Guitar Hero Update

It’s been a while since I posted about Guitar Hero. In fact, it’s been a while since I posted at all. Therefore, I feel it is appropriate to take a moment to brag about how my skills have improved. The last time I posted about Guitar Hero, I was talking about how I got 5 stars on “Number of the Beast” on Expert. This was, in fact, a big deal to me at the time, as it was extremely hard for me to do. Since then, I have gotten over 500,000 points on that very same song. I have also achieved 5 stars on all Guitar Hero 3 Career Mode songs, and also gotten the achievement for scoring 200k on “Cult of Personality” without using Star Power.

I have purchased and played through Guitar Hero: World Tour. I enjoyed the enhanced gameplay, especially the feature that allows notes to be played while a sustain is continuously held. The slider notes are great as well, as I’m a fan of the Hammer-ons and Pull-offs, and slider notes take that one step further, getting rid of strumming altogether :) World Tour fails, however, to amp up the difficulty until the last couple sets of songs. The only one I have yet to beat is “Satch Boogie,” thanks to its section of extremely fast slider notes. I have also yet to achieve 5 stars on “Trapped in Ice” by Metallica. The other songs, however, I found easy to master. I do appreciate the track list, especially “Hotel California,” a song I had not heard before playing it, but now greatly enjoy.

I bought Guitar Hero: Smash Hits last Wednesday and beat it on Thursday. I beat “Through the Fire and the Flames” for the first time on Thursday, and achieved 4 stars on Friday. Today, I achieved 5 stars on “Psychobilly Freakout,” and 5 stars on “Play With Me.” Now, I am only two stars short of a 5star full game, having 238/240 stars. The ones I’m missing are one from “Raining Blood” and of course, one from “Through the Fire and the Flames.” These are all on the Expert difficulty.

I loved Smash Hits, because it has many songs from the original Guitar Hero, which is not available for the Xbox 360, and I’ve never played it. The re-frets of the GH2 songs are excellent as well. Guitar Hero: Smash hits adds the function of seeing your progress on how many stars you’ve while you’re still playing the song, much like Rock Band does.

Rock Band 2

I know I’m way behind the curve here, but I finally got myself a copy of Rock Band 2. I played it all night long to unlock “One Step Closer,”

then played for the rest of the week working on unlocking all the songs and finishing my solo career. I have finally *finished* the career in the since that I have beaten the “Rolling Stones Rock Immortal” setlist, but I do not yet have the 900 stars required for the Endless Setlist 2 (I have 707 so far, and I just need to keep completing setlists). All in all, I give RB:2 a 9.5/10 because it has great gameplay and great replay value. I was a little dissapointed that I cannot transfer the songs from my original Rock Band disc to Rock Band 2 without a way to connect my X-box to the internet and $5 worth of Microsoft Points or whatever it’s called… Also, the “Impossible Challenges” are not-so-impossible. The songs that make up the marathons are about as difficult as GH3’s “Raining Blood,” “Cliffs of Dover,” and the last half of “One.” I never failed any of them on Expert Guitar. Yeah, the setlist was most certainly difficult, especially as one has to play six songs in a row, and the fingers do turn to jelly about halfway through the sixth song. However, taken one or two at a time with a short break in between, the songs on the Impossible Challenges are relatively easy to beat. When I saw the words “Impossible Challenges” I was thinking along the lines of “Through the Fire and the Flames” and I must say I was a little dissapointed. Rock Band has never been as difficult on the Guitar as the Guitar Hero games, understandably, but I was still hoping for a little more of a challenge. I do have a challenge, however, in getting 5 stars on some of these songs, and it will most definately take me a while. I will continue to work on that, and once that gets boring, I’ll see about getting an internet connection for my X-Box so I can download more selections to play. I am looking forward to getting the Who’s album, as “Who Are You” is one of my top 10 favorite rock songs of all time–OH! and kudos to Harmonix for re-doing “Carry On Wayward Son.” I LOVE this song and I love the re-vamped chart for the guitar. The awesomeness factor of this one song almos makes up for the non-challenging Impossible Challenges. Some of my other favorites from the RB:2 selection are “In the Middle” by Jimmy Eat World, “Alive” by Pearl Jam, “White Wedding” by Billy Idol (I’d never really been into this song very much, I’d just heard it a few times on the radio and liked it), and, of course, “One Step Closer.” Harmonix definately beat Activision in their choice of a Linkin Park song, because “What I’ve Done” (On GH: World Tour) is waaaay too easy, even though it is a great song. “One Step Closer” is a bit more challenging, so one can enjoy the music and the note chart as well.

Practicing TTFATF

I’ve been practicing Through the Fire and the Flames on Expert lately on GHIII on my X-Box 360. I’m still having alot of trouble getting the intro nailed down, my fingers just can’t seem to move fast enough. Once, I taped down the green button and made it through the intro only to fail 89% of the way through the song… <.< I know the tape is cheating but I’d like to be able to complete it at least once :P