September 3: Revenge of September

So yeah, I'm writing this on like the 22nd October (would I try and scam you lovely people? Noooo!) and am thus REDICULOUSLY behind on blogs. But anyways, today's blog is about:

GUITAR HERO!

There are several types of gamer. There is the hardcore FPS player. The puzzle game addict. The guy who plays RPGs or Horror games for rediculously long hours in the middle of the night. (This list is not complete :P)

But as well as these there is the casual gamer who only really dives into the electronic world of consoles at social gatherings, and more and more developers are hooking into this party ethos and producing multiplayer games that cater to this type of gamer.

Sure, there have always been multiplayer games. I remember many MANY hours over summers long gone playing Goldeneye on the N64, split screen, with 3 friends. We still regard Goldeneye as the best splitscreen multiplayer of all time, because it was fun, had great graphics for the time, and hell, you got to be your favourite characters from the Bond films. What's not to like.

These days, with such a focus on music and celebrities, games like Rock Band, Dance Dance Revolution (and its many clones), and the aforementioned Guitar Hero are all the rage. The premise is simple. Push buttons in time to little coloured dots on the screen which are themselves in synch to your favourite tunes.

The biggest holdup of this genre is, I believe, the initial outlay. You see, Guitar Hero, Rock Band, DDR... all these kind of games... tend to come with special controllers. What's the point in pretending to play electric guitar holding the awkward 360 controller, for example.

So yeah, they all have fairly expensive mini guitars, drumkits, etc etc. While these make for engaging methods of control, prices are indeed a bit steep. I believe Rock Band was currently going at £120 with its full set of drums, guitar and microphone. Ouch.

ANYWAY, Guitar Hero 2 & 3. These are the two GH games that I own, and I will be supplementing them with Guitar Hero: World Tour when it comes out.

I'm not great at these games. I have plenty of rhythm, and I have fairly long fingers and control, but I'm not exactly a god of rock, as I believe I have mentioned in previous blogs.

However, I have recently upgraded my game. Having beaten both games on Medium Difficulty, I've upped my ante somewhat and am now slogging my way through the Hard mode.

Surprisingly, I have made a little progress. The addition of an extra note further up the guitar to hit means that you HAVE to move your left hand up and down the frets to hit them all, and this is difficult. (Obviously. Wouldn't be HARD MODE otherwise).

When I first tried this level of difficulty I was basically aghast. No way was I ever gonna be able to hit any of these notes. No way was I ever gonna finish a song. I was doomed to Medium difficulty forever.

Turns out I was wrong. Sure, I'm probably never gonna be able to complete the game on Hard. By about the third bracket of songs it starts to get really tough, but practise makes perfect as people keep telling me. I'll get better as I go along. I hope.

But what I really wanted to write a bit about was the songs themselves. BOY is there some rubbish on these games. I know getting the licenses for real artists and their well-known tracks is expensive business for companies, but seriously, while I'm definitely no rock officianando, I've literally never heard of some of these bands.

This isn't always a bad thing, mind you. There are some really quite catchy tunes from some less well-known or even obscure bands on here. There's an awesome arrangement of the Top Gun theme, for example, or a rock remix of We Three Kings, and the Halo theme. There's also a version of ETC70's "I Am Murloc" for all you World of Warcraft players.

But I guess my favourite has to be Freezpop's "Less Talk More Rokk". It's barely a rock song, really, but it has an awesome catchy beat to it. Do a search for it on Youtube and give it a listen/watch. It won't be everyone's cup of tea, but I don't LIKE tea so to be honest that's all good.

I'll continue to update with GH progress as filler blogs at regular intervals.

... what, did I just admit this was a filler blog TO EVERYONE...?!?!? DAMN!!!!!