Another Disciple For Satan

In addition to finally getting my PSP back (Withdrawal is now over, I have something to do again on the train) the Sister-In-Law popped by for a visit (Y’know I’m still not used to throwing that term around) and she settled herself down with Guitar Hero and got totally sucked in.

I also made the curious discovery that I play Guitar Hero better when there’s a vacuum going on somewhere in the background. My theory is that the vacuum going off in the background simulates the atmosphere of being a struggling teenage musician that still lives at home and is trying to nail that riff in Symphony of Destruction but must focus out the fact that for all his long hair, drug use and devil worship, he’s still a suburbanite trying to be more interesting than he secretly suspects he isn’t.

However, it was still something of a breakthrough as I can now average about 60% of Cowboys From Hell before getting wiped out by the wicked guitar solo.

Just Another Day

Stuff was written at the GameAxis office, stuff was written at home, and some time after that, some songs previously not “5-starred” on Guitar Hero were 5-starred. The game rates your playing on a scale of 1-5 stars, though it’s actually impossible to get any less than 3 stars because lower than that means you were unable to finish the song. So essentially, 3 stars is a bare pass, 4 stars means you played it competently and 5 star means nearly perfect with perhaps only 1 or 2 really noticeable errors.

I continue to rock the house down. Guitar Hero 2 in November, I’m already in line…

The Fluke

I somehow jumped from averaging 10% completion on Cowboys From Hell in Guitar Hero to 80%, but only the one time. I have no explanation for this.

HOLY CRAP

I JUST BEAT BARK AT THE MOON ON THE EXPERT LEVEL OF GUITAR HERO!

!!!!!!!

I’m so happy I could puke. Now all that’s left is finishing up the other less hard songs on Expert (I was an idiot and tackled the hardest song first) and I’ll be able to face Guitar Hero 2 with honor in November.

Thank GOD that’s over.

Now I just have to “5 star” it, which means play it nearly perfectly…

After 3 Months Of Semi-Regular Practice

I STILL cannot complete Bark At The Moon by Ozzy Osborne on the expert setting of Guitar Hero.

I feel bad.

Also, I have finally seen Neil-O’s Mirrormask and while I liked it, I didn’t like it as much as I thought I would. More on that later.

Too Much Guitar Hero

I had some bizarre dream today where I was walking around in what seemed to be an area of my home town, Edmonton. It was at a McDonald’s that was sitting on the other side of a parking lot for Beaumaris shopping mall, and I had my Guitar Hero controller slapped on.

It was a summer day, so the weather was fine and the sun was mild but comforting, and I noticed that there were a lot of other people–teenagers and adults of the male persuasion mostly–that were walking around with real guitars strapped on. A lot of Gibsons and Fenders all over the place. I was really puzzled by this, though strangely not puzzled at all about the fact that I had my controller slung on my neck, and was getting strange glances of approval from all the real guitar players hanging around.

So I went into the McDonalds and it was there, sitting at a table, I found Michael J. Fox and Christian Bale. There were also a whole bunch’a guitarists. It turns out that for some reason that particular McDonalds was holding a guitar contest, and Fox and Bale just happened to be there. The contest started, and the guitarists took off, I hung out with Mike and Chris and showed them how to play Jimi Hendrix’s Spanish Castle Magic on Guitar Heroe despite the fact that I had no PS2, game, or TV to hook the guitar up to.

Bleah. Maybe it’s time to get a real guitar…

I Am NOT On Ron Moore’s Viral Marketing Team

But I suppose I should be.

T’was a very Galactica day. One of the Wife’s clients is a small design/marketing firm and one of the owners for it is a pop culture kind’a guy that goes in for good TV and had never watched the show, so I promptly shoved my season 1 DVD collection of Battlestar Galactica down his throat and he proceeded to inhale it and then promptly go looking for season 2 through more… enterprising, online digital means. As repayment for me tipping him off to this most excellent of shows, he has decided to throw some good TV karma my way in the form of season 1 of Lost. I guess now I’ll finally see what all the screaming is about. As soon as I got it back, I remembered that the Father-In-Law had mentioned that he vaguely remembered the original show, and kind’a liked it, though he confessed that his most recent favorite Science Fiction show would have to be Babylon 5. Having now firmly put Babylon 5 on the 2nd place/silver medalist pedestal, I figured I’d better share the joy and for all I know, now he is sitting around going, “Starbuck’s a WOMAN!?” at this very moment.

In other news, I finally had a breakthrough and managed to survive Crossroads by Eric Clapton/Cream on the expert level of Guitar Heroes. Slowly but surely I am starting to come to grips with the game and have graduated from competent to Starting To Kick Ass. Heck, maybe I’ll get a real guitar after this…

Oh yeah, I wrote a review for the game which is now online.

