Never say never
Here’s something I thought I would never do: discuss a PS2 game. A few weeks back, our best friend lent us his PS2 with the game Herb got him for Christmas, the dreaded Guitar Hero II. Basically, songs play on the screen, and you have to hit the notes highlighted on the screen on the guitar-shaped controller and strum at the same time. Sounds pretty easy, huh? Hmmm. Well at first it can be. And then my left hand started hurting. I have almost no control over my left hand to begin with (when I type, it does things on its own like you wouldn’t believe, but if I become aware of it, it goes limp), and moving all of my fingers (three, really, at the beginner level (Herb got to the advanced level and I swear my pinkie cannot do the things it must do then!)) independently is something I could only dream about (if I figured out a reason to dream such dreams). Well, surprisingly enough, even though I wasn’t shocked to find that I’m no guitar hero and that those console games hold, as I thought, very little addiction power over me (most of those games make me nauseous - gimme old 2D any day! That, and I play to relax, not to add excitement to my life, thank you!), I did enjoy this game tremendously. It’s Herb, y’see. He got hooked, and he practiced and became good (not too hard to find the time when all you can do is sit) - and GTII is actually a fun game to watch other people playing! (Let’s face it, the horse head and flaming head cheats are pretty fun too.) The Kid was instinctively good at it - that’s controller/gamer instinct for you - and Herb was so proud it was hilarious. And now that the PS2 is gone again, well… we find that when we listen to certain songs, we think of GT (and see the notes flying on the screens of our minds)! Oh, speaking of the songs - I didn’t know or really like most of them, but when Herb got War Pigs as an encore, I was singing my ass off in the living room. In fact, we’re thinking GT could be combined with a karaoke game (and not to fall into a cliché, but in our house it would actually make the girlfriend play rather than sit and watch). I also thought they should do an acoustic version, but that’s mostly because I was thinking of what songs I’d actually like to ear and play. An interesting twist with this game is that it can actually help with playing a real guitar. Not that it teaches you how in any way, but that fingering and finger autonomy? Very useful for my guitar-playing man and my guitar-playing best friend.
