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November 24, 2007
Rockin' in a Not-So-Free World
I got to demo "Rock Band" the other day, as I was out shopping at Best Buy. Good golly, Molly. For those of you who don't know, "Rock Band" is basically "Guitar Hero" with a microphone and drums added to the existing guitar peripheral, allowing you to become a 4-person band. I sat at the drum kit, giddy with excitement, in order to see how it felt to play slightly more real fake drums than the air ones I normally employ.
I'll let Morgan Webb educate you on the game before continuing.
Within 30 seconds of settling in to fulfill one of my four fantasies not involving Shirley Manson, I heard a voice ask, "Mind if I play with you?" I looked up to see this impossibly skinny, impossibly long-haired guy, with a face as giddy as mine. So I said sure, hop in. And that's when a few things happened.
- When you play in co-op mode, you get to choose your difficulty level on an individual basis. So I chose "Easy", since it was my first time playing it, and he chose "Expert" for his guitar part. Ruh row.
- I preemptively apologized for my upcoming performance, at which point he told me he used to work for Harmonix, the company that developed "Rock Band," which is a long way of saying that he essentially helped program and develop the original "Guitar Hero." Double ruh row.
- I had trouble using the drum pad to enter commands into the XBOX360, at which point I realized that this demo setup had already yielded a broken drum pad. Even if I hit every yellow pad correctly during the song, the game wouldn't know, and my score would suck. Triple on the ruh rows.
That being said, it was tremendous, tremendous fun to play. We chose Stone Temple Pilots' "Vasoline", and honestly, I am not quite sure how I did, since the sound of me pounding the drum kit was louder than the TV itself. I could hear his guitar parts, so I knew he was playing well, and for the most part, since it was on "Easy", I kept up just fine. I nearly lost it though when all the "notes" for the game disappeared, and which point the two of us realized we could play anything we wanted during these sections, and just started wailing away, adding up points for the more notes we played in that section. Too much fun.
In the end, the game scores you per player, and ranks how you all did. He got the most notes correct...not a shocker there. So he got the title "Most Rocking" or something that like. I can't remember. I can't remember because I was awarded the title "Most Energetic," which essentially "Rock Band" assigned me the title of "Miss Congeniality. Damnit.
That being said, once I get the $400 for a PlayStation3, the $170 needed to simply buy "Rock Band", the $400,000 for a house big enough to actually put the entire "Rock Band" setup in, and like, 3 actual friends, I'll get this bad boy. Wait, I bet I can get Mrs. Me to play along as well. I only need 2 friends. Still, that may prove harder than the $400,000.
Posted by Ryan McGee at November 24, 2007 05:17 PM