Rock Band's Serious Offenses: Songs That Should Never Have Been In A Music Game

I've had a lot of complaints about some of the songs in Rock Band.  Now, even though a lot of them are for DLC, there are a few that don't deserve to be in a game relating to rock music.  Here is my list, you will likely disagree with me on some of them.

Starting with the songs on the disk:

Any Song By Rush

Rush.  They suck something big.  I'd rather play some John Mayer instead.

Nobody that knows a classic when they hear it should ever, ever listen to Rush.  I mean, Guns n' Roses with just Axl is still leagues better than Rush.

I am baffled as to why there's a Rush DLC pack available...

"Epic" by Faith No More

This is one of the most horrible songs I have ever heard in my entire life.  It sounds like some white kids trying to rap in front of the mirror to some 80s music.  And then when you get to the chorus, it sounds like Chester Bennington doing that not-screaming singing (yes, it does exist) while holding his nose. Good luck trying to sit through that music video.  And this song definitely is not epic, that's for sure.  It is an abomination of the term rock, and the master track needs to be burned A.S.A.P.

Songs by Oasis

Yeah, some of it might sound nice at first, but when you listen to what is being sung you realize that it sucks.  Really, Oasis are the guys that get punched in the face at their own concerts.  Seriously, that's pretty sad by anyone's standards.

Songs by All-American Rejects

I'll be honest with you, I used to listen to these guys.  I sort of liked it, but I never thought of it as rock.  Seemed too soft-sounding and it sometimes got so girly (note: they are all guys) that I wanted to punch them in the face along with Oasis.

DLC: Naked Brothers Band

This is probably the biggest offense in the history of music games.  These are the kids that have a stupid little Viva La Bam ripoff television show on Nickelodeon.  Did I mention that they don't even try to hide the fact that the show is staged?  Anyway, they make this type of music.

Just the thought of playing that kind of music in a game makes me sick, in the sort of "oh, Harmonix, what the hell have you done this time, you fucktards?" kind of way.

Those are all of the major offenses that I can think of at the moment.  Sorry if I missed any, but it's just so easy to overlook a bad song when so many suck to begin with.  Hope you enjoyed another one of my rants!

November's Random Post

This is just a post with a bunch of crap that I feel is worthy of being on my blog.  'Random' is more like 'partially random' as opposed to gibberish.

Super Obama World

This is a sort of spoof of the Super Mario World games.  In Super Obama World, you play as our President-elect Barack Obama and get to stomp on enemies such as lipstick-wearing pigs.  Even the first level is filled of political references like the 'bridge to nowhere'.  Play now.

The Matrix Runs on Windows

Another spoof, but this one is a video.  It is based on the first Matrix movie and depicts what would have happened if the Matrix ran on Windows XP.  You just need to see it for yourself.

Something Stupid That I Just Realized

The villains (or, well, the actors who portrayed the villains) from the first two Spiderman movies were both in movies featuring Harrison Ford.

The Green Goblin, a.k.a. Willem Dafoe was in the movie Clear and Present Danger (based on the Tom Clancy novel of the same name). Dafoe portrayed John Clark, some secret agent dude.  He works alongside Ford, who plays the role of Jack Ryan, the main character.

Doctor Octopus, otherwise known as Alfred Molina, was in the very beginning of Raiders of the Lost Ark.  He was that guy named Satipo that tried to escape from the temple with the golden monkey he stole from Indy.  Thankfully, the bastard gets mauled by those spikes.

Halotivations

If you haven't heard of it before, head on over there now.  It is a blog where people send in Halo-based motivational posters.

Do me a favor and make some posters.  There's apparently a lack of posters to... er... post.

Well, There You Have It

 The first official 'random' post.   I have more things to post about, more important things deserving posts of their own.  And I promise, no more 'I hate Republicans' rants.  Video games and politics do not mix well for the most part.

My 360 Is Back!

You read that right.  My Xbox 360 Elite is back and better than ever.  I expected a much longer wait.

I decided to send my 360 to Microsoft to get fixed.  I followed the progress on the Xbox website.  Here is a timeline of what happened:

Friday, October 24, 2008- Red Ring of Death is discovered.

Sunday, October 26- I arrange a repair.  The shipping box is sent.

Thursday, October 30- The box comes, I pack my 360, ship the box with my 360 in it the next day.

Friday, November 7- Microsoft receives my console.

Saturday, November 8- My 360 is fixed!  Shipped back to me a few days later.

Friday, November 14- This is the day that I originally would have received my Xbox, but no one was home to sign the UPS guy's paper...

Monday, November 17- The UPS guy tries again.  Success!

Microsoft sent a letter of apology (of course, my name has to be 'Xbox Enthusiast) and a card for a free month of Xbox Live.  That was very generous of them, considering the entire process didn't cost me a dime- the repair and shipping were both free.  They even renewed my regular warranty!

