Battle of the Bands (Wii) = A Weird Rhythm Game

While Rock Band is still my definitive rhythm game for now (even though the Def Leppard DLC for Guitar Hero III is okay stuff), there are probably will some stinkers that will try to take advantage of Harmonix's winning formula with Guitar Hero and Rock Band.

I never really paid attention to this awkward rhythm game, Battle of the Bands, for the Wii until I saw a commercial for it earlier this week. This is out now to buy for the Wii for a different twist on the rhythm games of today. Battle of the Bands is simply a cool concept of playing different versions of cult mainstream classics using different genres of music to spice things up. These YouTube videos are just examples of what this game brings to the table, but it is simply weird and random of a Spanish band rocking to Gorillaz's Feel Good Inc. and so on. I'm pretty sure the hardcore crowd won't appreciate this crap, but this is definitely designed for the casual audience (its only on the Wii). In the end, it is just THQ (who published this) trying to get a piece of that Guitar Hero pie and get some easy sales out of it, but I think it will flop hard. Then again, I might be underestimating the Wii casual audience and they will eat this up.

Madden's "Love" for Brett Favre pushed to a new level

Word from the streets, mainly Gamedaily who broke the news, that Madden NFL 09's coverboy will be the one and only Brett Favre. It seems like an odd choice considering he is retired now after one of his best seasons in a while, but it seems true and will be made official tomorrow. Of course, there are better candidates out there to be on the cover of this year's Madden, but maybe they are too worried about the Madden Curse striking again (ask last year's coverboy Vince Young even though his Titans made the playoffs). Then again, having two quarterbacks be on the cover for two straight years is interesting.

UPDATE - That looks like the cover alright and now official. EA is ready to reveal the details tomorrow and throughout the NFL Draft Weekend.

Clip of the Day (4/24/08) - The Kobe Aston Martin Jump, TNT Style!!

If you watched Inside the NBA after the Lakers winning Game 2 against the Nuggets, the TNT folks (Ernie, Kenny, and Charles) interviewed Kobe Bryant about the victory and his infamous Aston Martin Jump. Hilarity ensues when Kenny Smith tries it out for himself. This is why TNT delivers in pre-game and post-game shows for the NBA better than ESPN in some ways even though Sir Chuck can be crazy at times.

Another Racing Game gets the Bike treatment

It seems like more racing games (mainly arcade racers) are adding more than just cars as the main vehicle of choice. The Midnight Club series (started with 2) pretty much made bikes in console racers kind of fun and changed up the gameplay a bit. Now more racing games have seem to add bikes with PGR4, Test Drive Unlimited, and Mario Kart Wii. Looks like another racing game will add bikes into their repertoire of cars, which is Burnout Paradise.

The folks of Criterion are still piling up the DLC for the latest Burnout game, with a recent auto-update showing up on 360 (later this week on PS3) even though it is causing framerate issues.  They will fix that issue and the "Bogart" update will return in May 2. Meanwhile, that screenshot of a bike in Paradise City is also in a different time of the day. They also plan towards putting nighttime in Paradise along with bikes and supposedly planes in their "Davis" update later this summer before their "Eastwood" update, which is the promised expansion of Paradise City with another island to explore. Before those two updates is the "Cagney" update adding this SUV, which can't boost at all (pic below) as well new types of freeburn challenges and more online modes (mentioned in a previous post) to mess with (some of those are timed). Plus, PS3 fans will be happy of getting custom soundtracks in that update as well.

It is just impressive that Criterion is still willing to make Burnout Paradise better way after its release as other companies would just put up some pointless items up for download and stop there. They are pushing the concept of DLC to a whole level and all of this will be surprisingly free, which is awesome. The addition of bikes to Burnout could lead to some new challenges for the developers and how they can maintain what makes Burnout the intense racing game it is with different vehicles.

The GTA4 Marketing Train Commences....

Less than a week till the whole world stops for Grand Theft Auto IV and the marketing train has commenced here at the U.S. We seen the European ads and even hear about reported leaks at various spots of the world (Australia and some spots in Europe), and the billboards have started to rollout. These sets of billboards are nearby my neck of the woods at Downtown Los Angeles while other billboards have surfaced at other spots. What's interesting about these billboards is that they are not advertising both PS3 and 360 versions (I think this Downtown LA one is for the 360 while I have seen other ones promoting the PS3 version). Then again, these ads have somewhat in question with Fox News trying to ban them at Chicago. I'm still curious how much baggage this will carry with the government being how controversial it is in the past, but I think it won't cause any problems unless something questionable is seen and noted to make them pissed off. It is only a matter of time when the leakage of footage spreads among the interwebs, and Rockstar has been on tight lockdown on anyone who uploads some of it as well as playing it early to be recognized in PSN and XBL servers. To me, it's still amazing that we are a week away for gaming nirvana with GTA IV.

