On Christmas Eve my brother gave me Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock. I knew right away that I would spend a lot of time trying to learn how to play better. And by “play better” I mean I would spend a lot of time trying to learn how to at least hit a note or two.
The game is played with a special controller, a plastic guitar with different colored buttons representing guitar frets and a switch you push to strum your “guitar.” For the beginner level you only need to use the red, green and yellow buttons. I say only, but those were hard enough! I am right handed, so I hold down a button with my left hand and strum with my right. Round colored circles travel down a virtual guitar neck onscreen; you must hold down the correlating color button on your guitar and strum at the appropriate time. Miss too many notes and the song ends, something I experienced over and over again. On harder levels a blue and then an orange button come into play. This is when you are in hardcore guitar hero territory!
I had played the game before while visiting my sister. My niece and nephew, Izzy and Jack, played the game effortlessly. My sister and her husband were almost as good.
I am not one of those people who just sits down at a game and instantly masters it. When I tried Dance Dance Revolution at my sister’s I managed to score 100 points on a game that gives you millions of points for doing one thing correctly.
I picked up the Guitar Hero guitar and lasted about… as long as you can last without hitting a single note. It was incredibly hard for me to make my left and right hands work in tandem. I felt as incompetent as could be, and never took my family up on later invitations to try the game again. I can withstand only so much humiliation.
I firmly decided I ‘hated that game.’ That was that.
But once I had my own Guitar Hero game, along with two guitars, I was determined to learn to play. I never imagined that I would become any good at it.
I have not, in fact, become any good at it. But I have become mildly better, which for me feels like quite an accomplishment.
That Christmas Eve I played my friend Charles, who runs this site. We played on ‘quick play,’ a mode that lets you jump right into the game and start playing.
I couldn’t hit a single note on the easiest difficulty setting and grew increasingly angry. Charles left, warning me not to get too obsessed with the game, as he remembered how I had worn myself out earlier in the year with Mario Kart Wii. Still, I continued to play, hour after hour, until my ribs were sore and my fingers hurt to bend! Sadly, I could not get even a quarter of a way through I song. I also quickly tired of the very limited repertoire of songs from which to choose. Only a handful of songs are available when you start the game; you have to earn additional songs through your guitar playing. I won’t tell you what songs are available in Guitar Hero III; perhaps like me you like the element of surprise.
If it were left up to me, the surprise would be a long time coming. After a week of obsessive play, I had yet to complete a song.
I didn’t know how to get more songs, but I desperately wanted some new ones. A solution came in the guise of one Dave Sussman, guitarist from Bile and Vulgaras as well as Criss Angel’s former band.
Dave had never played a Guitar Hero game and isn’t a video game player. He told me of his unsatisfactory Pac Man experience and expressed concern that he would fare as poorly as I did. He seemed hesitant to pick up the guitar and deal with some videogame.
I quickly stopped relating to Dave as a fellow novice dealing with humiliatingly bad skills when it became abundantly clear he immediately started rocking the game. I was impressed as could be when he picked up my fake plastic guitar and started to finish song and after song on his first attempts.
He soon realized we could play in ‘career mode’ instead of quick play. In career mode players start their own band, and as they beat songs they earn money that can be spent on bonus songs or on new virtual guitars.
We created a band (my part in said band was groupie, of course) and Dave started playing.
On that first night, Dave reached the end of a level (each level consists of several songs that must be completed to reach the next level) where he had to engage in a guitar battle where he and a virtual opponent played alternating riffs. There were tricks combatants could play on each other, such as breaking their guitar strings. (We had to go to the instruction manual to try and figure it out.)
Dave’s first battle against Rage Against the Machine’s Tom Morello was a blowout. Dave kept getting soundly beaten and decided to call it a night.
I was pretty excited though. Dave had unlocked a plethora of new songs for me to play perhaps two notes on before getting booed offstage. Good times!
The next day, Dave beat Morello as soon as we turned the game on, making him my personal guitar hero.
Dave kept playing through the next level, soon confronting and defeating Slash. I was enjoying Guitar Hero III a lot … as an onlooker.
Charles came by and I watched him and Dave face off in battle mode, easily playing through a number of songs. Then I gave it a try, which of course was laughable.
Then, to everyone’s amazement, I played a song all the way through and received Guitar Hero’s "YOU ROCK!" accolade. It was thrilling. Alas, I couldn’t do it a second time. When Charles and Dave played, the game looked like fun, but to me it was still daunting and difficult.
After everyone left, I played and played, getting a little better, but not much. I was starting to really have fun with trying though.
Will I ever be any good at Guitar Hero III? One day. All in all, I think it’s probably a great thing to get good at: It can’t hurt to develop a little eye/hand coordination.
I hope nobody ever gets me Dance Dance Revolution though. I will probably break something trying to learn that one.