Another Slow Weekend

Not doing much today except for a little bit of shopping the acquisition of another chiropractic style pillow (hereafter referred to as “The Brick.”) and messing around with Guitar Hero. I have now entered into the Expert Mode and it is bringing me to my knees in ways that would make Baby Jesus cry with its satanic guitar solos. Once again, Ozzy Osbourne proves that he is indeed in league with the devil, because Bark At The Moon as a guitar piece–not to mention Pantera’s Cowboys From Hell–are positively unholy.

With the force of a million suns, Guitar Hero also manages to suck the Wife into its Geek Gravity Well, and now she too is rockin’ hard. The game cannot be resisted, it’s almost frightening how fun it is.

In other news I went looking for James Frey’s A Million Little Pieces out of idle curiosity and the Wife had to remind me that I was in the wrong section, because I went straight to fiction.

Legend In My Own Mind

Thanks to the evil that is Guitar Hero, I now feel totally ROCKIN’.

It has also had the unfortunate side effect of giving me a new appreciation for bands I had previously had no taste for whatsoever due to their excessive volume, or simple abundance of cheese. However, God help me, after going through it yourself and playing to a enthusiastic–albeit virtual–audience that is screaming, hollering and whooping you on, I now FEEL THE ROCK when Boston’s More Than A Feeling kicks in, and I too want to raise my hands, devil horns proudly swaying the air and nod my head up and down.

I’m also starting to really dig licks in stuff like Bad Religion’s Infected and just can’t help but go back and again to Ziggy Stardust I guess I’m just a sucker for Bowie.

Y’know, I really should get around to writing that review of the game.

Just one more song…

Can’t… Resist… DNA… Gotta’… Rock…

It is a belated, and potentially lethal Christmas present.

The Wife had been meaning to get this, but unsurprisingly, stocks were out in Singapore around Christmas shopping season. It’s a game. But not just any game. No, this is a game that plays to the cultural stereotypes in south east Asia, and makes me out to be exactly the kind of person that people here expect me to be. This is a game that puts me firmly in my place as artsey Filipino type, the kind that commonly appears in hotels, playing the guitar–usually bass–in some cover band.

This is Guitar Hero.

The game is fun in a way I can’t even begin to describe. It is probably my favorite game of 2005, despite the fact that it’s the new year, but it still feels like 2005, and anyway, the damn game came out that year. Locals will already be quite familiar with the premise, since arcades in Singapore have a similar game by the Japanese company Konami called Guitar Freaks. In the arcade, it’s a big cabinet with a plastic guitar attached–and usually chained up for reinforcement–and the game play is simple. A series of colored bars corresponding to the colored buttons on your guitar fall down the screen. When they hit the bottom, you “strum” by pushing or pulling up/down on a plastic lever to stimulate hitting the strings. It’s just a guitar version of Dance Dance Revolution, which most North American gamers will probably be more familiar with.

Here’s what you get with Guitar Hero for the PS2:

For the more guitar oriented readers, you’d be correct in thinking, “That looks just like a Gibson.” It is indeed a plastic, travel-guitar sized replica of a Gibson SG, the axe of rock gods such as The Who, Cream and AC/DC. You get the guitar, the game itself, a strap and, for the young or young at heart, stickers to adorn your guitar with. Just plug that sucker in, take some time to familiarize yourself with the tutorials (That is, if you haven’t been rocking to Guitar Freaks in the arcade the way I have over the last few years) and prepare yourself for the Majesty Of Rock.

And here’s where the evil of the game makes itself first known. I think every kid–or at least male kid–has been guilty at some point in their life, of giving into their impulses and doing a little bit of air guitar. This takes it to a whole new level, and strikes an amazing balance between being accessible enough that you won’t require Rock God skills to play, but will acquire some Rock God-ish skills on along the way if you want to play on expert mode. When you play it on easy or medium, you get a feel for it, but once you kick it up to hard and expert mode, that’s when you’ll realize that the level of complexity borders on the real thing. And by God, you WILL feel like you can play a guitar for real once you survive those solos.

The game really lives up to its advertising slogan, which is, “All the thrill and excitement of being a rockstar without ever leaving home!” But more importantly, you will get more an appreciation for the actual skill of playing a guitar. There are only five buttons to fret with here, compared to the 72-132 frets on a real guitar, and once you try something like Higher Ground by Red Hot Chili Peppers, you’ll realize exactly how much coordination, practice and discipline it takes to play those tunes so flawlessly. Suddenly, it won’t seem like some drug addict with long hair just mindlessly strumming his hand up and down a guitar, you’ll see how much craft is involved it getting to rock to sound loud and obnoxious to call the cops and shut down the party.

I’d write more, but I got permission to do the review for GameAxis, so I’d better save the rest for that, put the link here once it’s out.