Pigtruck Electrifies Red Octane Club With Stunning Set
"Guitar Hero is about rocking your f---ing face off."
- Tycho Brahe
So, I broke down and bought Guitar Hero on Saturday. I cannot believe how incredibly enjoyable this game is.
It's not addicting: I don't feel the need to go play while I'm trying to work. It's not really triggering my OCD: there's no way in heck that I could finish every song in Extreme mode with five stars to unlock that last secret guitar, and I don't really feel compelled to try.
It is simply this: I have never played a video game that made me feel so good while I was playing it! There's a crowd cheering, and the music is rocking, and I'm jamming out those crazy notes... I would describe the experience as exultant.
About five years ago I noticed that when I play video games late into the night, my reaction time noticeably degrades. It's very frustrating to be playing an OCD-fulfilling game like Spyro or Zelda, and telling yourself "after I get 100% on this minigame I'll go to bed" but steadily find your performance deteriorating until you give up and go to bed anyway. Guitar Hero is no different: I reach a point where the notes seem to be coming at me faster and faster and I keep getting surprised by unexpected chords--even on songs I've played half a dozen times already.
After you play a level, the game shows you the newspaper review of your concert. The title of this post is the title I got last night. (Yes, my band's name is "Pigtruck". I was going to call it Pigtrokk, but honestly, who could take themselves seriously with a name like that?) To give you a bit of background, I'm playing on Medium level, and I've got 5 stars on the first 16 songs. I generally score about 90,000 points with about six scores over 100,000 (including a stunning 166,000 on "War Pigs"). My perfect streaks are typically about 100 notes long; my best streak is 180.
Last night I told chaliren that I was getting sleepy, and that my scores would soon be dropping off. She's really not all that thrilled about the game so she patted me on the head and said "Well, come to bed soon, then" and wandered off. I had just bought "Less Talk More Rokk" from the unlock shop and I thought "one last song won't hurt". (That's another measure of how wonderful this game is. I know I'm going to score low and I don't care. It's all about hitting that one riff just so and not about perfection. I haven't yet finished a song perfectly, even on easy mode.)
Anyway, I fired up Less Talk More Rokk fully expecting to enjoy failing spectacularly at it.
I missed three notes in the entire song.
I had a 474 note streak.
I scored 205,479 points.
I know it's just a stupid game and the points don't mean anything, but man OH MAN I love playing it!
Also, to anyone within driving distance of Utah County: I have two guitars....