What's Your Definition of Ancient?

Lately, I realised that my definition of my day-to-day use of the word ancient is becoming more and more recent. I've been calling things that are early last-generation of games ancient. Like recently, chewxy asked me whether I could help him acquire Fatal Frame for Xbox. My reply? "Isn't that ancient?"

Then, I started rethinking about what I considering ancient. I don't consider my PS2 ancient, but I do consider my PSone ancient. I mean, do you remember Final Fantasy VIII? You know, from the ancient age from which Final Fantasy games were actually good? Is it fair to call something like that ancient?

My definition of ancient is a little weird. I consider something to be ancient when it is neither really ancient nor recent. In a manner of speaking, it's a relative 'ancient'ness. I call Fatal Frame ancient, but I'd call Final Fantasy VII classic. I'd call Chrono Trigger ancient, but I wouldn't call the remake for PSone ancient.

I suppose my consideration for being called ancient might have more to do with the lifecycle of a given system. I got Fatal Frame pretty early, while FF8 was out of my reach for quite a while. I never played Chrono Trigger until the PSone version. I wouldn't call Devil May Cry ancient though, so I think my definition is a little more complex than that.

A better way would probably be to say my definition of ancient is games I don't care too much about anymore that are pretty old. By pretty old, I mean anything more than 3 years old. Anything that's more than 3 years that I don't care too much about. That's a huge list actually - but I only remember stuff that I like to begin with, so it's a really massive list.

So, what games do I consider ancient? Unreal Tournament. Unreal. Half-Life and derivatives. Deus Ex. Battlefield Vietnam. Enter the Matrix. (and so on....)

Favourite Guitar Hero 3 Songs

Even if I do say almost all the songs are good - there'll always be favourites. My favourite 3 songs in GH3 are When You Were Young (The Killers), Miss Murder (AFI) and My Name is Jonas (Weezer).

Guitar Hero III

For those who have been keeping up with the casual gaming trend, you'll know that Guitar Hero III is out. I've acquired it (thanks to a nice promotion and Big W), and I've been playing it over the past week very heavily. For those who aren't so familiar, it's a guitar-sim game where you have this guitar controller and pretend to play a guitar. LOL.

I don't really have much to say about the game. The new wireless controller is good. It has a good weight to it, a detachable neck and overall solid feel. Since I have the XBox 360 version, I can also say that it works well with the Wireless Gaming Receiver and you can enjoy a good game of Frets on Fire with it. My only real complaint with the controller is that it consumes batteries rather quickly. I've had to recharge a pair of batteries every two days, and I play about 5-6 hours every day. The removable faceplate is kinda good, since I can take it off for cleaning (it's a real fingerprint and dust magnet).

The game itself has gone through some graphics overhaul, with the new Star Power meter, combo counter and of course, being on a powerful console, looks really nice. I like the new art style and the guitar battles - which are plenty of fun.

I'm the most satisfied with the song selection this time round. (I wasn't too happy with Guitar Hero 2's song selection.) Plenty of good tracks - and of course, the best part is that a greater amount of the songs are now masters (recordings by the original artist) and those that are covers sound pretty good too.

I don't know if I'm right, but I have reason to believe that the difficulty for the game has increased by a noticeable amount for every single one of the difficulty levels. I found Easy to be more demanding than it was in the previous games, and the same goes for Medium level note charts. While the 3 buttons and 4 buttons limit is still in place for the two difficulty levels, they have become technically more difficult to play.

I'm certain Hard is harder than it used to be technically - but that might be actually due to the songs themselves - a lot of which are I believe more difficult to play in real life to begin with than some of the earlier songs. I've only recently been able to play Hard difficulty songs in Guitar Hero 3 (just today, actually - most of the solos that are made to be trivial in Medium are really difficult in Hard). Why am I sure it's harder? Because I don't remember quite so many green-to-red-to-yellow-to-blue-to-orange (and practically in reverse immediately) sequences when I tried playing Hard on previous Guitar Hero instalments. That being said, those probably helped me a lot. Playing on that difficulty level helped considerably with my memory of where my hand was on the fret buttons.

Since I can't play on the Expert difficulty yet, I won't comment, but I'm certain it's gotten more difficult too - which is a good thing.

I won't bother putting photos for a simple reason - they're everywhere - no point, especially since this is kinda a late review for the game. I believe this game is currently the best in the series, and you can't go wrong when it comes to simple fun.

(On another note, the Xbox 360 is making my room really really hot, so I can't play it for too long, otherwise my room becomes a small dry sauna.)

Now Listening To: Higurashi OP

For some odd reason, I've become addicted to Higurashi no Naku Koro ni (the opening theme for the anime of the same name) by Shimamiya Eiko. I think I'm addicted to the strange chanting.