Mongo Nation

Guitar Hero for girls, pretty much

By Jeremy Azevedo

The first thing you’ll notice when you boot up Band Hero on your Xbox 360, PS3, Nintendo Wii or (if you’re poor) PS2, is that it’s pretty much the exact game as Guitar Hero 5. Except for everything is pink and purple, and all of the once familiar characters are now wearing hair gel and sweater vests.

More specifically, it’s like Guitar Hero 5 from an alternate dimension, where music games are made by and for girls instead of overweight, bearded metal dudes.

Don’t believe me? Let’s take a look at the song list. I’ll highlight all the songs that I, as a heterosexual male, find intolerable but that your girlfriend will probably think are “cute!” and/or “fun!”

3 Doors Down - When I’m Gone
The Airborne Toxic Event - Gasoline
The All-American Rejects - Dirty Little Secret
Alphabeat - Fascination
Aly & AJ - Like Whoa
Angels & Airwaves - The Adventure
Ben Harper and the Innocent Criminals - Steal My Kisses
Big Country - In A Big Country
The Bravery - Believe
Carl Douglas - Kung Fu Fighting
Cheap Trick - I Want You To Want Me (Live)
Cold War Kids - Hang Me Up To Dry
Corinne Bailey Rae - Put Your Records On
Counting Crows - Angels Of The Silences
Culture Club - Do You Really Want to Hurt Me?
Dashboard Confessional - Hands Down
David Bowie - Let’s Dance
Devo - Whip It
Don McLean - American Pie
Duffy - Warwick Avenue
Duran Duran - Rio
Evanescence - Bring Me To Life
Everclear - Santa Monica
Fall Out Boy - Sugar, We’re Going Down
Filter - Take A Picture
Finger Eleven - Paralyzer
The Go-Go’s - Our Lips Are Sealed
Hilary Duff - So Yesterday
Hinder - Lips of An Angel
Jackson 5 - ABC
Janet Jackson - Black Cat
Jesse McCartney - Beautiful Soul
Joan Jett - Bad Reputation
Joss Stone - You Had Me
Katrina And The Waves - Walking On Sunshine
The Kooks - Naive
KT Tunstall - Black Horse & The Cherry Tree
The Last Goodnight - Pictures Of You
Lily Allen - Take What You Take
Maroon 5 - She Will Be Loved
Marvin Gaye - I Heard It Through The Grapevine
The Mighty Mighty Bosstones - Impression That I Get
N.E.R.D. - Rockstar
Nelly Furtado - Turn Off The Light
No Doubt - Don’t Speak
No Doubt - Just A Girl
OK Go - A Million Ways
Papa Roach - Lifeline
Parachute - Back Again
Pat Benetar - Love is A Battlefield
Poison - Every Rose Has It Thorns
Robbie Williams & Kylie Minogue - Kids
The Rolling Stones - Honky Tonk Woman
Roy Orbison - Oh, Pretty Woman
Santigold - L.E.S. Aristes
Snow Patrol - Take Back The City
Spice Girls - Wannabe
Styx - Mr. Roboto
Taylor Swift - Picture To Burn
Taylor Swift - Love Story
Taylor Swift - You Belong With Me
Tonic - If You Could Only See
The Turtles - Happy Together
Village People - YMCA
Yellowcard - Ocean Avenue

So you see, this leaves only about 10-15 songs that you won’t totally hate playing, because they are, at the very least, good karaoke songs. But they certainly aren’t going to offer veterans any sort of challenge on guitar or drums, that’s for goddamn sure. Wanna play bass on the Spice Girls’ “Wannabe”? No? How about drums on Aly & AJ’s “Like Whoa”? Didn’t think so. Read the rest of this entry →

Are they out of touch? (Short answer: Yes.)

By Jeremy Azevedo

While at a press conference for a boring documentary about the history of the electric guitar that no one will watch, Jimmy Page and Jack White were challenged to comment on the concept of music based video games.

