If you want to see some J-Rock on Rock Band, go on jrockrevolution.com and vote for the bands you’d like to see, either as official Rock Band downloads, or on the new Rock Band Network!

You can vote for up to 10 bands. You can also vote multiple times for one band if you want to. For example, I put in 4 votes for Maximum The Hormone since they’re so damn badass

Since there’s been literally no news on Rock Band Japan since it was announced, it’s great to see that someone is doing something to get some Japanese music on there for everyone to play.

Click Here to Vote!

Let’s go right away and define what “Gold Standard” means. It’s pretty simple. It has to be:
1. A game that defines the genre it’s in.
2. It has to be a high-quality game/series.
3. It still has to be fun to play.
4. Of course, it doesn’t need to be the BEST in the genre, but it has to be the one to have set most of the genre’s standards.
5. It has to be an older game, as much as possible.

So read on and see what are the Gold Standards in the gaming industry! Of course, if I’m missing a genre(there’s some I didn’t put in because I either could think of any 1 game that defined the genre, or that were too similar to another genre that I didn’t need to include them), or if you think about a game that I might not have thought about for any of the categories, be sure to comment!

Action

The Action genre is fairly new. There were multiple games in the genre starting in the Playstation generation, but they were rarely good. The genre really took off when Devil May Cry came out. At the time, it defined the genre. Fast-action, multiple combos depending on the timing of button presses, multiple weapons, badass cutscenes, no cumbersome QTEs… it had it all. Some tried to copy it and failed (*coughgodofwarcough*), others did a fairly good job at taking the concepts from DMC and making their own game(but never as good). But the genre was near perfected when Devil May Cry 3 came out. And THAT is when the Gold Standard of the genre was decided. It took everything from Devil May Cry but made it all better. The original DMC was held back by the fact that it used a slightly modified Resident Evil engine. DMC3 had it’s own engine and was a lot smoother and just overall better than its predecessor.

So the Gold Standard for action games is: Devil May Cry 3. As of the writing of this post, the game to follow the standards it set the best is Bayonetta. We’ll see if it becomes the new Gold Standard in the coming years.

Fighting

There’s really no doubt behind this choice, right? This is THE game everyone thinks about when you mention “fighting games”. It’s still one of the best fighting games, and it’s been at it for all of 19 years. Street Fighter 2 is without a doubt the Gold Standard for the genre. And what better example for what I mean by “Gold Standard”? It’s been around for 19 years, it has consistently been good for 19 years, and people still play it after 19 years(with occasional new versions from time to time). It will always be a great game. Every fighting game after it used the same basic gameplay as it, but they made minor changes to make it their own game. May it be concentrating more on juggling, different button input methods for special attacks, or adding a bunch of cancels, more speed, every fighting game is basically SFII.

So the Gold Standard for fighting games is definitely Street Fighter 2…. any of its millions of incarnations.

Beat’em Up

This is a tough genre to decide on a Gold Standard, mostly because most games in the genre pretty much play exactly the same. So for this one I just had to go for one that is highly recognized and popular. It’s timeless and still a high-quality game. And all that after 23 years in existence. The game I went with here is Double Dragon. No, not the NES version, but the original arcade version. A good Beat ‘em Up always needs multiplayer, which the NES version lacked. Since then there have been tons of Beat ‘em Up games, some just as good, and even better than Double Dragon, but at the basics all of them are following closely in the footsteps of Double Dragon.

This is why Double Dragon is the Gold Standard of the genre.

Platformers

I don’t even know WHY I have that genre on here. the answer is incredibly obvious. May it be Side-Scrolling or 3D platformers, is there a better choice than Mario? No, there isn’t. There were platforming games before Mario came on the NES, but none of them were anywhere as good as what Mario created with its NES incarnations. Mario perfected the side-scrolling platformer with Super Mario Bros 3. In the switch to 3D, Mario was eager to use the new dimension to it’s full potential, and Super Mario 64 was the perfect way of doing so. It might have started the trend of collecting a bunch of things instead of a more linear story progression, but it worked very well with idea.

Mario is easily the Gold Standard of the platforming genre. Super Mario Bros 3 is the Gold Standard for Side-Scrolling Platformers (and has yet to be surpassed). And while I think Super Mario Galaxy was a better game than SM64, it did just follow the standards SM64 set and didn’t really add innovation to the mix. So Super Mario 64 is still the Gold Standard for 3D platformers.

