By Alex Villafania, hackenslash Reporter
INQUIRER.net

I’M an air guitarist, that is I strum my fingers without a real guitar. Actually, I don’t know how to play the guitar nor will I have the patience to learn how to. I just use my imagination like most non-guitarists. But Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock (PlayStation 2) just about made me wan to pick up a real guitar and learn how to pluck chords.

This is the very first time I’ve played a game from the Guitar Hero series, which has been getting more and more popular and gave PS2 owners a reason to actually keep their PS2s for quite a while. This is not a game about graphics and as such players will not be concerned or distracted by the 3D background, which I would say is nominally good in some sense. All the players will be concerned about are the five colored notes from the top of a screen coming down along a virtual guitar neck and the player will have to press the corresponding fret button on their guitar controller. It’s also important that every time a fret button is pressed the strum bar has to be pressed down as well. As in a real guitar, there is also a whammy bar for hammer-on and pull-offs for rapid, consecutive notes.

First-time players like me will find playing the game difficult to start with, especially when having to press five buttons with only four left fingers (the left thumb is at the back of the guitar neck). Most of the time, the index finger will be used to press two buttons as it is the most movable finger among the four. Still, it takes quite some time to learn what to press and can be daunting even with the easy mode. The concept is similar to the arcade Dance Dance Revolution wherein the player has to time their button press when the notes hit the empty colored buttons at the bottom of the screen. Missing a note will cause some points and the Rock Meter to be shaved off. The Rock Meter serves as the player’s health and when it drops to zero it will cause the music to stop. Not missing for a while will give special bonus points to the player. Bonus points become harder to achieve as the levels increases. Getting in the “groove,” that is, being able to completely following the buttons on screen would take at least 1 hour. But once the buttons are mastered, it’ll be hard for anyone to let go of the controller.

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By Alex Villafania, hackenslash Reporter
INQUIRER.net

THE TEAM representing the Philippines in the upcoming WarRock World Championships has replaced one of its players with a member of a rival team, days before they are to depart for South Korea.

Baguio Clan Uno’s Melvin Bares has been replaced by Edgardo Abiera Jr. from Team Ambush, one of their rivals during the WarRock Philippines Road to Korea Finals.

Bares’ departure stemmed from the delays in the processing of his passport, which means he will be unable to fly to South Korea with his teammates.

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By Alex Villafania, hackenslash Reporter
INQUIRER.net

ASIAN MEDIA, which publishes the massively multiplayer online role-playing game Lineage II, promises to make big splashes in early 2008.

In particular is the commercialization of Lineage II, which has been in open beta since July this year. The company will also launch in the first quarter of 2008 the Kamael update of Lineage II, which is expected to introduce a new race of characters.

In line with the early year plans of Asian Media for Lineage II is the upcoming single of the winners of their Game Girls competition. A Lineage II-inspired music video will also feature the five-person Game Girls.

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By Alex Villafania, hackenslash Reporter
INQUIRER.net

YOUR Xbox 360 and Nintendo Wiis are environmentally poisonous. So says the latest review of electronic waste by environmental advocacy group Greenpeace.

The latest Guide to Greener Electronics by Greenpeace has rated console makers for the first time since the quarterly report started about a year ago. It also included LCD TVs, which are fast replacing old CRT monitors as the display panels of choice.

The game console business is also one of the reasons more consumers are buying LCD TVs.

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By Alex Villafania, hackenslash Reporter
INQUIRER.net

FILIPINO game development firm Anino Games said it has put on hold the development of what could have been its first console game called Project Phoenix.

Anino announced in January this year the development of Project Phoenix and showed an alpha version of the game to hackenslash. The game was originally intended for the Microsoft Xbox 360 but could eventually be ported to the Sony PlayStation 3.

In an e-mail response to hackenslash, Anino senior producer Paraluman Cruz stressed that Project Phoenix was put on hold as they “pursue other platforms.”

“Our end goal is to make next-generation games, but to get there we realized we need to build up our portfolio on current-generation platforms (PC and recently the Nintendo DS); these platforms will give us the experience and credibility we need to make our dream [of a] next-gen game,” Cruz said.

Project Phoenix is a third-person action-adventure shooter with a female character. The setting is a sort of cyber-punk megacity under threat from underground hackers.