Hit-and-run post #1: Guitar Hero III update

To all and sundry: I have retired from Guitar Hero III.

This doesn't mean that I've quit playing by any stretch, but I have stopped trying to finish songs I've never finished before.There are 9 songs I haven't finished successfully in Expert difficulty, not counting three guitar battles, which seemed gimmicky anyway.

I spent an hour playing and in practice mode trying to play the ludicrously hard bridge in The Metal, also known as the ending credit music from the movie Tenacious D. Two attempts at the song after this garnered one failure at the expected 50% and another failure at 94%. I noticed after that failure that I had at some point stopped having fun.

I'm confident that I can do it, provided I'm willing to spend as much time as I need to develop the muscle-memory required for this one song. On quick-play mode I tried a few other songs and ran into the same difficulty, that being that there is a stupidly difficult chord sequence or hammer-on sequence each time that you can learn if you're willing to spend the required time to teach your fingers to perform that one sequence, which won't help you with the next song. Ultimately, I'm far enough behind in my unplayed games library that spending hours on hours not having fun with this one simply isn't worth it.

That's not to say that I've stopped playing it, I happen to enjoy the music, particularly the Blue Oyster Cult song Cities on Flame With Rock And Roll, and when company comes over I'm more than happy to play with them. I've just stopped trying to finish every song on my own, and for someone who's willing to farm in caves, that's saying something. It also hasn't stopped me from looking on the Internets for a remotely cheap copy of GH I and II for the PS2 so that we can play all the songs that were in the first two games. But I digress.

I partly blame Rock Band, but that's another entry, coming soon.