Shooter

By shooter, I mean shoot em’ ups. Side-scrolling or vertical-scrolling games where you control a spaceship or flying magic-user, shooting everything in your way, finding power-ups and dodging millions of bullets (sometimes literally). This is a genre that hasn’t been very well represented in recent years, but it’s still not dying. Neither should it, because the Shmup is one of the more exciting/challenging genres in gaming. What would best represent the genre? I think Gradius fits the best. Gradius 2 to be exact. The arcade version released in 1987. I feel it’s the one that solidified the power-up system(with multiple options) in the series and created better level design for the genre in general. It solidified the genre’s fast-paced bullet-dodging gameplay, had a nice comprehensible upgrade system, cool bosses, it was pretty tough, and being able to choose the upgrade “path” at the beginning set the basis of shmups with multiple characters and play styles.

So the Gold Standard for Shooters is Gradius 2!

Action Platformer

The action platformer is basically a mix of platforming and shmups. It’s not exactly a Shmup, yet not exactly a Platformer, but it concentrates a bit more on fast-paced action rather than the platforming. Contra set the standards for that genre. The NES version I’d say, the arcade original isn’t exactly as fun. There’s bullet’s everywhere, the controls are silky smooth, shooting enemies is fun, it’s challenging, the various different weapons are awesome, Co-op… and there’s the spreader. What’s not to love about Contra?

Contra definitely set the standards for its genre. A genre that is very under-represented nowadays, but a great one nonetheless.

FPS

Another hard choice. Because there are so many of them, and because it’s kinda hard to pinpoint exactly which of them started it all. To get some of them out of the way right now: it’s not Wolfenstein 3D. It’s not Doom or Quake either. Though each of those are definitely inspirations for the Gold Standard, they don’t have enough gameplay elements to count. It has to have, at the least, fast gameplay, cool weaponry and solid multiplayer. A good single player is a nice asset but not exactly a must. It’s a hard choice, but I think Unreal Tournament(released on PC in 1999) takes this one. There’s other good candidates like Goldeneye and Perfect Dark, or even *shrugs* Halo. But UT took the basic multiplayer gameplay from Goldeneye and made it near perfect. It took all the modes and made some modes of its own, made the gameplay millions of times smoother, better controls than basically anything else on the market, the weaponry was a lot more interesting and it was a lot more satisfying to blow the crap out of other people. Not to mention the game’s modability.

So… while it wasn’t exactly an easy choice, I think Unreal Tournament defines what an FPS should be. It might not have a great epic single-player story, but the single-player mode is still quite interesting and playing a LAN game with friends is tons of fun. To this day, all FPS multiplayer is based on modes UT created. (I know some people will disagree with me on this one)

Adventure / Action-Adventure

I originally had a section for both Adventure and Action-Adventure… But suddenly I realized both genres had a similar Gold Standard. I think it’s a simple to find who wins this one. Of course it’s Zelda. I had a few other choices(like Adventure on the Atari 2600), but none of them fit nearly as well as Zelda. The original Zelda is definitely a great adventure game. You have to find hints to get to the next part, you need to find new items to solve puzzles, there’s tons of hidden stuff. Definitely an adventure. There’s really no other game that’s as influencial to the Adventure genre than the first Zelda game. It sets a shitload of standards not only for Adventure games, but for gaming in general. For Action-Adventure games, I’ll says Link to the Past had a bit more influence on the Action part of the genre. The action was faster and more interesting, and the huge amount of items to use in combat just made it that much better.

So the Adventure genre has 2 Gold Standards: the original Zelda for Adventure games, and the faster-paced action gameplay of Link to the Past for Action-Adventure games.

RPG

The RPG genre has a ton of colossus. Giant super series that have existed for over 20 years and that are still popular. Sure, the main inspiration for the genre is basically Pen and Paper RPGs like Dungeons and Dragons, but those definitely can’t count as the Gold Standard. There are 2 series that are the obvious choices for the Gold Standard: Dragon Quest and Final Fantasy. But choosing which game in both series can serve as the Gold Standard… not an easy task. Both series set standards in the whole genre. Final Fantasy 1 and 3 went with the whole “custom team” idea and character classes, as did Dragon Quest 3. Final Fantasy 4 and 6 innovated the kind of story an RPG could tell, as did Dragon Quest 4, 5 and 6, with multi-character/multi-quest epic plots that spanned long time periods…

So let’s cheat this time and say that the Gold Standard for the RPG genre is both the whole of the Final Fantasy and Dragon Quest series(up ntil the final SNES incarnations of both series), why don’t we? Both contributed greatly to the genre, and are the main inspiration to most RPGs now… Other than the ones that use a D&D system, of course. Those series also set the standards for RPG sub-genres such as the Action and Strategy RPG.

