Boredom-Fueled Blog

First off, some thoughts on Guitar Hero 5: They’ve dropped the Roman numerals, probably because the majority of Guitar Hero players don’t know Roman numerals past three. Second – are they going to release this thing every year? Are people still buying these? The track listings get worse and worse with each installment, which is the perfect segue into the rest of this post…
They’ve already announced part of the track listing for Guitar Hero 5, and I must say I’m disappointed. I won’t be buying this game, and I wouldn’t buy it even if Activision payed me $50. I decided to help them out with Guitar Hero 6 (or VI):
Location 1: Your Garage. No cheering fans here, but after every song, your virtual mom comes in and serves Tang to your band.
Set List:
1. Blue Suede Shoes – Carl Perkins
2. Subterranean Homesick Blues – Bob Dylan
3. Johnny B. Goode – Chuck Berry
4. I Must Be in Love – the Rutles
5. I Saw Her Standing There (Live) – Paul McCartney
Location 2: Local Club. Every song ends with the sound of about five people clapping and one person booing you.
Set List:
1. Jungle Love – Steve Miller Band
2. She’s My Baby – Traveling Wilburys
3. You Really Got Me (Live) – The Kinks
4. Mrs. Robinson – Simon & Garfunkel
5. In The Flesh? – Pink Floyd
Location 3: A club in a big city. You have become the back-up band for a virtual singer. Each song ends with a decent amount of applause.
1. Green Onions – Booker T. and the MGs
2. Almost Cut My Hair – Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young
3. Wah-Wah – George Harrison
4. Money – Pink Floyd
5. Black Dog – Led Zeppelin
Location 4: The set of the Tonight Show with Conan O’Brien. This is your virtual big break. Every song ends with a decent amount of applause and at the end of the set Conan comes out and shakes your hand.
Set List:
1. Frankenstein (Live) – Phish
2. Parachute Woman (Live) – The Rolling Stones
3. The Simpsons Theme – Green Day
4. Break On Through (To the Other Side) – The Doors
5. My Generation – The Who
Location 5: An outdoor concert. Every song ends with a lot of applause.
Set List:
1. Walkin’ on the Sun – Smash Mouth
2. Happy Together – The Turtles
3. Any Way You Want It – Journey
4. This Ain’t the Summer of Love – Blue Oyster Cult
5. While My Guitar Gently Weeps – The Beatles
Location 6: A stadium. The world is now gripped with (your band’s name)mania. Every song ends with thunderous applause and cheering.
Set List:
1. Words of Love – Buddy Holly
2. Plug Me In – George Harrison featuring Eric Clapton
3. Medley: You Never Give Me your Money/Sun King/Mean Mr. Mustard/Polythene Pam/She Came in through the Bathroom Window/Golden Slumbers/Carry That Weight/The End – The Beatles
Location 7: The set of a commercial for Sierra Mist. Your virtual band has sold-out. Every song ends with the sound of the crew clapping. After the song, the commercial’s director can be seen approaching your band shaking his head angrily.
Set List:
1. N. S. U. – Cream
2. 12 Bar Blues – NRBQ
3. Ain’t That a Lot of Love – Taj Mahal
4. Handle with Care – Traveling Wilburys
5. King of the Hill Theme – The Refreshments
Location 8: A stadium. Since the events at Location 7, your virtual band has broken up and twenty years have passed. You are now doing your virtual reunion show at a stadium filled with your most dedicated fans. Each song ends with thunderous applause and cheering.
Set List:
1. Medley: Yer Blues/Yer Blues – Plastic Ono Band/The Dirty Mac
2. Rock and Roll – Led Zeppelin
3. Shot Gun Blues – The Blues Brothers
4. Layla – Derek & the Dominoes
5. White Room – Cream
There you go. That’s the basic career mode. Activision can throw in whatever garbage they want for bonus songs or whatever, but I expect to see these in Guitar Hero 6. That I’d buy.

Nintendo Guitar Hero, Lists

1. The Motion-sensing-Oriented Games
Examples: Wii Sports, Cooking Mama: Cook-Off
These kinds of games were very abundant during the early months of the Wii because everyone was interested in this ground-breaking technology, and game companies knew that people would pay big bucks to throw a virtual horseshoe.

