Musical Mayhem!

Guitar Hero 5 was released at the top of this month with 85 on-disc songs including 2 by Nirvana. When performed these two songs can feature a Kurt Cobain avatar performing on the virtual stage along with you. Its not the first time they have had artist's likenesses as avatars but it is the first time it's caused so much controversy. The reason being that he is also an unlockable character. Cool huh? Not really when you have him singing "Hungry Like the Wolf".  There are a lot of people fretting (pardon the pun) about this including the owner of Kurt's estate, Courtney Love, who initially allowed the avatar to be created with the expectation it would only be able to used to play his own songs. Even David Grohl, Kurt's former bandmate, spoke out against Activision saying they should update the game so he is unavailable as a playable character.

Anyway back to the game. It has a bunch of new features including a revival meter the band can raise by playing well to revive one of their downed bandmates. For Wii players you can use your custom miis as in game avatars. As well there are game modes that allow you to use your DS to give your band a helping hand through mini games. I think Rockband is gonna have trouble keeping up with Guitar Hero considering they don't seem to have another core game on the way until next year. The Beatles can only hold them up for so long before people get bored of playing "I Am the Walrus" and "Octopus's Garden".

Anticipated games!

Now more than ever we are seeing a growth in large video game projects featuring releases of franchise titles across multiple platforms. Take Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 for example. The first Modern Warefare really solidified COD's place amongst FPS games and World at War proved they were going to grow their online play. CODMW2 is sure to shoot to the top of online games but there are definitely more to come and contest that place.
Battlefield: Bad Company 2 is a surefire hit and with Bioshock 2 promising multiplayer we'll be in for a whole new experience. (I just hope they make a competitive multiplayer game and not just co-op or campaign.) And there is something being worked on called Halo: Reach slated for Fall 2010 but this is a pretty dry case. All we really know is its an FPS that acts as a prequel to the Halo series.

Nintendo is working on a new Zelda Wii title as announced at E3 but I don't think we will see more of that until October. Another Nintendo classic is being brought back and even though it's series consists of only two games Golden sun will get people back on their DSi once they get bored with it.

First Post/First Game

My first blog post! Anyway, the first video game I can remember playing was Mario Bros. I think that goes for many others as well. The classic tale even Shakespeare could never write. A princess kidnapped by the evil king Koopa and the only courageous enough to save her are two brothers. Plumbers of the same womb who, although seem to be Italian, have only been know to say "mama mia!". Only the twisted genius of Shigeru Miyamoto could create such an amazingly ridiculous character and have it capture the hearts of millions. The only reason I didn't yell "WTF" when I played this game for the first time is because I really had no frame of reference for video games. But now I see clearly one of the many reasons for our generation of blissful dementia. Mario really led the way for the strange fads and trends we enjoy today. We probably wouldn't have so much Japanese culture influencing the youth if it weren't for Miyamoto-san.