RTS

When I think RTS, I think Command and Conquer Red Alert. It’s the game that introduced me to the genre, and it was a very good game. But after replaying it not too long ago and having a bit of trouble with the controls, I realized it couldn’t exactly be the Gold Standard. Nah, the Gold Standard for this is a relatively easy choice: StarCraft. Great fast-paced RTS gameplay, incredible resource management, 3 unique races with completely different gameplay styles and… high-level games are just crazy to watch (not like I have the skills required to actually play in those high-level matches). It’s no wonder there’s still a ton of people playing the game online, and that’s probably not going to change, even when Starcraft 2 comes out.

There’s little doubt about this one(though I did consider WarCraft 2 for a minute there, before remembering that StarCraft exists), the Gold Standard of the RTS is StarCraft.

Simulator

The simulator… Now I don’t mean Flight Simulators, or Train Simulators, or Racing Simulators, or Rape Simulators. What I mean is games where you’re given a city, or people, or companies, and you have to manage them. Getting money to build up, keeping residents/clients happy, becoming as successful as possible… that’s what I’m talking about. Though my favorite in the genre is probably the original Roller Coaster Tycoon game, there is little doubt in my mind that Sim City set the standards for the genre.

With its multiple scenarios and innovative gameplay and features, Sim City set the standards for the Simulator genre (and spawned a needlessly high amount of sub-series).

Racing (arcade)

It’s Ridge Racer!

RIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIDGE RAACEEEEEEEEER!!!
(I could go on and talk about how it did things that no other racing game before did and such… but I won’t waste my time when just 2 words is all I need)

Racing (Simulator)

The racing simulator genre is still a young genre. The game that I think set the standards is Gran Turismo 2. Sure I think Forza 3 is a lot better and might be setting standards itself, but until Gran Tursimo 5 comes out (it’s not out as of the writing of this post), I’ll hold back and keep an older game as the Gold Standard here.

So Gran Turismo 2 it is!

Music

The music genre exploded recently. But it’s been going on for a while. Before Guitar Hero and Rock Band, there was only one: Dance Dance Revolution. Okay, that’s a bit wrong. Other games came out a bit before/around the same time in the genre(like Beatmania), but the first one to really have an impact was DDR. It started out a bit basic, but the fun and original techno music and the new type of fun gameplay had instant appeal. Sure, we all looked like morons playing the game (unless we had insane skills… which I didn’t), but we had lots fun(AND it was great exercise). The gameplay was fast and frantic, the music was occasionally interesting(though newer versions just slap on a bunch of crappy pop music… the older Konami Originals are badass), it was challenging, and becoming good at it was very satisfactory.

Now we have Rock Band, which takes the fun DDR gameplay in a good direction with multiple instruments and such, but the game that set all the standards for the genre is definitely Dance Dance Revolution. So that’s the Gold Standard this time.

Puzzle

One day I woke up and my Gameboy had Tetris in it. I could never get it out.
Also: Tetris music by Powerglove
And this too: Tetris God (it’s so true)
And maybe a bit of this: Brentalfloss
Why the hell not?: First-person Tetris (even like that it’s insanely fun)

I don’t need to say anything about Tetris…. Really. I think it’s the most obvious Gold Standard in the list.

The first song is for one of the towns and the second one a battle song. Enjoy.

Distant Beliefs, from Final Fantasy XI was my favorite Final Fantasy song and I’m hoping to see a new favorite in XIII or XIV.

Unless you count the Monkey Island games, I’ve never played a Tim Schafer game. So I wasn’t completely sure of what I was going into when I started playing this.

The demo basically confirmed that I wanted to play this game, and I bought it at launch. It was a very bad representation of the game to be honest. It was fun, for sure, but would you really expect the game, after playing through an action/beat ‘em up demo, that the game is actually an RTS? Yeah, me neither. It’s not fully RTS, and has a bunch of other gameplay elements, but the most important parts of the games are large-scale battles between 2 armies where you must gather ressources and destroy the enemy’s base. Quite different than I was expecting.

So does this travel through the land of Heavy Metal live up to the huge hype, or is it just a wanabe?

