunting and sluggish at times, especially if you are an impatient person or have a lot to write/edit/etc. Really kick ass feature, thank you guys!

Post Revisions, Comparisons and Restore

WordPress 2.6 now brings to the table complete revision history and management for posts including comparison and restore support. Handy for posts that a lot of edits are done to, collaborative work with another author or maybe you screwed something up royally and your browser crashed and you need to restore the posts to it’s previous state.

Post revisions is a great addition to the already rediculously powerful WordPress publishing feature set.

Press This

This is an interesting new feature that starts off in the form of an integrated bookmarklet that you can hit on any page or story that you want to blog, then the story, it’s graphical resources, summaries, etc. are loaded up in a WordPress mini-post interface where you can chop up the story and write it however you want pulling Images and Videos from the original post as you want to create your post.

If you blog by scouring news from other sites and covering those topics that are interesting to your readers (a lot like this site), this is going to be a godsend feature for you.

Image Captions

If you do a lot with images on your site you are going to love the addition of image captions. No longer do you have to try and wing captions with small 2-row tables, they are directly support in the image gallery/image editing interface and inserted with a consistent look and feel to them directly into your post.

Drag and Drop Image Management and Ordering

Subtle but awesome, again for publishers that make use of a lot of images. When you do mass-uploads of images that were added in 2.5, you’ll notice that they upload in alphabetical order, which is then carried across to any inserted galleries you have in your post. You may want the images in a different order that isn’t necessarily alphabetical and now in 2.6 you can simply drag and drop the images around into modified orders on the Gallery screen for the Image Management interface to set that ordering.

Live Theme Preview

This has been a highly requested feature for a while especially for publishers that are always trying to tweak their site and make it look a bit better: the ability to preview a new theme live, on your site, without applying it to the production site incase something is wrong with it.

There have been plugins to do this in the past, but now WordPress 2.6 supports it directly.

Enhanced Avatar Support

Besides the existing Gravatar support WordPress 2.6 has further enhanced avatar support for users directly into the profile settings; allowing users to have a bit more control over refining their representation on your site.

Enhanced Plugin Management

WordPress 2.6 also brings enhanced plugin management allowing you to quickly activate and deactivate multiple plugins at once instead of walking your way through an entire list, hitting a button and waiting for a page refresh.

This is important for authors working with a lot of different plugins, site designs or WordPress upgrades when you may need to troubleshoot certain plugin conflict issues.

Word Count

Minor but still nice: word count. For publishers that are working with a team or your editor needs to keep you in-bounds of a certain word count number, this can be very handy. For other authors that have personal limits set on themselves for how long they want their posts or how short, again a very handy tool to keep an eye on how your writing is doing.

Conclusion

Overall WordPress 2.6 looks like an awesome update to the 2.5 series, bringing a lot of new features to the table to help increase productivity with the publishing platform.

If you are already a WordPress users, you are probably psyched about the Gears and “Press This” features, and if you are a blogger and haven’t used WordPress before, you should really take a look; it’s awesome.

Download it here!

Some surprise information about Resident Evil 5 was announced at E3 - full co-op support through the entire game and coming in a March 2009 release!

How badass is that? The one qualm I’ve had with the Resident Evil series is the single-player insanely stressful experience that playing was; constantly trying to give you a heart attack as you play.

Resident Evil 5 looked amazing, as Capcom tends to do with their games, but the “single guy versus all of Africa” approach had me pretty hesitant about it because I don’t tend to like the impossible odds in the Resident Evil games. If you want me to fight an entire town, give me way more ammo and I’ll be happy to.

With the announcement that it will have full co-op, needless to say we are pumped about this title now. Here’s a media blow-out for you to feast your eyes on.

Introductory Cinematic & Gameplay Snippets:

Co-op Gameplay Video:

Screenshots:

Thanks GameSpot!

Mirror’s Edge is shaping up to look like a ridiculously beautiful, thematic and emotionally driven game… I’m not sure how else to describe it.

