I recently bought Guitar Hero for my PS2. Now, I'm not a fan of rhythm games. I never really saw the draw of PaRappa the Rapper, UmJammer Lammy, or Space Channel 5, so when I heard about Guitar Hero my first reaction was just, "Feh". When I saw that the controller was a guitar with colored buttons on the frets, I became slightly more interested.

TANGENT - When people say, "I play guitar," I take this to mean that at least several times a week they are sitting and playing a real guitar in their house. This is why I don't tell people, "I play guitar,". I can play guitar, and I performed in bands with some regularity through high school, but I haven't sat down to play one of my guitars in quite some time...well, not counting just a few nights ago. The point of this is, I know how to play guitar and I know the feeling of performing with a band.

So, when I was at E3 this year, I saw some guys playing Guitar Hero II (slated for release in November). Seeing a Guitar Hero game in action made it even more enticing. In most rhythm games the music plays and you have to hit buttons to a beat, but when you miss the beat the music just keeps playing. In Guitar Hero, if you don't play the guitar correctly there is no guitar in the song. So it will not sound right if you screw it up. I liked that aspect of it quite a bit because the controller and your input are solely responsible for the guitar in the song.

Well, I finally bought it, and let me just put it bluntly: it's fucking awesome. I don't know what it is about it, but it is extremely satisfying to play through these songs with a plastic guitar. It is basically guitar karaoke. When I was learning songs in high school, I always wanted to get versions of the songs without the guitar track so I could play through them on my own but still have the rest of the song parts playing. That's what this game is. There are several difficulty levels and many levels of songs so you don't have to play every single note. The songs are all really well done covers of classic guitar songs and new songs. I brought it to work the day after buying it and several of the guys played during lunch. It was an instant hit, and a few of them went out and bought it that weekend.

Now, playing Guitar Hero will not teach you how to play guitar, but I can envision a scenario where a guitar player could benefit from playing it just as a finger exercise or to improve your left hand dexterity. Regardless, if you have a PS2 it is worthy of your attention. Someday, I will master that Bark at the Moon solo.

PLUG - An article I wrote on John Woo's Stranglehold got published today.

posted by Travis at 9:15 AM

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Thursday, June 15, 2006

Kim and I have settled on a name for The Boy that we both like. When we started talking about names we looked at the popular names and didn't care for many of them, so we went in a different direction. I'm not sure the normal process for naming a child, but I'm pretty sure we didn't follow it. Some of the names were thrown out immediately. I think when I pitched Stormshadow Soundwave Meacham, and Kim countered with Peculiar Purple Pieman of Porcupine Peak Meacham, we knew that perhaps using our favorite childhood toys was not a good naming convention (although I'd like to hear a teacher call on a kid named Stormshadow in class). We sorted through several others, and many have been booked for other children. In the end, Kim pitched the name, we thought on it for several weeks, and just kind of settled into it.

So the name is...

And, yes...that really is the name.

posted by Travis at 5:29 PM

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