Developer: Double Fine Productions
Publisher: EA Games
Date of Release: Rocktober 13, 2009
Platforms: PS3, 360

Genre: Action RTS
Players: 1-2 (maybe more, I’m not a big online player so I didn’t check)

Looks and Sounds
The graphics are great. Technically they’re nothing special. Similar to early PS3/360 games. But the style is great. It goes for a semi-realistic cartoony style, and everything looks awesome in that aspect. The environments definitely steal the show though. They constantly said that this was based on “things you’d see on metal album covers”, and for that it definitely succeeds. Most areas in the game would make a great cover are for a metal album. From the awesome bone pile you start on to the dark foggy undergrounds of the sea of black tears, every area has style and looks great. The character design is a bit on the wacky side for certain characters, but there’s one thing for sure: they’re metal.  They go for various metal looks and hair styles (not a big fan of the Glam Rock dude though >_> he just looks lame).

The sound is another great feature here. First, the voice acting. It’s great. Really. Not being a great Jack Black fan myself, I find that his acting here is great. Sure, he sounds like Jack Black and talks like Jack Black, but he feels just right in the role of Eddie Riggs. No complaint here at all. The rest of the voice actors are great too. Ozzy is surprisingly entertaining as the Guardian of Metal, but he has almost no lines which kinda sucks. The other “celebrity” voice actors such as Lemmy Kilmister as the Kill Master, Lita Ford as Rima and Rob Halford (AKA god) as The Baron and General Lionwhyte are all very fitting. I have no complaints in that regard at all.
The soundtrack is really what steals the show here. It includes 108 metal tracks. That’s already a huge amount, but the selection itself is actually quite good. There are no songs that feel out of place or anything. Some of the songs aren’t exactly “metal” (Scorpion isn’t metal… right?), but they still don’t feel out of place. There are some strange things with the soundtrack though, namely the lack of the biggest metal band ever: Iron Maiden. Seriously. There’s a bunch of Iron Maiden references in the art, the MAIN CHARACTER’S NAME(Eddie being the Maiden’s mascot’s name, and Riggs being the last name of the mascot’s creator), the trophies/achievements(Ran to the hills?), yet not one Iron Maiden song. It’s pretty weird. There’s a few other weird omissions. But overall the soundtrack is great.

Story
You play as Eddie Riggs, the world’s most badass roadie in history. You start in a modern day “metal” show. One of the musicians does something stupid and it’s up to Eddie, being the best roadie in the business, to save him from a dangerous fall. That causes part f the badass set to fall on Eddie, killing him. Some of his blood falls on a belt-buckle of his, which summon’s badass metal god beast Ormagoden. He wreaks havoc at the show, and transports Eddie to a badass world of metal, where music can create greatness. May it be fire or lightning or vehicules, the power of metal does everything. Here he meets up with a few people, starts a rebellion against the evil emperor Deviculus. From here on out there’s plot twists and stuff about Eddie’s origins and explanations on how they meet up with various people to form an army fit to fight Deviculus.

The story is overall pretty interesting. Nothing incredible, but the writing and dialogues are really well done, creating a really fun world and great characters. The comedy is really good, having similar humor style to previous Schafer games (as far as I know). My only complaint about the story is that the game ends on a big revelation about Eddie, yet there’s no explanation or anything, it just… ends. I feel it could have had a few extra hours of gameplay just to talk about those things you learn in the end. But it was still a fun story.

Gameplay
Action, or the basic gameplay
The main gameplay is action-oriented. You have normal fighting moves, with axe slashes, the use of your guitar to shoot lightning and light enemies on fire, earthquake attacks, blocking and special moves with allies. The basic gameplay pretty much feels like a dumbed down Devil May Cry, or an old-school beat ‘em up. In addition to all that, you have various Guitar Solos, each with a special power. Most of them are used in the RTS segments, but some of them can be used in combat as well, like the facemelter, which literally makes your enemies’ faces melt off (doesn’t everyone wish they could do such an awesome solo that it melted faces? I know i do), or the relic raiser which raises gateways to the Metal Forge, or various other things like songs you can unlock, and there’s a solo to just make your car appear in front of you. Pretty useful.

The car is probably where you’ll spend most of your time in the game. Since it’s fast, you’ll use it to go to the various areas in the game, and eventually you’ll use it to traverse the whole world when you’re done with the main campaign. The car is both a means of transportation, and a weapon. As you advance through the game, various upgrades will become available in the Metal Forge, enabling you to make it faster, add more time to your turbo, put on more armor and ramming power, and add guns to it, as well as sub-weapons to add to its capabilities It can be useful in tons of situtation, and is pretty much required to find everything in the game. There are other “vehicles” in the game as well… or at least animals you can ride. Give them a nice jolt of lightning, get to them and jump on them to ride them. Similar to double team, you get new attacks when riding animals. They have really useful attacks sometimes, or are just plain awesome (black panthers shooting lasers from their eyes !_!)