As for how my 360 is performing, the few things that were changed were the most noticeable, in a good way.  Signing into Xbox Live is a lot quicker, and testing the connection doesn't take as long.

But the biggest difference is that the 360 is a lot quieter.  When it starts up, it doesn't sound like a leafblower.  Instead, there's this really quiet, soft noise that sounds like a Gonk droid.  It only does the Gonk noise twice, then if I want to hear it again, I need to restart the console.

The sound of the console is also a bit more pleasant.  It doesn't make that motorcycle... er, racket after 20 minutes.  Even though the fan is the loudest part of the console, the 360's noises aren't nearly as obnoxious and distracting anymore.

All of that said, I recommend sending RRoD-afflicted consoles to Microsoft for repair.  It's worth the wait.

The Red Ring of Death: A Pain in the Ass

The image you see above is my Xbox 360 Elite, plagued by the Red Ring of Death after a little over one year of use.

See, I'm pissed right now.  No hardware today should break after one year.  Hell, even Super Nintendos still work.  I know two people with working SNESs.  They're fucking ancient and still work.

It all happened like this:

Friday afternoon.  The end of a bad week in school.  I just wanted to relax.  After watching Law & Order for an hour, I decided to play on Xbox Live.

I turned on my 360 and tried playing the Mercenaries 2 demo.  The console did a weird freeze up while loading the game map.  There was some distortion in the picture.

I restarted my console and tried the demo again.  I got a little further this time: I got in the truck and after a few seconds of driving, the console did another weird freeze up.  Again, some picture distortion.

I restarted again, and this time tried the Need for Speed: Most Wanted demo.  It froze up before the main menu could fill up the screen.

I decided to restart again.  This time I tried playing Naruto: Rise of a Ninja.  As soon as the game map finished loading, the console froze up again.

So I decided to restart again.  I got the Red Ring of Death.

I tried one last time.  When I put the 360 on its side, I got a weird green screen.  I gave up after that.

So now I'm in the process of finding an easy solution.  I am trying to avoid sending my console to Microsoft, because I've heard that it takes weeks and that you might not get your hard drive back.  I don't even know if I'll get a 360 Elite back.

The warranty expired on June 14.  Fucking warranty runs out before I get the RRoD.  I sort of expected that to happen.

Any tricks that might help fix the problem are welcome.  "Get a PlayStation 3" is a legitimate answer.

EDIT: I decided to send my 360 to Microsoft for now.  I arranged a repair on Sunday, and got the shipping box on... Thursday or Friday.  I'll need to check.

EDIT 11/7/08: Microsoft has recieved my 360 and are fixing it.

EDIT 11/8/08: 360 is fixed!  Expect a post when I get it back.

Should We Pay For Our Multiplayer?

For those of you that know, online multiplayer is a way to expand your gaming experience.  You are able to play with against real people (including your friends) in the comfort of your home.

But it usually comes at a price- sometimes you need to pay to play online.  This is common in MMOs and console gaming.

Generally, the great multiplayer and expanded set of features like downladable content override the fee.  Such is the deal with Xbox Live and World of Warcraft.  But many people turn to free online gaming like Sony Online because, well, it's free, and there are still a lot of good games to play.  The same amount of fun without paying a penny extra (not including your electric bill).

Chances are, you will probably say that all online gaming should be free.  I was asking a friend about it, and he brought up an interesting point: when it's free, it doesn't give the companies much incentive to make the online better.

His statement is mostly true- just look at how hugely popular and successful Xbox Live is compared to Sony Online.  Overall, XBL has a lot more and better online games- Halo 3 being a really big one.  It also has a lot of downloadable content for gamers to expand their experience even more.  

And those bucks most likely contribute to the Xbox 360 having a lot more exclusives and big hitters.  Final Fantasy XIII on the X360 is undoubtedly possible partly because of Xbox Live not being free.

Despite that, free online is one of the Playstation 3's biggest selling points.  In the long run, someone with an Xbox 360 playing on XBL is going to spend more money than someone who got a PS3 and plays online.  Considering that the PS3 has heavy hitters like Metal Gear Solid 4 and Resistance: Fall of Man, in some ways a PS3 is a better buy than the 360.

PC games also have free online.  As long as your internet connection is fast enough, you can most likely play games online whenever you feel like it.  Some people turn to the PC for online gaming because there are a lot of free online games, and the online doesn't cost money- if you need as much money as you can get, PC gaming can be a great alternative to console gaming.  In most games, it's going to stay free forever- there are too many people against pay-for-online-play for big corporations like Microsoft to make you pay for it because they really don't like you.

In some ways, it just comes down to preference- what do you consider more important? Free online?  Or more DLC, games, and other such things?  That is up to you to decide.