People downloading their songs

People not knowing who they are when they’re in a queue

The man trying to tell them what to do

There being a blue M&M in the bowl of brown ones

I haven’t done anything like that (recently) but I am a big fan of music rhythm games with the silly plastic toys.

Now I’m under no illusion that playing the Guitar Hero is anything like playing an actual guitar, it’d be retarded to suggest otherwise. You don’t play a guitar with sheet music, which is effectively what these games are. It’s more like playing whack a mole – see a colour, hit the colour, win.

I do however get tired of people saying “oh if you spent that amount of time with an actual guitar…”. If wanted to learn the guitar I would do and may do. I like playing these games, they are instant gratification and you get to rock out to your favourite songs (especially if you’re playing with @heychinaski) and not spend 8 hours trying to play 3 blind mice badly. Now I know some people (Chris) will counter this but I’ve heard it a million times and so check any objections with the indifference leopard.

Guitar Hero III

I first experienced the Guitar Hero phenomenon about a year before actually trying it. Back in the arse end of the Sandcastle days, we had a copy of Guitar Hero on the PS2 but I never played it.

This was mainly because I assumed I’d be rubbish at it and didn’t wanna look like more of an idiot than I do at all times. The other guys in the house would play it loads and I’d sit on ass doing nothing…

Roll forward to December 2007. I was living in a grubby little house in a faceless little village. It was quite a crap chapter in my life, not bad, just dull. I was doing things like entrusting my luck for the week to a bottle cap that I found, so it’s safe to say I was quite staggeringly bored.

One advantage of living in a room the size of a Ford Fiesta is the rent was fuck all. Being a little more flush, I could afford the occasional foolish purchase (nb. I still make foolish purchases, only now I can’t really afford them, so that makes them better). I’d seen a few reviews of Guitar Hero III and they were all good, so I picked it up along with the plastic axe.

Initially I was rubbish, couldn’t finish a song on easy. It was at this stage I went to the tutorial mode and realised you could hold the coloured buttons down in between notes. I was off and away!

Steadily I got better and better. Made the jump from Easy to Medium and started to see why it was so popular. The harder you set it, the more stake you have in the song, so the more in control you feel. It’s all an illusion of course but one I was happy to lose myself in.

The jump from Medium to Hard was definitely the harshest. The elusive orange button, out of the range of my piddly fingers, mocking me. I avoided it for as long as I could before Medium really wasn’t a challenge any more. It took some work and some swearing but I eventually sussed it and I was a fully fledged avrage Guitar Heroer.

I was completely hooked by this stage, playing the same songs over and over. Nailing hammer ons, grabbing more star power and getting that elusive fifth star. I couldn’t stop until…

There it was staring at me like HAL. The RROD. No more rock for you Jason. I remember it like it was yesterday, in fact I blogged about it on majigger. I quote:

“There I was…feverishly hammering away on guitar hero 3. Playing Down N Dirty by the LA Slum Lords and then it happened…my xbox made a kinda twing noise and froze. I feared the worst, any self respecting gamer knows if an xbox 360 stops, you know whats coming next…

I reset it…the familiar swirl of the xbox logo appeared, but before I could breath a sigh of relief, it did it again. One more reset and there it was.

The red ring of death. In the words of Hudson, “GAME’S OVER MAN, GAMES OVER”. I let out a wail of despair, a wail which contained quite a lot of swearing, perhaps this was indicative of me entrusting my fate to a bottle cap.”

Yeah. So I had to take a break.

When I finally got my 360 back I still played the balls off of GHIII and found about some fantastic songs because of it. The some examples would have be

Pride & Joy – Stevie Ray Vaughan

Knights of Cydonia – Muse

Reptilia – The Strokes

Mauvais Garcon – Naast

In the Belly of a Shark – Gallows (cockney overload)

Lay Down – Priestess

I really enjoyed Guitar Hero III and still do. As you read onto further chapters you might question this. But this is one of those games which gave me so much, despite what I feel now, I can’t hate it. In the same way I still like Ash. Things were to change though, as they inevitably will.

I shall continue this saga in the next episode…I used to be a Hero – Episode 2: I joined a band.