And I couldn’t imagine walking from one side of the map to the other. It’s huge. Not the biggest overworld ever, of course, but just driving from the final area to the first area can take around 10 minutes(maybe more if you take a wrong turn), which is quite lenghty compared to multiple other open-world games. The game, however, features a nice function on the car, changing the flashers to tell you where you must go, so you’re never really lost. And if you DO get lost, the car comes with MUSIC, so you can switch tracks and listen to what you want. And the land not only features varied environments, but tons of things to find. A variety of side-quests (not INCREDIBLY varied, but still lots of stuff to do), finding landmarks to look at using some… thing that I don’t know how it’s called, Bound Serpents which you must burn to free them, and for each 10 you get, Ormagoden gives you a slight boost to your abilities, may it be extra health, faster regeneration, or things in relation to your crew in RTS mode. And as you traverse the world, you’ll frequently find your troops fighting enemies, which gives a sense of “there’s always something going on”, and helping them out gives you fire tributes. As do everything else I just mentioned.

Fire Tributes are given to you by the Metal Gods to bring them to the Metal Forge, where the Guardian of Metal (Ozzy) will let you upgrade your car, get new attacks, get better strings for you guitar, paint your car, sharpen your Axe or give it various properties, and get other memorabilia. This is a nice little feature where you can upgrade your character to your liking. You like using Lightning? Get those guitar chords that make the lightning stronger and gives it more range. More of an earthquake guy? There’s strings for that too. There’s not exactly as many upgrades as I was hoping.

RTS
So while a lot of the game is driving around and fighting stuff, the most “important” part of the gameplay is definitely the RTS segments, which make up most of the boss battles (though some boss battles aren’t the RTS segments). The RTS mechanics are actually pretty simplified. You have a base, and you create units. Pressing R1 gives you a selection of units, and creating them takes a certain amount of “load” as well as a number of Fans. Fans come out of Geysers and are out to see your “show”. Using a certain Guitar Solo, you build Merch Booths on the geysers, making the fans come to your show. That’s pretty much all there is to resource gathering. Some geysers have leeches attached to them so you must kill them to get access to the Fan Geyser, and opponents will also build Merch Booths to gather Fans themselves. You can destroy those and build over those as well.

The actual fighting is as simple as it gets. You can fly, moving across the board a lot faster than any other method. This will enable you to get to your troops faster to give them orders. The idea here is to get lots of Fans, target the enemy’s base as fast as possible, build an army, then mount an assault on the base. Orders are given using the D-pad. Simple enough: Up means “walf up to that shiny red spot and kill anything in the way”, Down is “Stay there and defend this spot”, Left is “Follow me” and Right is “Attack whatever I targeted and ignore everything else”. You target by holding L1 and placing the pillar of light on either a leech, an enemy Merch Booth or the enemy base. One thing to mention here is that To give orders to your troops, you have to be close to them, otherwise they won’t hear your voice and they won’t react. Flying is really useful in that case, since you can move between either separate troops or your targeting area really fast. In addition to all that, You can still use the character you’re controlling to fight, some kind of Hero unit I guess. You can play solos, fight hand-to-hand, it’s really nice to be an active part of the fight. And solos have a variety of effects. Dropping a burning Zeppelin on your enemies, the facemelter is always useful, you can prevent your opponent from flying and restrict his movements, you can prevent the opponent from recruiting units for a short time, you can place rally flags for newly-created units to get to, and various other things depending on who you’re playing as. Oh and you have Team Attacks with any unit you create, which can lead to devastation.

Though in the story you only use Eddie Riggs and his Ironheades army, in multiplayer you can also play as the Drowning Doom and the Tainted Coil. Each faction has a variety of units and different solos. Ironheades are more focused on brawn and hitting hard, as well as boosting units’ power. Drowning Doom seems to focus more on numbers and giving negative effects to enemy units. Tainted Coil has a lower enemy of basic units, but using the “double team” on them enables you to create more units and really boost your army that way. They each have a very different way of working and this definitely adds for various strategies when you bring the fight online.

(check this article on Kotaku for some extra info on the RTS segments)

Overall
This is unlike anything in the industry really. Some people compared it to Overlord, but it’s not even close to being the same. This is a really well done mix between action and RTS. While being simplified versions of both, it manages both well enough to be an interesting game. The RTS segments might seem simple, but I could see really epic battles going on.