Just check out the gameplay video below. The combination of the city coloring and design style (world is bland but detailed and focus points are sharply highlighted using color, but don’t look artificial). The intense first-person perspective combined with the “you rarely use/need guns” design element and free roaming/flying environment topped off with the vocal/ethereal sound track… it honestly looks like you are playing a dream almost. The combination of all those elements is sure to emote some sort of reaction out of the folks playing it.

For me it’s a sort of awe-struck beauty, desolate emptiness and sad hopelessness sprinkled with a bit of “there is still hope, hang in there”.

Whether that was intentional or not, I have to applaud the Mirror’s Edge team for creating such a unique look.

Thanks VE3D!

A collage of single player gameplay in a single video; probably for us by media outlets to cut up and include in different story pieces or segments.

Pure hotness, I don’t think any of this gameplay has been shown yet in any of the previously released videos. Looks like some heavily scripted sequences, mini guns, bigger explosions and much bigger environments even. Looks more like war-theaters versus buildings/streets/etc. that we saw in Gears of War 1.

I’m giddy like a child watching this.

Thanks VE3D!

Well it looks like BlackBerry was working on a touch-screen smart phone after all! Pictured above is the new BlackBerry Thunder (9500-series); details are sparse right now, but I imagine will be coming out at a breakneck speed over the next few months.

Reports are saying that RIM is trying to nail the typing experience with this device, check out the first point known about the screen already:

• Tactile Response - when you press on the Thunder’s screen, it pushes in “just” a little bit (the whole screen is sort of like a big button) and you get immediate “real” feedback - you hear an audible clickety sound, and can feel a buzz in your finger where you actually pressed on the display.
• Full QWERTY and SureType entry - hold the phone in landscape mode and you can take advantage of a full-qwerty keypad. Use the phone in portrait mode and you can enter data on a SureType keyboard. You will be able to choose/change your screen/keyboard orientation at anytime.
• Screen is made of glass and will feature multi-touch - the Thunder is said to be utilizing WebKit for it’s browser engine (same as the iPhone), so hopefully that means a solid web browsing experience for the Thunder.

Pretty damn interesting that they would go through the engineering trouble to make the screen give you feedback like that (the entire thing clicks when you press on it)… I have to imagine they went through user-trials that found that feedback made them more effective typists on the portable device.

The other thing I like is that the device input (keyboard) can be used either in vertical or horizontal orientations. The iPhone sorta does this, depending on the application. For example, you can browse and type horizontally in the browser, allowing you to wide-grip the phone, but as soon as you are doing email, notes, SMS, etc. you have to hold it vertically, cramping your hands together and praying you don’t drop it.

We are expecting enhanced media capabilities from the Thunder given the new (possibly higher resolution screen than the iPhone) widescreen layout options and time they have had to improve and polish their approach starting back with the Pearl’s enhanced media player when that phone first dropped and has been enhanced again and again since then.

Also worth noting is the classic BlackBerry buttons on the bottom, giving you quick, concrete access to the functions you have been using for years; it looks like they aren’t pulling the rug out from under the BlackBerry user’s feet, but instead streamlinging it all a bit and making it a better experience.

There are rumors the Thunder (and possibly other BB devices?) will be using the WebKit/Safari Mobile browser base or something along those lines. We don’t have any confirmed details right now, but that is floating around and worth noting.

Right now there are rumors floating around (I believe via Boy Genius Report) that the Thunder will come to T-Mobile in short order, possible September. I wonder if AT&T will want to get on that bandwagon is the 3G iPhone sales don’t continue to sky-rocket just to have their bases covered?

The schematic pic we have has a Verizon logo on it, but given how slowly Verizon rolls out phones I have to wonder if it’s going to get it soon, or maybe Q109.

