Rockin' Fool

I've been playing a lot of Rock Band and Guitar Hero World Tour lately.

About a month or so ago after we got back from San Diego, Gwen and I bought Guitar Hero World Tour for the PS3 because we knew it came with a "good" guitar. I say "good" as opposed to Rock Band's standard "awful" guitar, which comes complete with a mushy strum bar from hell and non-clacking fret keys that manage to instantly drop talent levels from a nice mix of expert and hard on Guitar Hero to a mediocre mix of mostly medium and occasional hard on Rock Band - at least for Gwen and I this is the case. (Somehow Eryn and Adam have gotten around this problem - I smell a soul selling...)

(While Gwen and I were in San Diego in February Eryn was borrowing a Guitar Hero World Tour guitar that Gwen and I found was much closer to the original Guitar Hero guitars which we used to shred on back in the PS2 days. Suddenly playing guitar became fun again - an experience we had yet to have in Rock Band. )

At first we only wanted the guitar itself for use with the Rock Band game, but there was no way, at the local Air Force Power Zone (eat your heart out Best Buy), to buy a lone guitar without purchasing the entire Guitar Hero World Tour game (which comes complete with game, drums, guitar, and mic). Wanting desperately to actually enjoy guitar on our very own Rock Band game, and interested in the song list for GHWT, we decided to make the purchase of the entire GHWT game.

Despite the added cost, and though we only really wanted the guitar, we were pleasantly surprised at how neat Guitar Hero World Tour also was. The song list is good, not better or worse than Rock Band, just different, it's basically just another song list. Some of the styling in the game is clearly different, but not too much. There are few other odds and ends which separate GHWT from Rock Band, but generally the game is very much the same. That said, there is one major difference - the drum kit.

Whereas Rock Band has only four pads and a foot pedal, Guitar Hero World Tour comes with FIVE pads and a drum pedal. Also, the alignment is such that two of the five drum pads sit higher in the kit representing cymbals (see pics).





Rock Band Drums






Guitar Hero World Tour Drums


Because of this, and for obvious reasons, drumming in GHWT is harder than in Rock Band. When I purchased the game, and because of our recent San Diego trip and extensive access to Eryn's system, I was starting to flirt with the "hard" setting on drums in Rock Band. This didn't translate so well on Guitar Hero World Tour, as the five pads and their locations on the screen threw me for a loop at first. Slowly, though I started to figure it out, and I must say it's probably a little bit "cooler" (relative term here) to play a 5-pad kit with varying heights as opposed to simple 4-pad kit. It feels more "real". I'm basing this, of course, on years of real drumming experience.

The other HUGE reason to buy GHWT back at that time was that I knew in only a short while a certain game called "Guitar Hero: Metallica" was coming out, and it was exclusively for GHWT, not Rock Band.

Given my recent love of Metallica's new album Death Magnetic (which I purcahsed in the fall and have not gotten sick of yet - I honestly listen to that thing, in full, at least twice a week, and often much more - it's the best album I've heard in a long time), and the fact that Metallica's first four major albums remain insanely good, and the fact that I thought their power cord type of music would play perfectly into the rhythm game genre, I knew that GH: Metallica was a game I needed to have.

Turned out I was right.

Two weekends ago, I was on call through the weekend, working the days but having the nights off. Gwen was off in England visiting her aunt. On Friday after work I drove by the old Power Zone (again, Best Buy eat your heart out) and there it was: Guitar Hero: Metallica. Purchasing it with all the zeal of a 9-year old me spying a new GI Joe figure on the shelves at Toys R' Us circa 1984, I drove home (on the autobahn, listening to Metallica) and before I knew it was in Man Room banging my head and drumming my ass off to Master of Puppets, Whiplash, and the rest.

With Gwen gone, Friday, Saturday and Sunday of that weekend went down the same. Work, home, Man Room, Guitar Hero: Metallica. I was putting in 3-4 hours a night on that kit.

