Guitar Hero

I’ve watched people play Guitar Hero (and Rock Band) a few times, here and there, over the past year or so. It’s a lot of fun to watch — the graphics, the animation, the music (especially the music). I love just about every song I’ve heard and watched played.

But I’ve never felt the interest to try and play the game, myself. The whole interface of the fake guitar (and the other instruments for the other game) just looks unwieldy. It doesn’t look like really playing a guitar (which I can’t do, anyway), and it doesn’t look like playing a game controller (which I, at least, used to could do). So I’ve never even tried to play the game.

During Calfgrit9’s recent birthday party, I gave it a try. Adventure Landing (where we had the party) has a big game area with all kinds of arcade games, including a two-player Guitar Hero game. I had a pocket full of extra tokens for the games, and so I thought I’d finally give GH a play.

Since it was my first time with the game — I’ve never even held the guitar/controller — I chose the “Beginner” level. It said Beginner level doesn’t require pushing the color buttons, only strumming. And I chose “Rock You Like a Hurricane” by Scorpions.

Strumming to the visual cues of the game felt nothing at all like playing anything like the song. I couldn’t even get the rhythm by following the visual cues. After only about 30 seconds into the song, I had lost all interest in the game. I was scoring with my strumming to the visual cues, but it felt like just touching a button while an unrelated rock song played.

After about a minute, a 30-something man walked up beside me and suggested I tilt the guitar to really rock it out. I commented back, without taking my eyes from the screen, “This is my first time, and it’s taking all my concentration to strum.”

The man beside me was a fan of the game, and explained, after I complained about the strumming not following the song, that the Beginner level skips notes. This seemed to make sense in one way: not having to hit every note on time should be easier. But it made the game harder in the same way: I couldn’t play the controller to the rhythm of the music I was listening to.

Had the visual cues, and my strumming, matched what I was hearing over the speakers, I could have kept the rhythm, and it would have more felt like actually playing the song.

I gave up. I took off the guitar strap from around my neck, and handed the controller over to the man beside me. He said, “No, you finish it,” but I told him I wasn’t interested.

“I’m just going to let it play out on its own if you don’t take over.”

So he took the guitar from me, put the strap around his neck, and rocked out. He seemed to thoroughly enjoy the last half a minute of the song. More power to him.

At least now I can say I’ve tried Guitar Hero. I didn’t like it, at all, but I did try it. It’s kind of ironic that maybe playing at the Beginner level is what actually turned me off of the game. Maybe if I had tried it at a higher level, and been able to strum with the actual song I was hearing (rather than seemingly random visual cues), I might have liked it Ok.

Bullgrit