| handjobs for rock band |
[Jul. 8th, 2009|03:36 pm] |
Reader, I am a degenerate Rock Band junkie. While the fad seems to have passed for most people, content to occasionally pick up a controller after a few drinks at a party and play with some friends, I've continued to squire myself away and obsess over becoming perfect at my favorite songs. I seem to have hit something of an impasse with the main Rock Band and Guitar Hero games, as I was never able to make that mental leap to all five frets. Thus, I'm stuck in no man's land between Medium difficulty (which is exceedingly boring at this point) and Hard (where I can play about half of the songs on Rock Band, and only a few on Guitar Hero). If only there was a game mode that offered the difficult fret combinations and cranked up speed of the Hard and Expert difficulties, but with only four frets instead of five...
And then such a game came along, and I've been a hopeless addict ever since. I got Rock Band Unplugged for my PSP and it's basically a nightly occurrence now that I go to Starbucks, order my Grande Light Mocha Frappuccino, curl up in one of the squishy chairs, and play for 2-3 hours. I started out on Medium, then went to Hard, and now I can do about half of the songs on Expert. It feels pretty bitchin' to be able to keep my head above water at that highest level, and the great thing is that when I do fuck up, it doesn't feel insurmountable, like the thing with not being able to figure out five frets did. I can see that I'm making stupid mistakes, and when I keep practicing, it pays off.
The tracklisting for that game is really awesome, too, incorporating some of my favorite songs from the first rhythm game I got into (Guitar Hero 3), like AFI's "Miss Murder," as well as songs that have been out for awhile but which I had overlooked until I discovered them in this game, like The Killers' "Mr. Brightside." They're releasing weekly DLCs for this version, too, so I can add to my library just like on the PS3. Mute Math's "Typical" is a fantastic DLC track that I continue to fight with, especially the last blistering guitar solo.
One thing that sets this version apart is the control scheme. Since you don't have an actual instrument to play, you use the D-pad buttons on the left and the face buttons on the right as your four frets. To maintain the Rock Band experience of playing as a group, they came up with the idea of having you play everything at once. In the primary game mode, you start on a given instrument, and if you hit 10-15 notes in a row, called a "note phrase," that instrument goes on auto-pilot and another instrument activates, for which you have to hit a note phrase. Hit all of your phrases and you're golden, but miss one, and the next instrument kicks in, and now you're juggling two or more, trying desperately to pick off a note phrase so you don't have to deal with that one for awhile. It can get pretty hairy. An example of the gameplay:
To be honest, I love this game style. It adds a whole new level of brain activity to the experience because what's going on with the drums could be completely different than what's going on with the guitar, and you have to switch mental modes in a fraction of a second and really get into the groove of that new instrument. When you're playing each one, the volume of that instrument increases slightly too, allowing you to hear it more clearly. This is especially neat with the bass guitar, which is usually so buried beneath everything else that an untrained ear can't really pick it out. I've developed a whole new respect for bass.
Moving back to Rock Band 2, there's a DLC of some songs on the new Green Day album (which is SO fucking good, BTW - I've never been an enormous Green Day fan, but I am now), and I'm so excited for it I can't hardly stand it. One song in particular - East Jesus Nowhere - is one of the best rock songs I've heard in forever. It has an unbelievably catchy chorus and bridge, and so many distinct sections throughout, it's going to be killer to play. Each instrument plus the vocals (which I usually don't care to try) are amazing, too, so I could see myself obsessing over mastering not just the guitar but the bass, drums, and vocals, as well. I told my roommate to expect to hear this song about 50 times in a row on Thursday when it comes out and I start playing it. If you haven't heard that album yet, here's that song plus one of the others in the DLC which is also great:
East Jesus Nowhere 21 Guns
I know it's uber-lame to still be gushing about Rock Band at this juncture, but I really freakin' love it. I took a yoga class one time where the teacher said that yoga is all about finding a way to center yourself, and that means clearing all conscious thought from your mind. She said, if you want to know what zen is, watch a 2-year-old child at play. They are so single-mindedly focused on what they're doing. They're oblivious to the world around them. That's what it's like to play Rock Band for me. Everything disappears, but my mind is working at such a high level, and I feel like it's a project I'm constantly chipping away at. Enriching? Maybe not so much, but incredibly cathartic and fun. Sometimes that's all you're looking for. |
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