Add to that the interesting story, the humor and the great presentation, and you have a great game in your hands. My only big complaint is the length, with the game being done in 6-8 hours, when some parts of the story could still be explored. On the other hand, there’s tons of sidequests and collectibles to find, so if you’re really into it you can at least double your gameplay time just in the single player. There’s tons of stuff to do here.

It truly is a great game and everyone should check it out. A nice tribute to metal and it might even get you interested in the genre if you aren’t already.

Pros/Cons
Pros
- Great graphics
- Great soundtrack
- Good voice-acting
- Great mix between action and RTS, especially when you get the controls right for the RTS sections
- Fun story
- Good humor
- Tons of stuff to do after the main story is done (+online if that interests you)
- IT’S METAL!

Cons
- Main story is short when it could easily have been a few hours longer
- Combat boils down to little more than simple button-mashing

The Save Factor
The game has a starting price of $60. I’d say the save factor is $50. Just wait for a very small price drop, or maybe a deal somewhere and it’s gonna be worth it. If you’re a metal head, buy it full price just because of the soundtrack and for the overall heavy metal feel and the metal references (just summon the car, stay away from enemies and that’s it, you can listen to the soundtrack… though you have to find some of the songs scattered through the game’s world, you can still enjoy a great soundtrack on the way).

Hi there!

After purchasing a Kodak ZX1 for myself a few weeks ago, I figured I’d try my hand at a Videogame playthrough/review thing for this site. I filmed myself playing a few games. I maed a gam3 w1th z0mb1es!!!1 is one of them!

So here’s my first try at the video blog:

I’m quite sorry the audio quality isn’t all too good. I will find ways to improve this in the future. This and also the editing.

In short. This game is a twin stick top down shooter much like Smash TV and all that. It’s only a dollar and you can find it on the Xbox 360′s Indie Games. You can find it by clicking through the link before the jump too!

This game is pretty much WYSIWYG if you watched my video. The difficulty spikes up here and there and it can’t really post your score on the leaderboards. It’s initial charm what with the music and all will wear out eventually. I still find it funny.

So here’s a mini review!

Developer:Jamezila
Publisher:Microsoft (through it’s Indie Games)
Date of Release:16/08/2009
Platform: Xbox 360 (XBLA)
Genre: Top down shooter
Players: 1-4

The Graphics:

The graphics are pretty basic. 2D animated sprites with a decent amount of gore. I think he spent a good amount of time working on those visual effects and that song.

The Game:

Fun and funny, a pretty good combo. Very Meta

The Sound:

The music makes the game. I love it. It may not have the same impact on you after 10 or so play throughs but it’s going to put a smile on your face as you try and survive.

The Bottom Line:

It’s stupid fun. No need to think too much into it!

Pros:

- It costs a dollar.
- It’s funny.

Cons:
- It may not make you laugh after a good amount of plays.

The Save Factor:
This game is easily worth twice it’s price! The title sells for 80 points ($1) on the Indie games. I’d give it $2.

Ah Green Day. A band I grew up with and still love to this day… Kinda. Everything up to their “Warning” album ranged from good to awesome, “Warning” was okay, and then they screwed up with the release of “American Idiot”. An album hailed by critics and the average person as being incredible, but was no good at all. Not only the worst Green Day album (yes, even compared to Shenanigans), but a complete change of style from “punk-rock” to “pop-rock” to get more “popularity”.

I hoped that the crappiness was just a phase, and that their following album would actually not be a big piece of shit. So here comes 21st century breakdown… a title that pretty much means nothing!

SO I’ll start this up with a mini-retrospective of the band, basically just talk about their albums, and then I’ll review the new album itself.

Read on and see if Green Day are back to their former greatness, or if being popular is more important (for them).

MINI-RETROSPECTIVE
1039/Smoothed out Slappy Hours

I’ll skip 39/smooth, since this includes 3 albums: 39/smooth (out in 1990), Slappy and 1000 hours(the last 2 are EPs). This album sported a whopping 19 tracks. It’s punk-rock at its purest. Included is low-quality recording, songs of a very repetitive nature and QUALITY. Here we have a Green Day that doesn’t really have a style and are still looking for it. Most of the songs have a similar sounds, but still there’s a few songs that stand out and that are very good. Not the best Green Day album, but still respectable. Random fact:for this album, Tré Cool is not the drummer, it’s John Kiffmeyer who quit the band not too long after the release the album.

