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This Week in Lumps
#8 [10/07 - 16/07]

· Get the bank balance ready, practice moving the furniture to one side of the room, and call your friends to make sure they have nothing else planned, as two of the biggest, must-own video games will be hitting the shelves just in time for Christmas: Guitar Hero III, and Rock Band.

The third installment of the Guitar Hero franchise (full title- Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock) is penciled in for a late October release, and looks set to be released “across the board”, meaning releases on the PlayStation 2, PlayStation 3, Xbox 360 and the Wii, with the last 3 of those receiving new wireless controllers shaped like a Gibson Les Paul, which looks really really sexy. Development responsibilities will shift companies, from Harmonix Music Systems to Neversoft Entertainment, more of which will unravel below. The game looks set to feature lots of new bands and songs which haven’t been included on the previous two, and also new online and multiplayer game play modes. There is also set to be a feature included which lets you ‘challenge’ guitarist Slash, who recorded motion capture with RedOctane for his movements and style. The images of people all over the world trying to outdo Slash at ‘Welcome to the Jungle’ brings a smile to my face. Other bands announced include Tenacious D, Weezer, Pearl Jam, and … and, er… Heart. Don’t let that last one put you off. With regards to other bands, RedOctane said:

“We’ve got a lot of songs and artists still that we would love to have. In particular, we’ve been trying to get Metallica, AC/DC, and Led Zeppelin. So hopefully sometime in the near future, my wish and everybody’s wish will come true and we can get some of their music in the game.”

You cannot say that you’ve had fun in life until you’ve tried a Guitar Hero game. However, you can remedy the fact you haven’t, by sounding cool on an entirely different plateau by admitting you’re saving your pennies for Rock Band.
Harmonix Music Systems, the company behind the first two Guitar Hero releases, have developed Rock Band for both the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360. There’s a US release date roughly planned, so expect an EU one to follow. It’s planned to offer wannabe musicians (and of course, proper musicians on their days off) the ability to jam in a virtual band with up to four friends, including the ability to utilize three different instrument-based peripherals (a guitar peripheral for guitar and bass/rhythm guitar sequences, a drum peripheral, and a microphone) and allowing them to interact through both online and offline multiplayer capabilities. Never fear if you’re friends are all too geeky to want to be in a virtual band, as single player options will also be available. There has been no announcement regarding a Wii version just yet, but it is widely expected to appear for that console as well.

The main split at the moment that I’m curious about (apart from costs, for someone who currently doesn’t own a console, this is all looking rather expensive) is Wires vs Wireless. Rumours are abound for which consoles, and which peripherals will have wires, and which of them wont. It’s a big thing to think about, you don’t exactly plan to, but you will start rocking out around the living room, and you don’t want to start pulling the console out of the socket.

For screenshots and more, you can visit the two main websites for each game. I shall try to keep the blog updated with relevant information, and various youtube videos of game-play, until then, watch this video of journalists and developers at E3 rocking out to Bon Jovi for Rock Band. I got shivers up my spine during a certain part, you’ll probably get it too.

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· Staying with gaming, the new fad for Wii owners has been announced, and it’s nothing more than a plastic shelf with sensors inside. Yes, that’s right, Wii BalanceBoard is on its way to stores, specifically designed (so far) for WiiFit, however, whether you’ll be power jogging or star-jumping up and down to get one is yet to be seen.

What strikes me to start with is, well, why cant you just keep fit normally? Can you not just do this with the bottom step of your stairs? Or better yet, not buy it, and go running outside? I can see Nintendo’s aim, keep fit while having fun (although I cant see myself having fun stepping up and down from a plastic shelf, or doing sit ups while my friends all drink beer and eat popcorn), but why all the fuss? Maybe if you own a Wii you can see the advantages of buying one, but its not something I’d want to get out and play with when my friends come over. What I can see however, is something like this being stolen and used for skateboarding and snowboarding games for future release on the Wii. Now that’s a kind of keeping fit I can sign up for. Plus, if you add the Wii remote in, and think about Gladiators? Duel anyone? Massive amounts of fun right there.

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· Media regulator Ofcom has said that the amount of bad language and violence being broadcast to children before the watershed is increasing. In a message to broadcasters, the regulator said there had been an increase in the number of cases involving “unedited or inappropriately edited” material, possibly hinting that it has slipped through the net much too easily.
Alarming you may think, however I remembered that back in April, Ofcom also criticised TV soaps for showing too much violence on screen. As much as they want to keep our TV viewing to a decent level, saying that there’s too much swearing and violence means they may be expecting us to all sit around and watch ‘As Time Goes By’ every other evening.
First things first, swearing has been around longer than most people think; its been in our language for a lot longer than you may realise, and although a lot of people don’t agree with it, its as much a part of our language as everyday words. Lack of swearing makes Eastenders unrealistic; if you think Londoners haven’t sworn at all in 20+ years you’ve never been to London; the most offensive thing you can utter in Eastenders is… slag. I know Londoners who cant go twenty minutes without swearing with words that would turn milk sour. Its part of our culture, and it was a part of our fathers’ and grandfathers’ culture, just no-ones got used it. However, in my opinion, it works the other way too; I tried watching BBC2′s Rome, but got tired of it after one episode because of the constant swearing; it just seemed like they were trying too hard to seem cool, look at us, we’re Romans, we swear. I’m sure they did, but did the makers have to cover it in as much colour as they have been? Where’s the focus on the acting and the dialect when everything is ‘fucking’ this and ‘fucking’ that.
Everyone knows a well placed swearword is a gem. Like a fart in a room full of men, its appreciated and applauded; to time it right, and to get the surroundings and level of tone right makes it seem priceless. Over-swearing is nothing more than bad vocabulary skills. Describing music your friends may like as ‘crap’ makes me cringe. Why not say what you dont like about it, instead of just finalising and ending the conversation right there? Much like this blog is all about opinions, and constructive arguments, if I were to type about a product, and just describe it as ‘shit’ then you wouldn’t read it at all. I think OfCom have to take this into consideration as well, take complaints with a pinch of salt. If children are getting offended by bad words close to bedtime, surely the timing of bedtime should be brought into question. There would also have to be a lot of television watching for them to pick up on words, if only a few are slipping though, which raises another key fact, how much TV should kids be allowed to watch?
Of course some swearing may fall through, but there’s much more offensive things on the television, Gillian McKeith examining other peoples shits on Channel 4 would be a good place to start. Dirty bitch.

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· One last quick thing this week; you may now notice there’s a new domain name currently sitting at the top of the page. It’s now officially thelump.net! The description of why the blog is called ‘the lump’, but this weekly write-up is called ‘this week in lumps’ will appear soon-ish in the About section, just to clear up any questions currently unanswered. Thank you also to everyone who added the Facebook Application last week, those of you still yet to do so can simply click on the blue button on the right hand side, it adds a RSS reader to your page, which the lump is apart of. It doesn’t seem to be what I was expecting from what I’ve seen at the moment though, oh well. If you hunt around in the Facebook Apps you can also find an application that shows your recent diggs, and also your recent Google Reader shared items, both of which can be found on my profile, which you can see my clicking the link in the box to the right.

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That was the week in lumps, a week in which: a really really big man met a really really small man, Danny Boyle wants to do 28 Months Later, Lembit Opik squashed rumours he was marrying his cheeky girlfriend, and soon you may be able to make silly gestures at the TV to change channel.

I shall close this week with these book disguises, in case you’re embarrassed to be caught reading Harry Potter.

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