Wasabisoft

That’s right, in honor of being asked to make a Crappy MS Paint Comic, I shall now actually write a post. So lately I’ve been playing a lot of Rockband. It’s a very social game, and it provides a nice structure for hanging out with people, and having a good time. Usually this is less painful the next day than our normal, unstructured good time.

I was first exposed to rhythm-action games in the guise of the now venerable Dance Dance Revolution, AKA “That game that makes you look like an ass when you play it.” If you couldn’t tell from my less than approving choice of descriptors, I didn’t like it very much.

My second (and more pleasant) exposure to the rhythm-action genre was via the not-as-venerable-but-getting-there Frequency. A game with music I liked! Unfortunately, I was kinda bad at it. No rhythm, you see. Yeah, kinda a must-have for a game based on it.

Eventually, I got my hands on Guitar Hero II. A game I liked mostly because it featured one of the greatest songs of all time. As it turns out, through the guitar metaphor I could actually simulate having some sort of rhythm. I really enjoyed most of the song selection in both Guitar Hero II and Frequency, and as it turned out, they were both produced by the same company; Harmonix. Naturally, when Harmonix sold the license for the GH series of games to Activision, I was a bit disappointed. Well, disappointed until I found out they were producing Rockband, which is Guitar Hero + the rest of the band. Naturally, being both a fan of Harmonix and of the GH franchise, I ended up purchasing both Guitar Hero III and Rockband. I’ve beaten the hell out of Rockband. I still kinda suck at it. Can’t really play past easy on drums, still working on hard for guitar/bass, Pretty much plateaued at medium for singing, and I have to switch to easy for the harder stuff. I still play it though. Pretty much every time I have friends over, somebody wants some Rockband action. You may have noticed this is all about Rockband so far. Well, there’s a reason. I haven’t gotten past the first tier of songs in GH III. Not because they’re hard, but because they… well… they suck. I’m quite glad I received GH III as a gift, because I would feel kinda bad if I had payed money for it. The track selection is all over the place, most of the music is rather crappy. Much like the time I played Elite Beat Agents and got stuck for two months because I refused to play an Avril Lavigne song, I am stuck on the first tier of songs in Guitar Hero III, and probably will never go beyond. To be honest, I don’t even remember what it was that caused me to sort of half-puke, and then throw the guitar shaped controller down in disgust, barely restraining myself from aping Pete Townsend and ramming the thing through the TV. All I remember is vowing to never open the GH III case again, and sealing it with fel magics and a tungsten casing, for I could not trade it in, subjecting some poor, unsuspecting dupe to the foul… whatever it was.

So, to get to the point… I’m buying Rockband 2. GH IV be damned, create-a-song feature and better controllers included. If I’m buying a rhythm-action game, a game primarily based on music, I want it to contain MUSIC, not a rapid succession of button presses which will allow the music to continue playing in the background. Cause that’s all I felt out of Guitar Hero III.