I will say that to start I simply had to go down to the Medium setting for most of the Metallica songs at first. There was no shame. They're simply too drum heavy, too bass pedal heavy. I was having more fun on medium, getting my feet, learing the songs. Finally I started to do some of them on hard. And there were some great moments in there, banging my head to "MAS-TER!" "MAS-TER!" while the song blared on. It was really fun. The most fun I've had with a rhythm game in quite some time. Plus, of course, there was All Nightmare Long from my beloved Death Magnetic. An 8 minute endurance masterpiece on the drums.

When Monday came around the work week resumed and all was forgotten until this weekend, when Gwen and I went over to Man Room and I showed her GH: Metallica. Her love of Metallica is not as strong as mine, of course, but I think she still had fun checking the game out (plus it's not ALL Metallica songs). Unfortunately though, near the end of a another "killer sesh", the red pad on my GH drum kit stopped working. It just stopped out of nowhere (and made me fail Master of Puppets in the process). Which is funny, because it's by far the least used in the entire game. I have no idea why it stopped working. Several experiments to check it out and potentially fix the thing yielded no results, and now I'm left with no choice but to send the kit back and await a replacement, which'll take a few weeks.

Once the GHWT Drum Kit went down, we went back to Rock Band. Only something cool had happened. All my GH: Metallica drumming over the previous weekend had vaulted me comfortably into "Hard" drumming on Rock Band. Only four pads on regular, non-Metallica rock songs? You're joking right? Anyway, I'm certainly not perfect at hard, not even close, but I'm very comfortable with just about any song on hard now, though I haven't unlocked Painkiller or anything deep on the lists yet to really test myself. But I did Everlong pretty smartly which rates "5 stars" on drum difficulty. Not too shabby.

And most importantly, I'm enjoying rhythm games again. The bitter taste of the Rock Band Guitar has been washed away by the superior GHWT guitar. Though this applies to Gwen more than I, because she has been playing a lot more guitar. And I have my drums, where I feel I've definitely made a leap (not unlike going from medium to hard on guitar way back in the GH days on PS2). And together we've spent some quality time at Man Room rocking out, unlocking songs, and actually having a good time with Rock Band AND Guitar Hero World Tour.

And I owe it all to Metallica.

MAS-TER!

Guitar Legend

Back from a great 4-day weekend at Chamonix. Details and pics to follow in a future post.

More importantly, I just beat "Cowboys from Hell" on Expert, meaning I finally cracked every song on Guitar Hero on expert. Yes! (Yesterday I failed at 97% and nearly collapsed. Generally, however, the good thing about CFH is that the hardest part is right away, so you fail often, but at least it's early and then you're right back at it.)

My next Guitar Hero move( aside from letting Gwendolyn play GH again)? Not sure - I think I'm going to try and get more stars on the Guitar Hero 1 songs, but part of me wants to move onto the uncompleted expert of Guitar Hero 2. It'd be nice to 4-star every song on expert. Decisions, decisions....

More on Chamonix and the amazing food (and snow) in the next post.

Stup Smash!

The Beast is Slain

Our long national nightmare is over.

Well, sort of. I beat Bark at the Moon just a moment or so after I put up (and answered) the newest poll to the right.

Perhaps the night before provided a sign. I was driving into the hospital late, on call, and noticed a full or near full moon over the trees on the hilly road which leads to Landstuhl. There was a gray haze of cloud but the moon remained incredibly bright, straight out of a werewolf movie. I thought, is it mocking me? Do I need to stop the car and literally bark to pass the song? Is this some bizarre rite of passage? So many questions...


OK, I'm back. It wasn't pretty, but it's done. Done! It wasn't even one of my better lead ups to the final solo which vexed me for so long. (I think I was at about 70-something percent total with a wicked awesome 41 note streak. And, um, three stars...if you were wondering.) So while not quite Randy Rhoads, I am mildly proud, and I'm sure Gwendolyn is relieved, being quite tired of hearing me curse and yell repeatedly at a video game. (That isn't Madden.) Now I move on to Cowboys from Hell. But not today, people. Not today. Today I'm going to enjoy the fruits of victory, and savor the taste of this win.