Super Mario Fusion = Mushroom Kingdom Fusion

A name change later and we have now Mushroom Kingdom Fusion, previously Super Mario Fusion (blogged about it last month). YouTube user JudgeSpear2 has added a couple more members to his team to make this game better and better, which is still in a beta. I'm looking forward towards their new beta soon with some new additions and changes as he noted in these YouTube clips.

Other than Megaman Mario and more levels in the Mega Man world and now some levels in the Sonic universe (Labrinyth Zone for example from Sonic 1), more playable characters will be added, which is the major reason for the name change. Luigi is introduced and the gameplay differences are definitely noticeable as expected in Nintendo's Mario games with his SMB2 jump and Smash Bros. style fireballs, which I approve. Mario has some new additions as well with the Spin Jump from Mario World and more hopefully. This new beta seems improved drastically with some animation fixes and other gameplay changes with the Spartan suit power-up acting like Halo-like rechargeable shields now. This fan-made game is still ways off from complete, and hopefully it will deliver.

Music Roundup for 4/22/08

Time for a blog about today's world of music...

We'll start with what I have been listening to lately, which is mainly the new Atmosphere album, When Life Gives You Lemons, You Paint That S*** Gold, a cool name for an album I would say. Anyway, Atmosphere is pretty much one of the more known underground hip-hop / rap artists around even though the first time I knew about this album coming out was that it was on the pre-order section of the iTunes Music Store (that cover above is not the retail cover). Other than that, it is a pretty chill album to listen to with the fellas rapping and such with the chill beats compared to all the mainstream hits out there (most of them being crap, but still catchy). Atmosphere, to me, is about the rapping first, beats and melodies second, and it shows in their latest album. Basically, this is underground hip-hop and rap at its finest, and if you're looking for a chill album to listen to escape such songs as Ray J & Yung Berg's Sexy Can I and Lil Wayne's Lollipop, Atmosphere's latest is worth checking out.

I also happened to listen to a little bit of Madonna's new album, Hard Candy, which is out next week. I guess some of the tracks I downloaded weren't the real versions, so I have to go back and try again on that. If you like her last album, Confessions on a Dance Floor, it is basically a familiar vibe with Hard Candy. The productions actually do take center stage themselves rather than Madonna herself so far with the album divided up to productions from two of the best producers now, Timbaland and Pharrell Williams. Of course, you have your first single and current club banger, "4 Minutes", with Timbaland and Justin Timberlake, but then u listen to other songs like "Give It to Me," her newest single, and it is surprisingly good for what it is (that is produced by Pharrell). There's also a song called The Beat Goes On with Kanye West, but it is not as good it could be especially with someone like Kanye. If you're into new banging productions from Timbo and Pharrell, Madonna's Hard Candy is worth a listen even though Madonna herself is not that as worth it. Plus, I rather listen to this than Mariah Carey's E=MC2 album, which is odd for my tastes.

Okay, this is a little related to games with Judas Priest's album, Screaming for Vengeance, out on Rock Band today. This is not bad for a first album to choose to start up the albums for Rock Band, with such hits as "Electric Eye" and "You Got Another Thing Coming." Most of the songs have ridiculous solos, specifically the title track, "Screaming for Vengeance" (Notechart video below thanks to YouTube user Npaeen), and I barely passed that (good thing I had Overdrive ready for it just in case). Overall, the whole album is worth the download (15 bucks or 1200 Microsoft Points) for the challenge and accepting the fact that albums finally made it to Rock Band.

Lastly, this pic above may seem weird at first, but yeah that's Busta Rhymes and Linkin Park together. I first read about this mash-up or collaboration at IGN which is basically Busta's first single called "We Made It" for his new album, Blessed. I happened to like Linkin Park's mash-up with Jay-Z a lot with Collision Course with "Numb/Encore" being the smash hit it is and the fact the mash-up actually worked. I don't know if this Busta / LP song will work since I haven't listened to it, but it is interesting to say at least.

That's it for My Music Roundup for this week, maybe more next week, who knows if there's something good worth mentioning.