I Am Un Chien Andalusia

On June 26, 2008, in Games, by peterb

In my review of Guitar Hero, back in January of 2006, I wrote what can only be considered to be a prophetic sentence:

I guess I should be glad, really, that this isn’t an Xbox game, because I’m pretty sure that if I could pay to download more songs on Xbox Live, I’d be broke right about now.

Well, I now own Rock Band for the Xbox 360, and I can pay to download songs on Xbox Live. And so I am broke.

I exaggerate, of course. The only thing I have bankrupted is my petty supply of “Microsoft Points”, the Xbox’s demeaning company scrip that is intended to make you not know how much money you spent on their products. Yesterday, for example, I spent about $19 to buy the entire Pixies’ album Doolittle for Rock Band.

Worth. Every. Penny.

The brilliance of Rock Band is in its guitar (and drum) tabs. Whoever writes these is, quite simply, a genius. Never simply punishing for the sake of being punishing, their tabs seem to be written with one goal in mind: convincing you that you actually know how to play a song, when you really don’t know how to play an instrument at all. Here Comes Your Man plays so perfectly you’d swear it was written for the game.

In summary:

Dear Harmonix,

More bands like the Pixies, less bands like Judas Priest.

 

4 Responses to “I Am Un Chien Andalusia”

  1. Dan Martinez says:

    That should be “fewer bands”, not “less”.

    Yes, I know, I’m basically the biggest wanker ever not so much for noticing that kind of thing, but for not being able not to.

    Unfortunately my doctor says there’s no way of fixing the damage on the cellular level without killing me on the table in the process.

  2. Goob says:

    (Dan: you are channeling my Mom. Never mind that you’re correct!)

    If there is any justice or beauty in the world, there is a secret easter egg in Rock Band; a riff of the drum, a chord on guitar, and the game moves to a plush, faded nightclub. The avatars are wearing matching suits with monster lapels, sport afros, huge sunglasses, bad mustaches. A sad disco ball spins feeble in the corner, and everything is covered in red shag carpet, including the amps. This is because you are now playing Lounge Band.

    And the songs are all the same, except -cheesier-.

  3. Adam says:

    Heck yeah, I grabbed Doolittle the other night. It’s great. I don’t even want to sit down and calculate how much I’ve spent in Rock Band, but I’m up to 128 songs in the game now.

    (The secret is to look and see when Target offers $20 worth of MS points for $15, and then stock up.)

  4. I’ve been tired. best pixies song ever.

    the drum part should be reasonable but i would think the guitar part would be boring.