Weekend Report: Karaoke and a New Game

Not a whole lot to report on this dreary Monday morning. I've already given my thoughts on Tabula Rasa. They patched the beta on Friday, and while the general playability is improved, the combat's still a one-trick pony, and I stand firmly by my statement that it's more of a free-2-play game than one that's worth fifteen clams a month. As one of the creators of Guild Wars said recently, "Make sure when you decide to charge people a monthly fee that you can back the decision up with a reason why."

With so many MMOs on the market these days, and so many decent choices, and so many of them charging $15 a month, you'd better have one hell of a good game, or start thinking about a different pricing model. I'm betting we'd be seeing a lot more positive press if TR was going with a free-2-play or buy-your-time model. At least then, it'd sound more worth the money, and maybe all the scary Auto Assault comparisons would stop.

But I digress. This post is about my weekend.

My weekend was filled with bad rednecks screeching out their favorite pop-country hits and drunken middle-aged women spilling their beers and falling onto a urine soaked floor. In other words, it was hi-freaking-larious.

However, the choice in music the people at this particular establishment chose to sing was grating on me eardrums, especially when only 1 out of every 5 could belt a tune. But, hey, it's karaoke. It's for people to make fools out of themselves with. So I joined the fray. But little known to anyone but my closest of friends, I'm actually a pretty decent vocalist. Not a technical singer by any definition, but I'll be damned if I can't belt out a solid rock song.

For those interested, I opened with Little Richard's "Tutti Fruity" (yes, it worked), followed up with The Darkness' "I Believe in a Thing Called Love" (I wanted to do "Stuck in a Rut", but the guy only carried top 40 hits it seemed), then again with an oldy ("Superstition" by Stevie Wonder), and lastly capped it off with a little Setzer and "Cat on a Hot Tin Roof". I really don't like tooting my own horn, but compared to the majority of the evening's other singers, I was Frank Sinatra. Because the rest of the people were so god awful, I owned the room when I went on stage, largely in part to not being drunk, even though I wasn't perfect (the mic was off for the beginning of the Setzer tune thanks to one of the aforementioned drunk women). It was a rush. Definitely have to do that once in a while. If only I could find some people with instrumental inclinations... the Bildo Experience would be born.

Other than that wild evening, I also managed to somehow get another beta invite for another new game. This one's due out fairly soon, and has an announced launch date for this fall, but I don't think I can say what game it is yet, which is pretty silly if you ask me. I'll have to find out if I can say the name of the game... Regardless, just know that unlike TR, and like one of the other betas, I'm completely sold on this game. If it gets nice and polished before release, it'll be one hell of a fun game. I'll post my thoughts on this one just as soon as the NDA is lifted, which for all intents and purposes could be this month.

Also, for some reason or another I got about 4 invites for Gods & Heroes (not the game mentioned above, for real). I'm pretty sure they're a mistake because I already got into this one via a contest on their community site, but I'm going to ask the CMs there if I can give out these extra keys to my readers. I'll announce a new "contest" if they allow it. As for my thoughts on this game, it's also under NDA, but I didn't see anything mentioning I couldn't say I was in the beta, and considering I won the key on the PUBLIC forums for the game, I doubt it's a problem. I'll post thoughts on this one also when the time comes and I'm allowed.

Oh, and there's a new quasi-strip over at Don't Panik. We weren't really hungover, we just didn't have the time to get a full one out. So we figured a cheap gag would be funny enough to make you not notice we didn't put a lot of effort into this week's strip.

Cheers to one and all!