Saturday, December 09, 2006
thursday night was awesome. it was awesome, because i think i may have impressed ryan while playing a video game. for a little context, ryan is the one person who can consistantly beat me at every video game i have ever played. it is not that he is head and shoulders better than me, he is just naturally gifted. he is one of of those people who is slightly better at everything than anyone else when he has a controller in his hands, just enough to make the difference the majority of the time. he is a good sport though, i just try to provide him with some competition while slowly getting better so i can surprise him. eventually i break him down, and sometimes i can even run off a few wins in a row, but he always adapts to what i am doing faster than i can readapt.
anyways, this time around we weren't even competing, so that paragraph is half moot. but we were playing guitar hero 2, and he has the guitar controller. i played guitar hero 1, just not to the point of exhaustion. i played amplitude, and exhausted frequency, which is still one of my favorite games ever. of course, i did this all using the regular controller to keep the beat, instead of the guitar controller. let me tell you, this guitar controller is the beginning of a musical gaming revolution. it is a whole new game, and it turns these guitar hero games into some of the best games ever made. but, it was my first time using it. i was expecting to pretty much suck, all night. i played one song on easy, and screwed it up pretty hard, but by the end i was kind of getting the hang of it. then, knowing i was probably going to look like a fool in front of my best friend, for my next song i chose the hardest song on normal, which is the difficulty ryan is still working under. he thought i was crazy. the song was freebird, and it is the full version, 8 some minutes long, including the entire solo. he said i would never make it to the solo, so that became my goal. first try, i made it to the solo before being booed off the stage. ryan was pretty amazed. second try, i made it about a quarter of the way through the solo, and he was even more amazed.
my main motivation was to simply get to the point where i could play normal, because it is pretty annoying when there are only two people playing, and you have to switch difficulty levels between every song. with more than two, it doesn't really matter, but when there are only two, you really feel the time it takes to switch back and forth. it has become sort of a mantra these days. when i have to learn something, throw me into the fire. i told him that, to let me at it, and see what happens. after those first attempts at the hardest song, i beat all but one level i played on normal, and did pretty well. i still suck, and i still can't play every part of the songs, but i did well enough to keep ryan entertained. there were times when i had to use my glowing star power to keep from getting booed, but i didn't lose. ryan threw some crazy hard songs at me too, but i got through them. i think i surprised him, and that was awesome. i want to play again. every time i went into a level, i saw his high scores, and knew i will probably never beat them.
i think if anyone has a shot, it is me. one thing he knows from watching me play video games over the years, is that more than probably any other person i have flashes of complete brilliance and intense focus, where i can completely own a single level from start to finish almost flawlessly, without really paying attention. when it happens, i don't really know how i am doing it, all i try to do is keep the momentum going. it is definitely not a repeatable skill, which makes it even cooler in my mind. the general competence for gaming is always there, which makes me decent at everything, along with a competitive fire that keeps me winning at most games. and above it all, there is something more that is beyond rational explaination. i am one of the few people who can show him things in games that he has never seen before, which is probably why he still loves playing with me, even if he does beat me most of the time. maybe with a little more practice, i will actually light one of these guitar controllers on fire using just my fingers and my overwhelming powers rock and roll badassness
racquetball and guitar hero at ryan's house, two more reasons to fire work.
anyways, this time around we weren't even competing, so that paragraph is half moot. but we were playing guitar hero 2, and he has the guitar controller. i played guitar hero 1, just not to the point of exhaustion. i played amplitude, and exhausted frequency, which is still one of my favorite games ever. of course, i did this all using the regular controller to keep the beat, instead of the guitar controller. let me tell you, this guitar controller is the beginning of a musical gaming revolution. it is a whole new game, and it turns these guitar hero games into some of the best games ever made. but, it was my first time using it. i was expecting to pretty much suck, all night. i played one song on easy, and screwed it up pretty hard, but by the end i was kind of getting the hang of it. then, knowing i was probably going to look like a fool in front of my best friend, for my next song i chose the hardest song on normal, which is the difficulty ryan is still working under. he thought i was crazy. the song was freebird, and it is the full version, 8 some minutes long, including the entire solo. he said i would never make it to the solo, so that became my goal. first try, i made it to the solo before being booed off the stage. ryan was pretty amazed. second try, i made it about a quarter of the way through the solo, and he was even more amazed.
my main motivation was to simply get to the point where i could play normal, because it is pretty annoying when there are only two people playing, and you have to switch difficulty levels between every song. with more than two, it doesn't really matter, but when there are only two, you really feel the time it takes to switch back and forth. it has become sort of a mantra these days. when i have to learn something, throw me into the fire. i told him that, to let me at it, and see what happens. after those first attempts at the hardest song, i beat all but one level i played on normal, and did pretty well. i still suck, and i still can't play every part of the songs, but i did well enough to keep ryan entertained. there were times when i had to use my glowing star power to keep from getting booed, but i didn't lose. ryan threw some crazy hard songs at me too, but i got through them. i think i surprised him, and that was awesome. i want to play again. every time i went into a level, i saw his high scores, and knew i will probably never beat them.
i think if anyone has a shot, it is me. one thing he knows from watching me play video games over the years, is that more than probably any other person i have flashes of complete brilliance and intense focus, where i can completely own a single level from start to finish almost flawlessly, without really paying attention. when it happens, i don't really know how i am doing it, all i try to do is keep the momentum going. it is definitely not a repeatable skill, which makes it even cooler in my mind. the general competence for gaming is always there, which makes me decent at everything, along with a competitive fire that keeps me winning at most games. and above it all, there is something more that is beyond rational explaination. i am one of the few people who can show him things in games that he has never seen before, which is probably why he still loves playing with me, even if he does beat me most of the time. maybe with a little more practice, i will actually light one of these guitar controllers on fire using just my fingers and my overwhelming powers rock and roll badassness
racquetball and guitar hero at ryan's house, two more reasons to fire work.