2. The Mini-Game Games
Examples: WarioWare Smooth Moves, Wii Play
Personally, these are my least favorite kinds of games. Often they also utilize pointless motion-sensing tecniques. The general rule for these games is: the more minigames in one, the worse the game is going to be.

3. The Movie Games
Examples: Shrek the Third, Meet the Robinsons
Following in the steps of such terrible NES games as “Home Alone” and “Back to the Future Parts 1 and 2,” the tradition of making video games out of movies continues. These games could sometimes be good if they didn’t have some annoying character as the game hero.

4. The Hard-Core Sports Games
Examples: Madden NFL 07, Madden NFL 08, Madden NFL 09
Personally I’ve never been a big fan of these sports games, but I’ve never been a big fan of sports in general. I must say that I played a lot of “NFL Blitz 2000″ for the Nintendo 64 (it’s responsible for everything I know about football) and I enjoyed it, but in my opinion the “Madden” series of today is too complicated.

5. The Self-Bettering Games
Examples: Wii Fit, Big Brain Academy: Wii Degree
These games were marketed as games that were not only fun, but made you a better person. With Wii Fit you could try to balance on one foot and supposedly have fun doing it. Several minor categories of games fit within this major category including the “Games Based on Game Shows Games” category.

6. The War Games
Examples: Medal of Honor: Vanguard, Call of Duty: World at War
I think that these games have made gaming too mainstream. There are some gamers out there who can be perfectly happy playing Call of Duty or Mario Party, but I don’t know many people like that. “The War Games” have caused division… most of the people I know who play these games are people who, had “the War Games” never come along, would be beating up people who play games like Super Paper Mario and Wii Chess.

7. The Tie-In Games
Examples: Mario Kart Wii, Wii Fit
Ahhh… the tie-in… Is there any better way for an already rich company to get richer? Nintendo jacks up the price by offering some peripheral such as the Wii Wheel, the Wii Balance Board, or (for some versions of Animal Crossing: City Folk) WiiSpeak.

8. The Rockin’ Games
Examples: Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock, Rock Band 2, and to a lesser extent, Wii Music
Before GH III, Guitar Hero games were not allowed on a Nintendo system, but finally the rocker games came to Nintendo and it was all a landslide from there: Rock Band, Guitar Hero: Aerosmith, Guitar Hero World Tour, Rock Band 2, and several third-party rip-offs were soon to follow. (If you’re not into learning pretend guitar, you can always just shake your arm in Wii Music.)

9. The WiiWare Games
Examples: Mega Man 9, Dr. Mario Online Rx
WiiWare is to Nintendo as XBox Live Arcade is to Microsoft. WiiWare games are overall terrible games, but there are a few good games to be found, including Mega Man 9 which is a great continuation of the original side-scrolling Mega Man series.

10. The Good Games
Examples: Super Mario Galaxy, Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess, Super Smash Bros. Brawl
Yes, amidst the clutter at your local gaming store or Wal-Mart you can actually find some games worth buying. These games never quite lived up to expectation, but they were still phenomenal games.

Nintendo Guitar Hero, Mario Kart

I’m sitting here looking at the hundreds of dollars I’ve spent on Wii games, and I was bored so I’m blogging about it.
First of all, honorable mention goes to Wii Sports, Twilight Princess, and The Simpsons Game.
5. Mario Kart Wii. This is the second most frustrating video game I’ve ever played after Spy vs. Spy for the NES. But the very fact that I continue to play it over and over again says something… Nintendo knows how to keep you coming back.
4. Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock. I think I spent more time playing this game than any other.
3. Super Paper Mario. Classic with a dollop of modern. Feels like the son of Super Mario Bros. 3.
2. Super Smash Bros. Brawl. If you’ve read my blog regularly you’re probably surprised that this isn’t number one, but I thought about this for a long time, and determined the main problem with this game is repetitiveness – too many of the characters are too similar. Sorry, Brawl but there’s one Wii game that takes the cake… or Mushroom as it were…
1. Super Mario Galaxy. This is like the grandson of Super Mario Bros. 3. There’s not one aspect of this game that I don’t like, from the overall gameplay to the background music. This game rocks!…

Nintendo Guitar Hero, Lists, Mario Kart, Paper Mario, Super Mario Galaxy