Kerplunk

Here, Green Day were getting closer to finding their style and this gave birth to one of their best songs to date: Welcome to Paradise. The recording still lacked a bit quality, but the songs were quite fun to listen to and feature weird lyrics from time to time. Again, not the best Green Day album, but they definitely established their style and they were on the way to greatness. Also, this is the first album with Tré Cool, and the band’s main lineup hasn’t changed since.

Dookie

This is where Green Day really started being great. This album is filled with awesome songs. There is no doubt whatsoever that this is Green Day at it’s best. Burnout, Chump, Having a Blast, Longview, Pulling Teeth, Basket Case, She, Coming Clean, In the End, AND even a remastered version of Welcome To Paradise which sounds better than the original. This album is filled with great songs. And the songs I didn’t name? They’re badass too. There’s not one song on the album that’s bad. A great album, and the golden age of Green Day. They did get some popularity back then, but not at the same level as American Idiot.

Insomniac

Continuing from the awesomeness of Dookie comes Insomniac. Not exactly as good as Dookie, but it still had some really good songs. Armatage Shanks, Brat, Stuck With Me, No Pride, 86, Stuart and the Ave., Walking Contradiction, Westbound Sign are all great songs. Not as great as Dookie, but if I were to rank this album I’d say it’s the second best the band put out. Great quality, fun lyrics, fun music, overall great album.

Nimrod

This is where Green Day started getting in a minor slump. They still managed to have quite a few good songs here. Nice Guy Finish Last, Hitchin’ a Ride, The Grouch, All the Time, Platypus(i hate you), Uptight and Reject were all fine tunes. Overall it was an okay album, I still have fun listening to it, but I skip a few songs in it. Oh, and King for a Day is their major WTF song.

Warning

This is their most mainstream album, at least until American Idiot. The 3 popular songs in it were Waiting, Warning and Minority. Waiting was okay, Warning was kinda lame, and Minority was pretty fun. The album had some good songs too though. Church on Sunday was awesome, Castaway was pretty fun, Deadbeat Holiday was real good too and Minority was a fun song as well. The rest were average or meh. This was another step down towards lameness, but it was still a good album.

American Idiot

Before the release of this album, the only song I heard was American Idiot. An okay song, but not exactly up to the standards Green Day set with Dookie and Insomniac. And then the album came out. This felt like a major kick in the nuts for a Green Day fan. Instead of making good songs, they went and decided to do what was “popular” and “marketable”. And, in general (there are exceptions, of course), popular music SUCKS(proof: lady gaga). I’ll at least be honest and say that not ALL the songs suck. Jesus of Suburbia, despite being needlessly long and about 6 of those 9 minutes are no good, is a fun idea for a song, and some of the parts are actually good. Holiday was a fun song, a bit in the style of Hitchin’ a Ride, but not as good, but still the high point of the album. American Idiot was okay. St. Jimmy was average. But the rest of the songs, all of them, were downright horrible. But still, it managed to be a huge hit, and to this day I have no idea why.

Overall, Green Day went through all the phases. It went from an average band searching for their style, to setting their style and releasing awesomeness, to getting in a slump but still having a few good songs, to being completely lame. There’s a few other albums I could’ve mentioned. International SuperHits(released before American Idiot) was a compilation, but had 2 new songs that were respectable(Poprocks & coke was okay, Maria was really fun). Shenanigans is a compilation of songs that either didn’t appear at all (or appeared only in singles) that Green Day agreed weren’t good enough to put on the official albums, and it was quite a sucky album. Makes me wonder why they thought any of the songs American Idiot were worthy of being on an “official” release…

Really, I love Green Day and still listen to their old material, which to this day is some of the only punk-rock I still listen to(that and Offspring). They’re not perfect (see: American Idiot) but they truly have a lot of really good songs.

THE REVIEW!

So I set my expectations for this album REALLY low considering how bad American Idiot was. Their whole radical change of style really destroyed the band for me, and when I heard they were releasing a new album I wasn’t excited in the least (but, deep inside of me, I had a shred of hope that they realized their suckage with American Idiot and would go back to making good songs).
Now I gave it a few good listens, and I can come up with a verdict on the album. But first let’s go through all the songs one by one. I won’t go in large detail for each of them, but I’ll give a general impression.

