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!