Update #1: Dave Bullock just shared with us that the “clicking” the screen makes when keys are pressed is a little vibration engine of sorts inside the device, so the screen itself won’t be traveling any amount of distance possibly opening up dust and lint to collect inside it.

That’s good news.

Thanks Laurence Hartje and CrackBerry!

Damn, it seems that Nintendo has some bombs to drop at E3 this year, leading up with a new “true 3D motion accessory” that adds on to the existing Wiimote.

Apparently the new addon, combined with all the existing measurment facilities of the Wiimote, can completely accurately, with a 1:1 accuracy, map your physical motion to a motion on-screen.

So basically the sword-swinging, baseball bat hitting, light-saber cutting action we wanted from the first time the Wii was announced maybe finally be here shortly.

What is this going to do to “version 2″ of all the Wii games? Are they going to have Normal and Enhanced motion modes or something?

Depending on how accurate this things turns out to be, combined with what developers do with it… sign me the hell up!

Full announcement:

Nintendo’s upcoming Wii MotionPlus accessory for the revolutionary Wii Remote controller again redefines game control, by more quickly and accurately reflecting motions in a 3-D space. The Wii MotionPlus accessory attaches to the end of the Wii Remote and, combined with the accelerometer and the sensor bar, allows for more comprehensive tracking of a player’s arm position and orientation, providing players with an unmatched level of precision and immersion. Every slight movement players make with their wrist or arm is rendered identically in real time on the screen, providing a true 1:1 response in their game play. The Wii MotionPlus accessory reconfirms Nintendo’s commitment to making games intuitive and accessible for everyone. Nintendo will reveal more details about the Wii MotionPlus accessory and other topics Tuesday morning at its E3 media briefing.

Here’s a video of the Wii MotionPlus in action:

call me crazy, but how fun did it look slicing things like the wood and pencil in half? Just seemed like an awesome mini-game… can’t wait for more “ninja” games to come out for the Wii with MotionPlus support.

We have been covering Rock Band 2 (more) and Guitar Hero: World Tour (more) mercilessly with the impending war looming between the two franchises.

One of the most popular questions that keeps coming up so far is about the artist and song lists for Rock Band 2 and Gutiar Hero: World Tour. We continue to report the facts as they become available, and today we have 17 confirmed arists and tracks for Rock Band 2 to report.

This is the confirmed artist and song list for Rock Band 2 so far:

• Motörhead - “Ace of Spades”
• Foo Fighters - “Everlong”
• The Who - “Pinball Wizard”
• Dream Theater - “Panic Attack”
• Journey - “Any Way You Want It”
• System of a Down - “Chop Suey”
• The Muffs - “Kids in America”
• Red Hot Chili Peppers - “Give It Away”
• Cheap Trick - “Hello There”
• Elvis Costello - “Pump It Up”
• Bon Jovi - “Livin’ on a Prayer”
• Steve Miller Band - “Rock ‘n Me”
• Joan Jett - “Bad Reputation”
• Social Distortion - “I Was Wrong”
• Rage Against the Machine - “Testify”
• Avenged Sevenfold - “Almost Easy”
• Billy Idol - “White Wedding Pt. 1″

And don’t forget the DLC from Rock Band will still be playable in Rock Band 2 as well as Guitar Hero III DLC being playable in Guitar Hero: World Tour… so the complete track lists will be quite impressive all said and done for both titles which is why we think that what you have now (Rock Band or Guitar Hero III) will dictate heavily which franchise you buy this Fall.

The instrument list between the two is pretty similar with some enhancements to the Guitar Hero: World Tour guitar (touch-sensitive pad on guitar) and drums (includes cymbals out of the box, unlike Rock Band 2).

Thanks PS3Fanboy!

Update #1: Looks like the entire official list was released for E3, have a look-see!

