Guitar Anti-hero
Oct. 18th, 2007 11:52 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
beandelphikiSome weeks back, House fandom alerted me (via a fanfic) to the existence of the PlayStation 2 music video game Guitar Hero. Which I'd never heard of before. (Yes, I'm THAT clueless. I was also so late to DDR that it wasn't cool anymore by the time I had a dance pad.)
I've been looking around for it ever since, but it wasn't selling anywhere in the mall where I work. And then last week, suddenly everyone was carrying it again - new shipments must have come in or something. My coworker informed me, so I hustled my butt down to EB Games and picked up the bundled game/controller package for Guitar Hero II.
(Well, hustled down there and then stood by patiently waiting for the guy at the till to stop monologuing to the harried cashier about his gameplay in some first-person shooter or other. It occurs to me that the employees at games stores must get that sort of thing on a regular basis, and I have new appreciation for my job.)
Anyway. Guitar Hero II. This game ROCKS you guys, no pun intended. I may be the only one who hadn't heard of this game before, but just in case I'm not: if you own a PS2 or an Xbox, you should try this.
The breakdown (okay, THAT pun was intended):
The guitar-shaped controller is the most amusing thing about the game, in my opinion - the PS2 one is based off the cherry Gibson SG. That's got to be one of the prettiest guitars in the world. I'm almost positive I've seen a photo of Prince playing this guitar. Could be wrong, though.
(Both the controller for the PS2 and the one for Xbox are supposed to be 3/4ths the size of real guitars; sort of unfortunate, because while the smaller size is probably easier to hold in some ways, the PS2 one definitely doesn't naturally rest on your body the way a real guitar does, and I doubt the other one does, either. It's incredibly awkward, which is my one serious complaint about the design.)
The controller has "fret buttons" and a "strum button" in the place of strings, which you have to press simultaneously to play the notes. Below the strum button, there's also a whammy bar on the controller which is mainly for fun; but which can be used to increase your score.
"Notes" are colored circles which correspond to the colored fret buttons; they scroll down the screen, Tetris-like, along a guitar neck (yeah, very cute) and you need to play them at the moment they cross their respective colored rings at the bottom of the screen. (It looks like this.)
There's various "modes," of play, the main one for a single player being Career, where by doing well you unlock further songs and various other goodies, and progress to bigger and bigger "gigs." That's pretty much it for Easy difficulty "tours," but if you choose to do a "tour" on Medium, Hard or Expert difficult, you also earn in-game cash to buy extra stuff.
According to Wikipedia, this game is a ripoff of something called GuitarFreaks, which is a Japanese arcade game. That would give it a similar history to DDR, except that the home Konami version got its ass kicked by Harmonix's Guitar Hero. (Notice how in the entry for GuitarFreaks, the arcade photo also shows an arcade game featuring a drumset? That's DrumMania, and GODDAMN do they need to come out with a home version of THAT which is available outside of Japan.)
The bundled package comes with the game in its case, the guitar, an adjustable strap, and - hilariously - STICKERS of eyeballs and flames and so on to attach to the guitar. (Apparently the game designers FULLY EXPECTED parents to totally ignore the "Teen" rating on the game.)
Basically: it's DDR air guitar crossed with pretending you're Whitney Houston or Josh Groban in the shower. Admittedly embarrassing to be caught doing, but seriously INSANE AMOUNTS OF FUN.
I'm not so hot yet, but I've started getting 5 stars (out of five) on the Easy songs the first or second runs through (and my first perfect score, whoo), so I've started trying some Medium, and DAMN is this game a pain with small hands. I played today until my hands were about ready to fall off at the wrists, so I guess I'll see how much this aggravates my RSI...and how obsessed with this game I actually want to be.
FOUND ON YOUTUBE! Favorite song to play so far, despite the fact that it still completely kicks my ass:
"Free Bird" cover on Medium. (Yeah, yeah. Favourite song to PLAY, I said. It's fun.)
I'm doing okay on the first half of the song, but after it kicks into the next gear, I'm pretty much left mashing the buttons. I WANT TO NAIL THIS SONG SO BAD. But I've only got 70% accuracy rate on this song right now. (Oh, and DUDE, I just noticed it's almost ten minutes long. That explains why my hands and arms were cramping so badly after playing it all afternoon.)
*is still trying to get some feeling back in his fingertips*
Okay, some more vids unrelated to my own playing:
An 8-year-old kid playing "Psychobilly Freakout" on Expert. There's a bunch of vids of this kid, who apparently owns more than one version of the game. Check out the parts where he turns his back to the screen. Awesome.
(Less awesome: the fact that he's one of several Guitar-Hero-playing children on YouTube. Ooooh, your child can play on Expert and is only eight? Mine is FIVE! Well, mine is FOUR! Is there NO competition parents won't exploit their children for?)
Also, a double-necked controller! Actually just two controllers stuck together that someone in a pizza costume is playing very badly. Which is just LOL-worthy...that someone would go to the trouble to build that. TOTALLY POINTLESS.
And for even more lulz, the comments left on Guitar Hero vids are always full of people who don't know what the word "game" means. I mean, I could have embedded these, but you'd miss the opportunity to read the gems people leave each other over this game.