In other news, I got nothing - here's an interesting little clip of news to highlight the world we live in:

"Michael Vick isn't finished dealing with his dogfighting charges. He has a state trial on June 27, rescheduled from April 2, where Vick is facing two more state felony charges. Vick is already incarcerated in a federal prison for up to 23 months, possibly up through November 2009. Now Surry County Commonwealth Attorney Gerald Poindexter says he will try to keep him locked up until 2014. Vick is definitely paying for his awful crime. Meanwhile we have Pacman Jones -- arrested or implicated in at least 10 criminal cases that involve striking women, drugs & booze, assault, coercion, resisting arrest, traffic violations & the shooting that paralyzed a man -- reportedly about to get reinstated and play for the Dallas Cowboys."


The lesson is: I hope Michael Vick burns in hell.

And with that, I'm out for today - Random Picture time:

Dreaming of a White....Easter?

We woke up this morning and saw snow covering the ground, finishing the dusting which began eerily last night. Spring started last week, right? Apparently not in Germany. We barely got any snow all winter, and then a week into spring we have two days of the stuff. It's melting fast, but still. Yeesh. Signs of the apocalypse.

Gwen and I are taking it easy this weekend. We're both on call and have taken turns going into the hospital at various times to do work. Otherwise, it has been another lazy weekend for us. Gwen's been reading mostly. I've been working out, drinking coffee, surfing the web, watching the reasonably-timed March Madness games (via ncaa.com which streams them free!), playing Madden and then putting in stints at trying to beat Bark at the Moon.

It's not going well. I'm routinely failing at about 94-96% now, during the second solo. Occasionally if I'm not careful I'll still fail in the first solo. My hands are cramping, my "strap shoulder" is sore, and the frustration is mounting. I almost broke the guitar on Friday, and then took Saturday off from the game to relax. I swear I can hear the song in my sleep. I have to be over 50 times attempted now in the past week. This is getting ridiculous. I've been experimenting with different hand positions on occasion, but it still comes down to my inability to nail the repeating hammer downs in the solos. I'm about 75% (average) on the rest of the song - unfortunately given how many times I play I have to simply conserve energy during most of the song, as a result I miss about 1/3 of the quickly repeating green notes which make up the bulk of the song. It's simply too tiring to strum that fast over and over again to try and nail them - which also kills me near the end, after the big solo, I'm often too fatigued to pound them all out and as a result I head into the final solo with less green and more yellow/red than I should. Also, having played the song poorly so many times, I have some bad muscle memory laid down which hurts my ability to improve and nail all the other parts of the song. I make the same mistakes over and over - my brain can't switch the gears after it becomes so ingrained. Correcting those mistakes is going to be difficult, but necessary to put me into the best possible position to get through the second solo.

Come to think of it, I really hate this game.

(Worse, Gwen picked put the guitar and rifled through expert (on GH one), which she had never attempted before, having gained the majority of her current skills from GH2 and later. She didn't fail a single song and after she passed Frankenstein (on the first try), I looked on agape in some sort of proud horror and immediately banned her from trying Cowboys from Hell and especially Bark at the Moon. I can see it now - she steps up to Bark at the Moon and nails it first time out. (Which I could see happening too - she is really good at hammer downs and pull offs compared to me. Plus she's seen me play at at least 30 times and knows all the strategy for star power, etc.) If that happened, if she stepped up and knocked it out of the park on the first attempt - I would cry. Just shake my head, lie down gently, sob, and go into the fetal position, never to come out. I don't have the emotional strength to watch that after failing so many times. As a result, she's banned. BANNED! She can continue to amuse herself with the other Guitar Hero iterations. Maybe in a few days I'll let her try Cowboys from Hell since I'm not really playing that at all right now. We'll see.)

So I'm stuck. I usually play one other song to warm up and go right into Bark at the Moon. After pouring my soul into 5-15 failures at a clip, I don't have the strength or interest to try anything else, or go back and try to get five stars (or four even) on some of the other songs. It's just not happening. It's Bark at the Moon or nothing now. I doubt I'll ever play another non-warmup song again until it's beaten.

It must be beaten.

In case you haven't seen it, here is my pain: (I picked one of the videos where the guy actually screws up a fair bit. He's still a jerk because he finishes the song, but less of a jerk than others - whom I'm convinced sold their souls - that get 100% on the damn thing.)





And back to rosier topics - the Easter "blizzard"....