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These days, life is polarized by the opposing behemoths of school work and Guitar Hero 2. "Guitar Hero 2?" you might ask incredulously. "What is that, like some game where you play a guitar and feel like a hero?" To which I reply yes, yes it is.

Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to take a badass plastic ax and plug it into the XBox. Then you wail away on little coloured fret buttons and mash the strum trigger in tune with a song. Little dots on the screen race towards you at breakneck speed, and if you don't satisfactorily wail in accordance with their demands you get booed off the stage. This is the exact opposite of a Guitar Hero, incidentally, a Guitar Hello Kitty. Or a Guitar Honky. Either way, you would much rather have a tiny virtual audience clapping and cheering along with your efforts than screaming that you suck.

Which leads to the devilry of this game: you have to practice if you want to play the tough shit. You gotta play. I have a vague suspicion that people who play Real Guitar are naturally more inclined to rock - they have speedy little fingers already. But even if you've never touched an actual guitar, you can train yourself to play "Free Bird" in a couple days. And then, upon successful completion of this hideously difficult task, a flying saucer beams your Guitar Hero up and flies away into the stars. I'm not even kidding. It's awesome. But the key factor is "a couple days" in the middle of the customary April paper blitz. You will never rock as hard as your friends who aren't writing papers - it must be assumed that they will crank out a rendition of "War Pigs" that will make you cry. Because of how beautiful it is, but also because you can only hope to aspire to such levels of Guitar Greatness.

Which brings me to Plink Plink Plonk, which is what it sounds like when you screw up. They have these things called Guitar Hero Parties, I've been told, and one spontaneously combusted in our apartment last week. At this type of gathering your social worth is not only determined by your ability to rock the ax, but also to look good while doing so. So if you're scrunched awkwardly in front of the screen and you suck, it's all over, but if you look like a nerd and hit every note then that's aight. If you're bouncy but somewhat inept, you'll get encouragement. Basically victory is aligned somewhere along these matrices: you must not only have disturbingly quick fingers, but also look like you're having fun to win a Guitar Hero Party.

Witness the following:

I don't know if you can possibly appreciate how hard this is unless you've tried yourself... while looking at the screen... intently... and wondering how the fuck your fingers are ever supposed to move that fast.

Posted by Chris at 04:33 PM >> Commentations (9)