1. AC/DC “Let There Be Rock” 1970s
2. AFI “Girl’s Gone Grey” 2000’s
3. Alanis Morissette “You Oughta Know” 1990’s
4. Alice in Chains “Man in the Box” 1990’s
5. Allman Brothers “Ramblin’ Man” 1970’s
6. Avenged Sevenfold “Almost Easy” 2000’s
7. Bad Company “Shooting Star” 1970’s
8. Beastie Boys “So Whatcha Want” 1990’s
9. Beck “E-Pro” 2000’s
10. Bikini Kill “Rebel Girl” 1990’s
11. Billy Idol “White Wedding Pt. I” 1980’s
12. Blondie “One Way or Another” 1970’s
13. Bob Dylan “Tangled Up in Blue” 1970’s
14. Bon Jovi “Livin’ on a Prayer” 1980’s
15. Cheap Trick “Hello There” 1970’s
16. Devo “Uncontrollable Urge” 1980’s
17. Dinosaur Jr. “Feel the Pain” 1990’s
18. Disturbed “Down with the Sickness” 2000’s
19. Dream Theater “Panic Attack” 2000’s
20. Duran Duran “Hungry Like the Wolf” 1980’s
21. Elvis Costello “Pump It Up” 1970’s
22. Fleetwood Mac “Go Your Own Way” 1970’s
23. Foo Fighters “Everlong” 1990’s
24. Guns N’ Roses “Shackler’s Revenge” 2000’s
25. Interpol “PDA” 2000’s
26. Jane’s Addiction “Mountain Song” 1980’s
27. Jethro Tull “Aqualung” 1970’s
28. Jimmy Eat World “The Middle” 2000’s
29. Joan Jett “Bad Reputation” 1980’s
30. Journey “Anyway You Want It” 1970’s
31. Judas Priest “Painkiller” 1990’s
32. Kansas “Carry On Wayward Son” 1970’s
33. L7 “Pretend We’re Dead” 1990’s
34. Lacuna Coil “Our Truth” 2000’s
35. Linkin Park “One Step Closer” 2000’s
36. Lit “My Own Worst Enemy” 1990’s
37. Lush “De-Luxe” 1990’s
38. Mastodon “Colony of Birchmen” 2000’s
39. Megadeth “Peace Sells” 1980’s
40. Metallica “Battery” 1980’s
41. Mighty Mighty Bosstones “Where’d You Go” 1990’s
42. Modest Mouse “Float On” 2000’s
43. Motorhead “Ace of Spades” 1980’s
44. Nirvana “Drain You” 1990’s
45. Norman Greenbaum “Spirit in the Sky” 1960’s
46. Panic at the Disco “Nine in the Afternoon” 2000’s
47. Paramore “That’s What You Get” 2000’s
48. Pearl Jam “Alive” 1990’s
49. Presidents of the USA “Lump” 1990’s
50. Rage Against the Machine “Testify” 1990’s
51. Ratt “Round & Round” 1980’s
52. Red Hot Chili Peppers “Give it Away” 1990’s
53. Rise Against “Give it All” 2000’s
54. Rush “The Trees” 1970’s
55. Silversun Pickups “Lazy Eye” 2000’s
56. Smashing Pumpkins “Today” 1990’s
57. Social Distortion “I Was Wrong” 1990’s
58. Sonic Youth “Teenage Riot” 1980’s
59. Soundgarden “Spoonman” 1990’s
60. Squeeze “Cool for Cats” 1970’s
61. Steely Dan “Bodhitsattva” 1970’s
62. Steve Miller Band “Rock’n Me” 1970’s
63. Survivor “Eye of the Tiger” 1980’s
64. System of a Down “Chop Suey” 2000’s
65. Talking Heads “Psycho Killer” 1970’s
66. Tenacious D “Master Exploder” 2000’s
67. Testament “Souls of Black” 1990’s
68. The Donnas “New Kid in School” 2000’s
69. The Go-Go’s “We Got the Beat” 1980’s
70. The Grateful Dead “Alabama Getaway” 1980’s
71. The Guess Who “American Woman” 1970’s
72. The Muffs “Kids in America” 1990’s
73. The Offspring “Come Out & Play (Keep ‘em Separated)” 1990’s
74. The Replacements “Alex Chilton” 1980’s
75. The Who “Pinball Wizard” 1960’s
Bonus Artist Bonus Song Title Decade
76. Abnormality “Visions” 2000’s
77. Anarchy Club “Get Clean” 2000’s
78. Bang Camaro “Night Lies” 2000’s
79. Breaking Wheel “Shoulder to the Plow” 2000’s
80. The Libyans “Neighborhood” 2000’s
81. The Main Drag “A Jagged Gorgeous Winter” 2000’s
82. Speck “Conventional Lover” 2000’s
83. The Sterns “Supreme Girl” 2000’s
84. That Handsome Devil “Rob the Prez-O-Dent” 2000’s

