Perşembe 21 Şub 2008, 23:05

A.F.I. / "Miss Murder" / Decemberunderground (3) / May 2006

Artist: A.F.I.
Original Album: Decemberunderground
Track: Miss Murder

This past Monday I blew off work for the day and acted the total adolescent with my good friend JCV and our kids over at their place. They got the Wii for Christmas, so the primary objective for the day was a Guitar Hero III-fest!

This was finally(!) my first chance to take a shot at GHIII, and I was far behind the curve since they've been playing since late December. But I just couldn't start with something easy - the easiest being Foghat's Slow Ride. Nah, I didn't care if I got my ass totally kicked, I had to start straight away with \m/ Iron Maiden's Number Of The Beast! \m/

Yeah, well after sounding like a drunken cripple trying to walk up a flight of stairs for a couple of tries, I finally completed my first successful song with today's selection. It actually does help to know the songs. I know "Miss Murder" well enough that I was able to get a couple of 50-note streaks and finish with a completion of 91% - not too bad for a first success. (I know all you young gun GHIII-savants out there that play 20 hours a day must be laughing at the image of a 37-year-old "aged metalhead" sücking at his attempt to pass a Maiden track, but not scoring "YOU ROCK!" until tackling an A.F.I. song, but leave a n00b a chance…)

After I got absolutely nowhere with Queens of the Stone Age 3's & 7's - couldn't even get past the intro - I did get through Priestess' Lay Down with a 90% and scored something like 86% on Cream's Sunshine of Your Love, so I thought it was a decent first day because I didn't have too many other attempts.

I never did get through "Number of the Beast" though and that bugs the shit out of me. I think the problem is knowing the song too well, and trying to play along exactly with it, which you can't do because - at least on the Easy level that I was playing - the tablature doesn't make you play all the notes! So I'm there playing twice as many notes as what you're supposed to play and you get nailed for that!

The best part of the day was watching my two girls and one of his boys each take ONE of the color buttons, with JCV handling the strum - four people! - playing one guitar to try and get past Pat Benatar's Hit Me With Your Best Shot!

It didn't happen in one try, either. Part of the problem is kids wanting someone else to take over "their button" in the middle of a song. "Dad, play my button because I need to go get a drink!" Or because they need to pee, or they're hungry but they'll "be right back." Which caused us to proceed to tell them why that's not acceptable with completely ridiculous "example lectures" such as, "What would happen if Tony Iommi just decided to leave the stage for a minute during Paranoid to go get a sandwich??" "Do you think Kerry King just tells everyone to hold on for a minute while he goes to take a leak in the middle of Raining Blood?"

Which of course goes right over their heads like we're talking Martian, and anyway they could care less about that because it's really hard to hold down that green button for a full four minutes!! More than once we get the question while one of the older kids is playing solo, "Dad, is this song almost done? My wrists are gettin' tired!" My question as to whether, if they thought that was hard, they were really ready to now handle a typical 15-minute Opeth track was, of course, only funny to the dads…

So I guess the solution to my frustration is to now get a new system - since I only have an original Xbox - and GHIII. We just have to decide whether it's going to be a Wii so the kids can get all the other games they want, or a 360 so I can get more of the racing games I like and those cool add-on song packs.

You would think the music industry would already be on this GH Bandwagon. Can you imagine the craze that would enuse if they were to work with Activision to make on-demand downloads of any song as add-ons for the game? Want something by Thin Lizzy? You got it. Need Eruption? Here it is. Think iHero: click, download, play. Schwing!

Knowing how addictive this game gets even without that, if you could get that, I would certainly end up like this…

http://www.comics.com/wash/opus/archive/images/opus2008021523897.jpg

\m/ (ò_ó) \m/