The songs

Song of the Century – This song is nothing. It’s just a pointless intro thing(that appears a second time in American Eulogy).
21st Century Breakdown – So the album starts here. And what a weak start. The lyrics suck, the music is a mess, and it’s not very fun to listen to. Not the low point of the album, but it’s a bad song.
Know your enemy – The first single from the album. It’s been on the radio for a while. And it sucks. A lot. The lyrics are some of the worst ever produced by Green Day and the music sucks horribly, even without any guitar skills I could probably play it if I was arsed to touch my guitar again >_>
Viva la Gloria! – The beginning is stupid and pointless. After a minute the song changes style and sounds a lot better… Slightly better music and reworked lyrics could’ve made htis an interesting song. But it’s not.
Before the Lobotomy – Starts slow and boring, then gets… slightly faster paced but stays boring. It just sounds… completely dissonant. It just makes no sense in a musical point of view.
Christian’s Inferno – The lyrics are bad and unimaginative, the singing is… well… very lame and badly done(bunch of lame filters to made the voice sound lame really)… And the chorus is just them repeating “Christian’s Inferno”. Not good at all.
Last Night on Earth – Sounds… very lame, very cliché, the lyrics are really… standard love song crap that sucks and… it sounds like Boulevard of Broken Dreams. Yeah, this song is horrible.
East Jesus Nowhere – Starts with a fun little(slightly soft) rock intro, but never builds up to anything good. And the title sounds completely random. Sucks because it had potential to be a fun song. But potential alone is not enough.
Peacemaker – What the hell is this? I can’t classify what genre of music this is supposed to be. But it doesn’t matter, because it’s bad. Very bad.
Last of American Girls – I don’t know what to say about this one. It’s slow, boring, and the lyrics are bad. Nothing more to say.
Murder City – This is one of the few songs in the album I don’t really mind. Not a great song by any means, but it’s better than just about any other song on the album. Sounds a bit more like “normal” Green Day than the other songs… Still not the right style and the music needs a lot of work, but it’s okay.
Viva la Gloria? (little girl) – What with the lame song beginnings in this album? Well, this song starts horrible, of course, but after the lame start, it has a few fun parts. But the fun parts are short and interrupted by horrible music.
Restless Heart Syndrome – Well… yeah… another bad song. Not unexpected is it? Sounds like Boulevard of Broken Dreams and Wake Me Up When September Ends, and that’s never a good thing.
Horseshoes and Handgrenades – Sounds like a classic rock song. It’s not overly bad like a lot of the songs on the album. It just sounds a bit bland. Like a few other songs here, it sounds like it has potential but that potential is never attained. And it’s not Green Day.
The Static Age - This one actually gives of a bit of an older Green Day feel, and after all the crap in the album, this is a welcome addition. Actually, the chorus sounds just like “Church on Sunday” in the Warning album. But… It lacks the energy Green Day used to give off. But I’ll at least be honest and say that this one isn’t completely horrible.
21 Guns – Another one of those lame Boulevard of Broken Dreams kind of songs, and like the others it sucks. I won’t say more.
American Eulogy (Mass Hysteria/ Modern World) - I’m not sure what to think about this one. It sounds a bit like they were trying to get back to their old style, but it’s lacking… something… to be truly good. Some parts sound like Minority… a bit… And some parts of the song are just pathetic. It’s strange how one song can be… near one end of the spectrum and completely on the other at the same time. Can’t they make 1 song that’s all good in this album?
See the Light - Another song that has a classic rock feel to it. And again an example that Green Day trying to do something that isn’t their usual style isn’t any good. I did find it funny that the chorus had a bit of a “Shook me all night long” sound…

Overall
This… isn’t a very good album. It’s not an exaggeration calling it horrible. They took a completely different (and lame) turn with American Idiot, and they’re continuing towards that path with 21st Century Breakdown. It’s sad, because Green Day used to be a very good band. It did sound that they tried to go back to their old style in a few songs, but halfway through the making of the songs, they forgot what their old style was and just went with what “worked” for American Idiot. And through all that, none of the songs really sound like it’s Green Day. It’s safe to say the album sucks a BIT less than American Idiot, but not by much.

It does have a few “okay” songs, but 3 “okay” songs out of 19 is no good, and frankly I won’t listen to it again after posting this. The album as a whole is horrible.
And here’s the kicker: it’s 69 minutes long. Most of the songs are close to 5 minutes long. It’s already bad for a song to suck, but dragging it on for 5 whole minutes is not a good idea, and having 69 minutes of lame music in a row is just, well, lame..

So… Well, despite this not being a good album, it’s gonna be incredibly popular just like American Idiot. “Know Your Enemy” seems to be playing all the time on the radio, and I don’t doubt all the really lame songs in the album will be big hits too. Sad, but that’s the way the world works when it comes to music. Lame=popular.