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 →

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!

My picks for the top 5 games of E3!

By Jeremy Azevedo

Of all the great games that were at E3, there were a select few that just a certain special something…

These games might not be the most buzzworthy games of the show (actually most of them are), but they were the most fun to play as well as having represented the most exciting developments in gaming culture. Check out our picks for the top five games of E3 2008!

Lips

Everybody knows that the third most awesome thing to do whilst drinking copious amounts of alcohol, after fucking and fighting, is karaoke! So imagine my delight to hear that the newest contender in the karaoke game will reportedly allow you to use your own goddamn music collection! I don’t know how this is expected to work, or what the legal ramifications are, and I don’t care. My copy of Singstar only came with like 30 songs on it, only about 1/3rd of which were actually fun to sing. I own like 30 bajillion CDs, so if Lips delivers on it’s promise, it’s destined to become the number one party game in my household without cluttering up my living room with plastic drum sets and other such bullcrap.

Read the rest of this entry →

The absolute, unequivocal, worst that karaoke has to offer.

By Jeremy Azevedo

If you haven’t heard of and/or played “Singstar” in any of it’s various incarnations yet, you should know that it’s essentially the “Guitar Hero” of karaoke video games.

Which sounds kind of redundant now that there’s “Rock Band”, but that’s how it stands. Quality tracks (depending on your stylistic preferences), quality peripherals and quality presentation are all hallmarks of the Singstar brand.

Last year US karaoke enthusiasts were treated to an excellent collection of 80s tunes in the form of “Singstar 80s”. The songs on this collection were both challenging and fun, with great old pop songs like “Kids in America”, “You Spin Me Round (The Meatspin Song)” and “Who Can It Be Now”. Of course there are one or two stinkers on the list, but all in all, it cannot be said that the 80s were not a time of wild-eyed enthusiasm and musical experimentation. To it’s credit, “Singstar 80s” does a pretty good job of expressing the playful spirit of 80s pop music to the gamer.

MC Hammer: A crime against music, taste and fashion that we may never fully recover from.

The next logical step, of course, would be to release an all-90s edition. And unfortunately for the collective ear-holes of America, that’s exactly what Sony has gone and done. Having lived my teenage years in the 90s, I am painfully familiar with the decade in which pop music took a serious nosedive that it is still struggling to come back from. As bad as some of the music from previous eras was, it mostly manages to be remembered with relative fondness today. Not so with the “hits” of the 90s.

At best, some of these songs may be worth a laugh at a party, but most are absolutely cringe worthy. Have a look at the list of included songs and imagine yourself singing any of them:

Arrested Development - “Tennessee”
Boyz II Men - “Motownphilly”
Chumbawamba - “Tubthumping”
Color Me Badd - “I Wanna Sex You Up”
The Cranberries - “Zombie”
Divinyls - “I Touch Myself”
En Vogue - “Free Your Mind”
Extreme - “More Than Words”
Gin Blossoms - “Hey Jealousy”
Hootie And The Blowfish - “Only Wanna Be With You”
Jesus Jones - “Right Here Right Now”
Len - “Steal My Sunshine”
MC Hammer - “U Can’t Touch This”
Natalie Imbruglia - “Torn”
New Kids on the Block - “Step By Step”
Nirvana - “Lithium”
Paula Abdul - “Opposites Attract”
Poison - “Unskinny Bop”
R.E.M. - “Everybody Hurts”
Santana feat. Rob Thomas - “Smooth”
Savage Garden - “I Want You”
Seal - “Kiss From a Rose”
Sir Mix a Lot - “Baby Got Back”
Sixpence None The Richer - “Kiss Me”
Soundgarden - “Black Hole Sun”
Spin Doctors - “Two Princes”
Stone Temple Pilots - “Plush”
Technotronic feat. Felly - “Pump Up the Jam”
Vanilla Ice - “Ice Ice Baby”
Wilson Phillips - “Hold On”

Chumbawumba anyone? I would rather eat the computer that I’m writing this on than even so much as hear Len or Hootie and the Blowfish ever again, let alone sing along with them. And what’s with all the rap songs? As much as I like hip-hop, I’m a staunch believer that rapping is not karaoke in any way shape or form. I’m a purist of sorts.

If you added “Summer Love”, “Anything By Bon Jovi”, “Goldigger”, “My Heart Will Go On” and “Umbrella” to this track list, you’d pretty much have a laundry list of the most annoying songs ever warbled in a karaoke bar, ever. Anyone that thinks it would be fun to sing “Smooth” by Santana (feat. Rob Thomas) should be chemically castrated in order to ensure that music this bad never happens again.

Za-am-BEY, za-am-BEY, za-am BEY-EE, BEY-EE, BEY-EE!

The only thing I could even conceive of that would be worse than this would be “Singstar: Nu-Metal” featuring Creed, Korn, Staind, Limp Bizkit, Nickelback and Puddle of Mudd. Although, in all fairness, we did dodge a bullet by having several tracks removed or replaced from the International version. Check out this lit of horrors that were excluded from the US release:

All Saints - “Never Ever”
Aqua - “Barbie Girl”
B-52’s - “Love Shack”
Barenaked Ladies - “One Week”
Billy Ray Cyrus - “Achy Breaky Heart”
The Cardigans - “Lovefool”
Crash Test Dummies - “Mmm Mmm Mmm Mmm”
The Cure - “Friday I’m in Love”
Divinyls - “I Touch Myself”
EMF - “Unbelievable”
Lisa Loeb - “Stay”
M People - “Moving on Up”
Meredith Brooks - “Bitch”
Natalie Imbruglia - “Torn”
New Kids on the Block - “Step by Step”
Nick Cave & Kylie Minogue - “Where the Wild Roses Grow”
Radiohead - “Creep”
Roachford - “Only to be With You”
Spice Girls - “Wannabe”
Wet Wet Wet - “Love Is All Around”

It may be a small consolation, but at least we were spared The Spice Girls, Billy Ray Cyrus and The Crash Test Dummies.