Stress Fracture

I have to keep reminding myself that it’s my blog and I’m going to talk about whatever I feel like, because this seems like one of those topics that one just doesn’t say much about. But as it turns out, I have a mini-rant about it, so I’ll start with that.

I like rhythm games. I like them quite a bit. I own three different Dance Dance Revolution games, two Karaoke Revolution, six Guitar Hero and, let’s see, five Rock Band, now, all told. I’ll list them at the bottom so as not to get off track. Anyway, I get to hear a lot from otherwise entirely sensible people about how dumb games like Guitar Hero are, as people play them and think they’re having a great time but of course it’s not really like a real guitar and they aren’t learning to really play guitar, so it’s all very futile.

Well, I’m sorry, but that’s a pretty dumb thing to say.

Seriously, let’s think this through. Do I expect Left4Dead to train me to fire a shotgun at zombies? Did Wing Commander III prepare me for battling the Kilrathi in space? (Sorry, dated reference, but I’m old.) How about Diablo II, is that a training simulation to churn out barbarians to battle super-powerful demons? Why the heck should we expect these games to be anything more than what they purport to be: games?

As it happens, there are a few side benefits to Guitar Hero and Rock Band, I think, for an aspiring musician: drumming on Rock Band and the new Guitar Hero World Tour has at least a loose connection to actual drumming inasmuch as you’re, you know, drumming on surfaces with sticks; the guitar playing isn’t the worst hand exercise I’ve ever done for being able to reach and press with my pinky and in general stretch to hit chords; and of course, they are rhythm games, so you might suppose that they help you with, well, rhythm. But really, in the end they are games. Very fun games. In the case of the newer band-style games, pretty good party games. Why demand more of them?

Having said that, now the boring bits, such as what I’m up to: I decided I’d take a guitar tour of all of my guitar-controller games, in some arbitrary order, all non-bonus songs, probably. Having established to my bemusement that not only Easy but also Medium are simple enough for me that it’s not challenging (I five-starred all of Guitar Hero Aerosmith on the first try for every song), I’m doing so in Hard mode. This may actually explain a lot of why I like them so much: I never play games on hard difficulty. Or medium difficulty. Or any difficulty above the most trivial they’ll give me, because frankly I’m not very good at most video games. I’m too slow for twitch and I’m too impatient for strategy or complex puzzles. I just want to duck in and have a laugh. Boom Blox for the Wii is good for this, as a side note, but it kills my elbow, sadly. Back to Guitar Hero and its ilk — I’m actually good enough at them to do this. (And all it took me was years of band and self-taught music, if you choose to believe that helps any.)

Finally, here’s that boring list. All, in my case, are Playstation 2 versions:
Guitar Hero
Guitar Hero 2
Guitar Hero Rocks the 80s
Guitar Hero 3
Rock Band
Rock Band Track Pack Volume 1
Guitar Hero Aerosmith
Rock Band Track Pack AC/DC Live
Rock Band Track Pack Volume 2
Guitar Hero World Tour
Rock Band 2

I worked out that it’s about 440 songs or thereabouts, which is… quite a few. (Actually, there are some redundancies, but never mind.) Should give me quite a bit of entertainment as I try to rock my way through.

R

P.S. As for my actual guitar, ThinkGeek has a gadget I’m looking at really hard: the amPlug VOX Mini Guitar Amp, which is a little module that plugs into your pickup, then you plug in your headphones, and you’re good to go, complete with processing that sounds like one of a few different amp setups. It also has an auxiliary in so you can mix in whatever it is you want to rock along with. Yes, I do have a small amp, but this would be awfully portable and maybe encourage me to actually try playing with music of choice. Pull up some tablature on a laptop screen, maybe…