We have covered Killzone 2 before, and now with a newly released gameplay video it’s shaping up to look a lot like some sort of Resistance 2/Call of Duty 4 style mix (which is a good thing).

You have the perverted techno/grimy/future vibe going on, with the intense first-person perspective and enhanced first-person visuals (like depth of field, etc. that we saw in Call of Duty 4 polished to a ridiculous degree)

The one thing I wasn’t happy to see is that I’m assuming this game is going to already bag an M-rating, but there is barely any gore or blood. Check out the scenes where the soldiers get riddled with bullets, you get a small little “splash” effect like in Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune that disappears immediately.

I was happy to see some physical reactions from the environment, but am reserving my judgment for later, they did look like scripted sequences much like the Call of Duty franchise likes to use. More specifically, creating realistic environments by having lots of “wow” scripted sequences, but not actually modeling a battle environment that responds to your behavior in it (e.g. shooting a building with a rocket and watching it crumble).

This means the first time you play through the game, everything looks awesome and you are amazed at it, but if you die and have to replay a level or decide to replay the game later, you notice that everything is looking/happening just like it did the first time.

This is all speculation at this point, the game still looks damn pretty; check it out:

Summary [8.5 out of 10]

The Logitech Driving Force GT PS3 Wheel is an excellent driving wheel with a good build quality at a solid price point that will satisfy any casual or avid racer. Unfortunately not every game makes correct or full use of driving wheels, but the ones that do (e.g. Gran Turismo 5) create a surreal driving experience that will satisfy any driving fan.

For the purist that must reproduce the true racing experience in his or her house, we would still suggest the Logitech G25; it is, however, more than twice the price of the Driving Force GT.

Outline

• Summary
• Outline
• What’s in the Box?
• Hooking it all Up
• Build Quality
• Driving Experience
• Conclusion
• Areas of Improvement

What’s in the Box?

It’s a good sized box, about the size of a Logitech 2.1 PC speaker package. As shown on the box there was an instruction booklet, pedals and wheel (with integrated shifter).

What I was really surprised to find in the box, and it might have been a toss-in for some promotion because I don’t see it mentioned on Logitech’s site, was a full copy of Gran Turismo 5: Prologue. If you already have it, then use this copy (if you get one) as a gift I suppose. If you didn’t have a copy, you will be so freaking happy they included one, it does the wheel justice while other games don’t:

After spending time with this wheel and especially Gran Turismo 5, I would have to say that you cannot review a driving wheel, or at least this driving wheel, without having a copy of Gran Turismo 5 to test with. The experience is so much better with GT than it is with other “arcade” racers that it’s a night-and-day difference. More on that later though under “Driving Experience“.

For anyone that has used a force-feedback wheel in the past 10 years, I think the form factor of these things has always been the same. A life-sized steering wheel attached to a tapered base that is fastened to a table or desk of some kind using clamps or grips of some kind; this is very similar:

As you can see the steering wheel reproduces all of the 17 or so buttons you find on a standard PS3 controller. The red wheel and “enter” button on the bottom right can be used for navigation and confirma