Breakdown (Let Me Hear It, Now)

Rock Band hit back in November. I resisted. Lord, how I resisted. I have Guitar Hero 3. I am immune.

One of my coworkers picked it up this week. We discussed the game at great length yesterday. The more he talked about it, the more awesome it sounded.

I needed this fucking game.

Fortunately for my immortal soul and for my marriage, John described in great detail just how hard it is to get Rock Band in San Francisco. He had to comb the city for it. When he finally found it online, he ordered it and arranged for an in-store pickup. It sells out there the second it hits the shelves, even after a couple of months. Think Wii, only not a childhood euphemism for micturation.

Hooray, thinks I, I'm still immune... for, though I have caved after lo, these many months of wanting an X-box 360, and lo, these two months of wanting Rock Band, the game is in scarce supply. I can't have it.

I hit Best Buy on my way home from work yesterday. It would seem that we on the east coast do not suffer from the San Franciscan hard rock drought. You know how sometimes gas stations will build elaborate structures out of soda can cases? Best Buy had built what approximated a 17th century well out of Rock Band cases. The display came up to my chest.

Of course, they were out of 360s.

As was everyone else in Wake County. Evidently, Raleigh is anti-San Francisco. If there was ever an earthquake that rocked the San Andreas hard enough to cause the two to touch, I'm quite certain the earth would be destroyed in the resultant explosion and outpouring of energy. God help us all.

Three hours of store-hopping later, I found one at Target. Score! I paged the guys covering the section, and one of them showed up, unlocked the console, and carried it over to the register...

...where he discovered it had already been opened. Target's policy is apparently to return opened consoles as defective and recover the cost, so they don't sell them once they've been opened and returned. And I didn't really want to pay retail for a used system. They checked the online inventory, but no Target within reasonable driving distance had one.

Fortunately, I had kidzookie with me, and kiddo was looking extremely sad over the prospect of not getting the only fucking 360 to be found within 50 miles. No sooner had I explained to the Target guy that I understood, he'd been more helpful than anyone I'd talked to so far that night (especially the gotard at GameSpot who couldn't even fucking tell me whether they had any 360s in stock), and thanks for your time, than he asked me to hang on and paged his manager.

Manager lady showed up, and electronics kid told her my sob story. She got a load of my sad, sad little boy who was bravely accepting the loss of the 360, and offered to sell it to me against store policy at a 20% discount.

I love Target.

So I got the mid-range X-box 360 pro with Marvel Ultimate Alliance and Forza for the price of the crummy Arcade Edition.

The reviews for Ultimate Alliance paint it as a mediocre game. That's about right. It's fun, but not great... but fucking sweet for a free game

Forza is awesome... think Gran Turismo, except they actually model damage and actually let you paint your fucking car.

And then I stopped for Rock Band on my way home.

God Damn.

Rock Band may very well own my immortal soul. It was developed by the original Guitar Hero guys. It's fan-fucking-tastic.

1. The guitar. It feels cheap compared to the Guitar Hero controller. It's flimsier, made of thinner plastic. It's got more controls, but it feels cheaper. I'm not in love, but it's serviceable... it works well, it just feels cheap. Mad Catz is supposed to release a controller for it eventually, so I'll look into that when it comes out.
2. The microphone. It's well-made. It's heavy. I don't know if they weighted it to make it feel more substantial or what, but it feels like a solid piece of equipment. I sang (badly) into it for a while last night. It works well. On easy mode, the vocal tracks are very forgiving and easy to pass. I hear they're pretty fucking tough at high levels. We'll see as we get there... maybe I can lure wifezilla into the game with the mike. You can use more or less any headset/mike combo with the game as well, so I'll try to sell it as a song & choreography combo a la her favorite performers.
3. The drums. Jeebus. These things are the shit. They're really solid. Good aluminum struts, solid drum pads... the thing feels really solid. I played the drums for hours last night. I'm not good at drums, but fuck they're fun. Plus I get to hit shit.

I'm on my second evening with the 360 and Rock Band now. Well into the point where buyer's remorse usually sets in... except instead of the usual taste of stale beer and sadness, it's OMGWHYAMINOTPLAYINGROCKBANDRIGHTFUCKINGNOW?

OMG.

SRSLY.