That's probably enough obsessive geeking in public for one day.
I've been looking around for it ever since, but it wasn't selling anywhere in the mall where I work. And then last week, suddenly everyone was carrying it again - new shipments must have come in or something. My coworker informed me, so I hustled my butt down to EB Games and picked up the bundled game/controller package for Guitar Hero II.
(Well, hustled down there and then stood by patiently waiting for the guy at the till to stop monologuing to the harried cashier about his gameplay in some first-person shooter or other. It occurs to me that the employees at games stores must get that sort of thing on a regular basis, and I have new appreciation for my job.)
Anyway. Guitar Hero II. This game ROCKS you guys, no pun intended. I may be the only one who hadn't heard of this game before, but just in case I'm not: if you own a PS2 or an Xbox, you should try this.
The breakdown (okay, THAT pun was intended):
The guitar-shaped controller is the most amusing thing about the game, in my opinion - the PS2 one is based off the cherry Gibson SG. That's got to be one of the prettiest guitars in the world. I'm almost positive I've seen a photo of Prince playing this guitar. Could be wrong, though.
(Both the controller for the PS2 and the one for Xbox are supposed to be 3/4ths the size of real guitars; sort of unfortunate, because while the smaller size is probably easier to hold in some ways, the PS2 one definitely doesn't naturally rest on your body the way a real guitar does, and I doubt the other one does, either. It's incredibly awkward, which is my one serious complaint about the design.)
The controller has "fret buttons" and a "strum button" in the place of strings, which you have to press simultaneously to play the notes. Below the strum button, there's also a whammy bar on the controller which is mainly for fun; but which can be used to increase your score.
"Notes" are colored circles which correspond to the colored fret buttons; they scroll down the screen, Tetris-like, along a guitar neck (yeah, very cute) and you need to play them at the moment they cross their respective colored rings at the bottom of the screen. (It looks like this.)
There's various "modes," of play, the main one for a single player being Career, where by doing well you unlock further songs and various other goodies, and progress to bigger and bigger "gigs." That's pretty much it for Easy difficulty "tours," but if you choose to do a "tour" on Medium, Hard or Expert difficult, you also earn in-game cash to buy extra stuff.
According to Wikipedia, this game is a ripoff of something called GuitarFreaks, which is a Japanese arcade game. That would give it a similar history to DDR, except that the home Konami version got its ass kicked by Harmonix's Guitar Hero. (Notice how in the entry for GuitarFreaks, the arcade photo also shows an arcade game featuring a drumset? That's DrumMania, and GODDAMN do they need to come out with a home version of THAT which is available outside of Japan.)
The bundled package comes with the game in its case, the guitar, an adjustable strap, and - hilariously - STICKERS of eyeballs and flames and so on to attach to the guitar. (Apparently the game designers FULLY EXPECTED parents to totally ignore the "Teen" rating on the game.)
Basically: it's DDR air guitar crossed with pretending you're Whitney Houston or Josh Groban in the shower. Admittedly embarrassing to be caught doing, but seriously INSANE AMOUNTS OF FUN.
I'm not so hot yet, but I've started getting 5 stars (out of five) on the Easy songs the first or second runs through (and my first perfect score, whoo), so I've started trying some Medium, and DAMN is this game a pain with small hands. I played today until my hands were about ready to fall off at the wrists, so I guess I'll see how much this aggravates my RSI...and how obsessed with this game I actually want to be.
FOUND ON YOUTUBE! Favorite song to play so far, despite the fact that it still completely kicks my ass:
"Free Bird" cover on Medium. (Yeah, yeah. Favourite song to PLAY, I said. It's fun.)
I'm doing okay on the first half of the song, but after it kicks into the next gear, I'm pretty much left mashing the buttons. I WANT TO NAIL THIS SONG SO BAD. But I've only got 70% accuracy rate on this song right now. (Oh, and DUDE, I just noticed it's almost ten minutes long. That explains why my hands and arms were cramping so badly after playing it all afternoon.)
*is still trying to get some feeling back in his fingertips*
Okay, some more vids unrelated to my own playing:
An 8-year-old kid playing "Psychobilly Freakout" on Expert. There's a bunch of vids of this kid, who apparently owns more than one version of the game. Check out the parts where he turns his back to the screen. Awesome.
(Less awesome: the fact that he's one of several Guitar-Hero-playing children on YouTube. Ooooh, your child can play on Expert and is only eight? Mine is FIVE! Well, mine is FOUR! Is there NO competition parents won't exploit their children for?)
Also, a double-necked controller! Actually just two controllers stuck together that someone in a pizza costume is playing very badly. Which is just LOL-worthy...that someone would go to the trouble to build that. TOTALLY POINTLESS.
And for even more lulz, the comments left on Guitar Hero vids are always full of people who don't know what the word "game" means. I mean, I could have embedded these, but you'd miss the opportunity to read the gems people leave each other over this game.
That's probably enough obsessive geeking in public for one day.
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Date: 2007-10-26 11:29 am (UTC):P
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Date: 2007-10-27 08:54 am (UTC)