Saturday, January 01, 2011

Rock Band

As with most trends, I have come late to Rock Band - I played for the first time a few weeks ago at friends Kelly and Brandon's house.

It's a surprisingly (expensive) fun game, considering all it really consists of is pressing a matching colored button when a moving blob of color hits just the right position onscreen - and repeat repeat repeat.


The fact that you're playing with controllers that seem to be the real thing is a big part of the immersion. If I wasn't playing with a very realistic guitar but instead just tapping buttons on a normal XBox controller, the impact would be a lot less and a lot different.


Somehow when I'm playing the guitar controller, it really feels as if I'm performing the song that's playing - it's a weird sensation especially since I have zero musical skills, no coordination or dexterity, and no rhythm. Playing a Jimi Hendrix song to a virtual crowd of screaming fans is not something my psyche was prepared for. Is this what a flying dream would feel like? I don't have flying dreams.

For the moment, I'm stuck on 'easy' mode, since my cold limp yellowed withered claw of a left hand is about as responsive as a coma patient. It's my own fault - my left hand does a little typing, a lot of scratching, and not much else. For some reason, chords that require two widely separated buttons to be pressed simultaneously are as out of my reach as a Nobel Prize (red and blue, my old nemesis, we meet again for the last time!). If I want to graduate to medium without making all my bandmates fail out, I might have to resort to the kid buttons closer to the body of the guitar.

We played for about five hours yesterday, and I'm ready for more!

1 comment:

  1. The weirdest think about Rockband is that it's actually much harder if you actually play an instrument.

    I can play the drums fine, but when I try to play the guitar, I have to fight my muscle memory the whole time.

    Still an awesome game tho. Yeah, it's technically 'Simon Says' with an awesome soundtrack, but it's a hell of a lot of fun when you're playing with a whole band.

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