2008 Woodie Awards
I'm with the band: fake instruments at their finest
Technophile
Jonathan Harrop
Issue date: 4/9/08 Section: Life & Style
Having taken a rare weekend off of work, I have worked non-stop since last Tuesday. This is in addition to a heavy amount of homework involving various expensive programs created by the fine folks at Adobe and a distinct lack of sleep thanks to even more things to do for other classes, such as writing essays and reading Franz Kafka.
With this heavy state of affairs, for the first time I decided to exercise my year-old right to get completely trashed for three consecutive nights.
On the third night, my friend and I thought it would be a great idea to go to Wal-Mart at midnight and purchase something I've been putting off for a few months.
"Rock Band."
If you're unfamiliar with the concept of "Rock Band," it's the natural extension of "Guitar Hero." Alternatively, you could think of it as an amalgam of any given karaoke game, "Guitar Hero" and an old arcade game from Japan called 'Drumaniacs.'
You can create a band with your friends, online friends or just with yourself, and play shows with songs, earning money and generally having a good time.
Sounds simple, but it's a little bit more than that.
I've been a fairly avid, if mediocre, "Guitar Hero" player for about a year now, graduating to hard on "GHII" before being knocked back down to medium on "GHIII," courtesy of the completely unnecessary alteration of the fret mechanics.
When the "Rock Band" demo was put up at work, a few of my work colleagues and I came in a couple of hours early one day and tried it out. I was a little disappointed by the lack of difficulty in the guitar portions but it was fun enough, but not $XXX worth of fun.
The other reason I avoided purchasing it was because I have no friends.
Actually that has nothing to do with it. In fact, I have a lot of friends; I just don't like to fill my apartment with more than one other person. Because at that point, it starts to be far too crowded and there's always the danger of roof leakages.
With this heavy state of affairs, for the first time I decided to exercise my year-old right to get completely trashed for three consecutive nights.
On the third night, my friend and I thought it would be a great idea to go to Wal-Mart at midnight and purchase something I've been putting off for a few months.
"Rock Band."
If you're unfamiliar with the concept of "Rock Band," it's the natural extension of "Guitar Hero." Alternatively, you could think of it as an amalgam of any given karaoke game, "Guitar Hero" and an old arcade game from Japan called 'Drumaniacs.'
You can create a band with your friends, online friends or just with yourself, and play shows with songs, earning money and generally having a good time.
Sounds simple, but it's a little bit more than that.
I've been a fairly avid, if mediocre, "Guitar Hero" player for about a year now, graduating to hard on "GHII" before being knocked back down to medium on "GHIII," courtesy of the completely unnecessary alteration of the fret mechanics.
When the "Rock Band" demo was put up at work, a few of my work colleagues and I came in a couple of hours early one day and tried it out. I was a little disappointed by the lack of difficulty in the guitar portions but it was fun enough, but not $XXX worth of fun.
The other reason I avoided purchasing it was because I have no friends.
Actually that has nothing to do with it. In fact, I have a lot of friends; I just don't like to fill my apartment with more than one other person. Because at that point, it starts to be far too crowded and there's always the danger of roof leakages.
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