December 21, 2007: Chrissie's back from rehab!
Aimee, Scott, and I have created an all-girl band in Rock Band called Objectivist Mung. Aimee is our lead singer, Scott is the drummer, and I'm lead guitar. Or, more accurately, my character Chrissie is lead guitar.
(I didn't choose the name. I let the XBOX do it for me randomly.)
We've been having a great time playing songs of all sorts, and when I screw one up from time to time, I usually blame it on Chrissie's terrible drug addiction. She's a sensitive musician, you know, often fond of liquor and heroin to keep the monsters of a sexist, patriarchal, and consumerist society at bay.
So if she misses a few notes (often while trying to get up to the medium setting), her fans forgive her because she's otherwise a tortured genius.
Other observations about Rock Band:
- One could create another video game with the same press-a-switch-on-cue mechanic based on the telegraph. Maybe you could call it Telegraphy Hero, and the player would take the role of a frontier operator sending frantic messages back East or to the authorities or for the railroads or something: "Quick! Warn Coyote Junction about the flash floods!" Dot-dot-dot-dit-da-dat...
- "My Sharona" is an evil song and it hurts my fingers.
- Apparently, only three of my fingers work at any given time, which I can see right now in action as I type. So anything above the easy setting is all but impossible, as are the multiple simultaneous buttons at once.
- Aimee is a trained singer, so she's awesome. Of course, her training is in real singing like for the opera and whatnot, so she sounds a little like Rosemary Clooney when she belts out Blitzkrieg Bop with all that proper pitch and tone.
- My attempt at Blitzkrieg Bop got me booed off the stage. My Viking voice is designed for yelling in battle rage, not singing.
- They don't have enough songs I recognize, and they're too heavy on the grunge.
Rock Band is a lot of fun, and it'll be the centerpiece of our New Year's gala. Go get your own copy!
