RockBand Heads to iPhone/iPod touch

Cory Bohon — Sun, 11 Oct 2009 16:37:19 -0500

A mobile version of the popular music rhythm game franchise, RockBand, will be heading to an iPhone or iPod touch near you soon enough. TechCrunch is reporting that the game should be due out in mid-October with 20 songs (15 playable up front, 5 unlockable).

There's no announced price, but we do have some additional info about the game. It will feature Bluetooth gameplay, allowing 4 people to rock out together in regular Rockband fashion (vocals, drums, bass and guitar).

The gameplay is the same as what you might find in TapTap Revenge in that you tap on the notes to play them. The vocals are done the same way -- sorry, you won't be able to belt out your favorite tune while you wait for your bus. See the video above for a demonstration of each instrument.

Here's the full track listing:
“Attack” – 30 Seconds To Mars
“Girls Not Grey” – AFI
“Move Along” – All American Rejects
“Sabotage” – Beastie Boys
“All The Small Things” – Blink-182
“Hanging on the Telephone” – Blondie
“Learn To Fly” – Foo Fighters
“Everlong” – Foo Fighters
“Bad to The Bone” – George Thorogood & the Destroyers
“Hymn 43″ – Jethro Tull
“Bad Reputation” – Joan Jett
“Simple Man” – Lynard Skynard
“Ace of Spades ‘08″ – Motorhead
“Debaser” – Pixies
“Ladybug” – Presidents of The United States of America
“Give It All” – Rise Against
“Lazy Eye” – Silversun Pick Ups
“Cherub Rock” – Smashing Pumpkins
“Take The Money and Run” – Steve Miller Band
“We Got The Beat” – The Go Go’s

Video via MacRumors.

Spore Creepy & Cute Parts Pack

Zack Stern — Wed, 18 Feb 2009 03:37:00 -0600

We had trouble deciding, so here’s creepy...

Spore is packed to the gills with ways to customize creatures. But if the built-in menagerie of animal limbs doesn’t quite add up to the exact critter you want, the Creepy & Cute Parts Pack add-on mixes in a few dozen alternatives. It requires the full Spore game ($49.95) or the paid Creature Creator ($9.95), updating the creature-editing tool. While this booster pack also includes new animations, paint patterns, and backgrounds, its fun is short-lived. We wanted a full ecosystem of updates, but the Creepy & Cute pack gives us inert brine shrimp and calls them Sea Monkeys.

The expansion pack fulfills its most basic promise; you get 60 new body parts, 48 more paint patterns, and 24 extra animations. The parts and patterns fit the theme of the title, full of doe eyes, razor claws, rag doll stitching, and bloody-organ skin. And the new movements animate your creature in expressive ways, from new dances and gymnastics flips, to being struck by lightning or chased by bees. A couple extra backgrounds allow photos and videos in front of a rainbow-laden world or wasteland scene.

...and cute.

But while those numbers seem like a lot, they’re miserly when you get down to playing. The body parts are rationed across categories: 12 parts each to eyes, mouths, hands/feet, arms/legs, and decorations. And you get no new weapons, such as horns. We enjoyed building creatures with these new parts, but we wanted twice as many to justify the effort of installing the new software. And the new animations are entertaining, but we got tired of them in just a few minutes.

Other areas of the game remain untouched by this expansion pack. We wanted new building parts and new vehicle parts too, but those are absent. Worse, no new costume parts that decorate tribal, civilized, and other stages of creatures are added. And other than the creatures being compatible with the rest of the full Spore game, the expansion ignores that playground.

Mac|Life Electronic Arts RSS Feed

RockBand Heads to iPhone/iPod touch

Spore Creepy & Cute Parts Pack