I am so goddamn tired of musicians ragging on the state of the music industry and bawling about how much money they’re losing (as if making millions of dollars a year to fiddle on thier little guitars is a right and not a privilege), then turning right around and attacking the only forms of music ditribution that real people actually still use (i.e. downloading services like iTunes and Guitar Hero/Rock Band games). Apparently these seemingly obvious concepts of industry evlution and supply vs. demand are entriely foreign to Jimmy Page and Jack White, who are not interested in participating in the music gaming fad/proven-effective modern business model. Relying on the age-old “it’s not like playing real instruments” argument, Jimmy Page had this to say:

“You think of the drum part that John Bonham did on Led Zeppelin’s first track on the first album, Good Times Bad Times,” Page said. “How many drummers in the world can play that part, let alone on Christmas morning? Christ I’m old.”

I find it unsurprising that someone as old and out-of-touch as Jimmy Page would find little to be excited about when it comes to music games. Led Zeppelin, once known as the “biggest band in the world” hardly needs the exposure.. They get played on the radio at least twice a day on every classic rock station in the world, and will continue to do so for the remainder of human history. But maybe it’s time for him to get with the times? Robert Plant is out winning Grammys for doing his own thing while Page is complaining about “those whippersnappers and their gol’durn newfangled electro boogie vidyuh-game devices”. Someone needs to calmly and carefully explain to this dude that f**king “Cream” magazine doesn’t exist anymore, and that “Rolling Stone” only covers Lady Gaga nowadays, amirite?

Jack White, who isn’t as old as Jimmy Page but wishes he was so that he could have more “street creed” also chimed in with his own personal tirade against arguably the most profitable sector of the music industry in the last decade:

“It’s depressing to have a label come and tell you that [Guitar Hero] is how kids are learning about music and experiencing music.” While he added that he doesn’t try to limit “which format people should get their music in…if you have to be in a video game to get in front of them, that’s a little sad. Also, I am afraid of Terminators and even my cell phone is analog.”

So here’s a guy that hasn’t made a good album since White Blood Cells in 2001, complaining about his label trying to sell more records for him by getting his music into video games so he never has to work another day in his life. Yeah that sucks dude! I totally feel you. You know what else sucks? Looking like a Jonathan Daivis’ gay little brother. What a f**ktard.

I don’t know if these people realize that the whole purpose for these kinds of games existing in the first place was (and still is) to give music fans the ability to experience their favorite music by actually participating in it instead of just passively listening to it. And it just so happens that in participating, you may discover that you actually quite like artists that you may have never given a chance before…

Just to put this in perspective, here is a short list of artists whose records or CDs I have bought in the last couple of years because I enjoyed playing their songs on Guitar Hero:

The Edgar Winter Group
Blue Oyster Cult
The Exies
David Bowie
Matthew Sweet
The Police
Kiss
The Pretenders
Valient Thor
Deathklok
Foreigner
Steely Dan
Fleetwood Mac
Dinosaur Jr.
Pat Benatar
Bob Seger & The Silver Bullet Band
Lynyrd Skynyrd
Creedence Clearwater Revival
Eagles

Well it’s about goddamn time, but still…

By The Most Pissed-Off Dude In The World

As a longtime player of the Guitar Hero franchise from way back in the dark ages of the first Guitar Hero on the PS2, I have been absolutely dying to know just what in the goddamn hell is wrong with Activision…

Here they are, sitting on a library of great songs, doing f**k-all with them, while Rock Band releases boatloads DLC every single week like clockwork. What could Activision have possibly been doing with their time? Having goddamn tea parties with Aerosmith? Because let’s face it, they kinda blew their wad with the first few games, and “holy crap” moments are getting pretty few and far between in the newer games. Who among us hasn’t thought, “Jesus H, man, I wish they would just code the drums and vox into some of the older songs from the previous games already”?

Enough.

