Fallout 3 and Guitar Hero: World Tour reviews

Sorry for the lack of posting. Between the Beatles and EA layoffs and a major story that I hope we'll be posting tonight, it's been another day of total insanity. But meanwhile, check out our two most revent reviews:

-"When the team behind "Fallout 3" created a vision of Washington, D.C., following nuclear holocaust, it didn't just wreck the buildings, it twisted the American Dream itself," writes Variety critic Chris Dahlen, who says it's likely to be one of the year's biggest hits. "This long-awaited new installment in the cult franchise from publisher-developer Bethesda Softworks continues in the spirit of its predecessors by giving players a massive post-apocalyptic world to explore, exploit and try to save, while shrewdly integrating classic themes like patriotism, tribalism and mankind's capacity to destroy itself...

"In 'Fallout 3, the American Dream is a charred blueprint survivors are struggling to follow. But hope never dies, and the final stretch of the story includes a Strangelovian display of national power that's spectacular, ironic and heartfelt. The player leaves thinking America might just survive this war, right in time to start some new ones."

To give you an idea of how passionate Chris's review is, even our non-videogame playing copy editor told me that reading this made him want to get a console. Read Chris's entire review right here.

-Given how similar the two games are, the only real question about "Guitar Hero: World Tour" is, "Is it better than Rock Band?" It's pretty much a draw, according to my review: "While 'World Tour' beats 'Rock Band' with an innovative music creation and sharing system and a more realistic drum kit, it lags behind in subpar animation and the racket those drums make...

"'Guitar Hero: World Tour's' major innovation is that it brings the rock experience into a studio. The game has a powerful and well-designed music-creation mode where players can compose their own songs by jamming or by using a software program called GHMix to alter tunes note by note. Just as in the real world, jamming is more fun, particularly with the huge variety of effects and instrument types built in. Producing anything worth sharing with the world, of course, is quite hard and GHMix, while useful, is awkward compared with computer programs like Garage Band.

"Players can share their compositions with others via the GHTunes community, through which songs can be uploaded, downloaded, and rated. It's a fantastic idea, though the popular tracks have thus far leaned more toward remixes of the 'Super Mario' and 'Legend of Zelda' theme songs than anything original. Truly talented composers will inevitably be spending their time with real instruments and mixing software."

Hopefully "World Tour" composers will do better than Nintendo theme songs. But for now, that's what's topping the charts. And seriously, those drums are loud. If I want to play "World Tour" at night without waking my wife, I've got to use the "Rock Band 2" drums. Though it is cool how "World Tour" automatically adjusts to a drum set with four pads instead of five.

You can read the whole review here.