After you’ve already played “Cowboys From Hell”, “Freebird” and “Paint It Black”, it’s hard to get excited about crap like Bon Jovi and Tokio Hotel. (Seriously, Tokio Hotel? wtf?!) The original games had a setlist that was so goddamn rocking, it was like a music nerd’s wet dream. Now that it has to appeal to a more mainstream audience, the songs just get shittier and shittier. This would be easier to overlook if there was more variety, but while Rock band 2 offered Rock Band 1 owners the ability to port all of their songs from the previous game, Guitar Hero World Tour in turn offered owners of the previous games the opportunity to go f**k themselves.

Now it has been announced that they’ve finally got around to porting some of the older songs, but here’s the catch: Instead of offering the songs as DLC or as a budget priced expansion, Activision is planning to release “Guitar Hero: Greatest Hits” as a full retail priced, stand-alone product. That’s 48 songs for $60 bucks, my friend. 48 songs that you’ve already paid for, maybe even more than once if you made the jump from PS2 to Xbox 360. Not exactly my idea of a “thank you” to the OG Guitar Heroes that have kept the franchise alive, as it struggles to remain relevant next to some pretty stiff competition on the part of Rock Band. And guess what else? It isn’t compatible with Guitar Hero World Tour. Eat all of the dicks, Activision. You are out of your freaking minds.

Activision would also like you to pay $60 to pretend to be these guys.

So far, the only songs that have been verified are as follows:

“Them Bones” - Alice in Chains
“Killer Queen” - Queen
“Nothin’ But A Good Time” - Poison
“Killing in the Name” - Rage Against The Machine
“I Wanna Rock” - Twisted Sister
“I Love Rock N Roll” - Joan Jett and The Blackhearts
“Barracuda” - Heart
“Through the Fire and Flames” - Dragonforce

These aren’t even the best songs that the previous games had to offer. This is karaoke 101 type stuff, save for Dragonforce, which is all but impossible to play. Imagine trying to get a whole band to do “Through the Fire and Flames” without failing, as Guitar Hero lacks the more group-friendly save mode that Rock band has. Forget it. Here’s hoping that Activision comes to their senses and expands the setlist with some better stuff, as well as attaching a more reasonable price to it, like maybe $39.99 at most.

BFT destroys Bon Jovi on Guitar Hero: World Tour

Bedtime For Toys is one of the hottest bands in the universe right now (or more specifically, in Koreatown, LA), and has been featured in countless magazines, videos, and creepy fan-fiction novellas! Despite this fact, they still took a break from their busy schedule of bein’ rad and working on their new album to come down and play some Guitar Hero World Tour with us. True Story!

Bedtime For Toys is competing to win the contest that’s running at http://www.guitarheroauditions.com/. The winner gets to be made into a playable character in the game, as well as a chance to meet the the developers of the game and get their ass mercilessly pwned by them! Yay! Check them out doing “Living on a Prayer” better than Jon Bon Jovi himself:

Don’t forget to vote for Bedtime For Toys, or if you think you are hot stuff or whatever, by all means, upload your own pic or video. It won’t be as good, but your mom will probably tell you that yours is the best one anyway (she may even mean it when she says it; moms are masters of self-delusion). And if you have any friends, who knows, they might even help you cheat!

Also be sure to check out this crazy video with the Boombox Ninjas!

Holy crap! Another video with a HOT CHICK in it!

…For a contest, not that this makes it any less foxy.

CraveOnline’s own sexy field correspondent Laryn Michael made the following video to:

A.) Prove that girls can shred at Guitar Hero World Tour as good as any guy (as long as the difficulty is not too high, tee-hee! -Sexist Editor)

and B.) Win the contest they’ve got going over at http://www.guitarheroauditions.com/. The winner gets to be made into a playable character in the game, as well as a trip to LA to meet and be competitively humiliated by the developers of the game.

Check it out and be sure to vote for her, or if you think you can do better, go and upload your own. Or stop writing checks with your mouth that your ass cannot cash. Either way, it’s all the same to may a long as you watch the video:

Also be sure to check out this crazy video with the Boombox Ninjas!