I still love Guitar Hero.

Last Saturday I was at Suntec City to catch the Asia Anime Festival 2008. Along the way to the exhibition hall came across the Guitar Hero IV: World Tour. Decided to try my hands on it and also secretly wanna impress the crowd that gather there with my sub-par but acceptable "Hard Level" skills. Guitar Hero IV: World Tour is totally different from the previous series, I would say its more like a clone of ROCK BAND duplicated on the Guitar Hero franchise; got 2 guitar, 1 drum and a Mic to sing into. Pretty impressive game provided you got a game party at home else I would still stick to the previous 3 guitar hero for solo performance. Did not hang around the Guitar Hero IV game booth for long. Although the staff manning the booth are impressed, I must admit I am already rusting in skills and there are many really good Guitar Hero gamers out there who still passionately play the game everyday.

Came back home from work today. "Late Night, Come Home, Work Sux, I know - All The Small Thing- Blink 182". No one is around the house so I took my dusty Guitar (5 button one) and played a few of my favorite Guitar Hero tunes form Guitar Hero 1, 2 and 3 (yup, I got all of them). Surprise that its still working after 6 months in the storage. One thing I gain from playing this game is my left hand's fingers actually became more flexible! Not to mention I finally found good use for the ring finger other than for marriage and the pinky other than for picking the nose and middle finger other than for swearing. Yes...if you wanna play HARD and EXPERT level, use of the pinky finger will be very very beneficial.

Really really rusty liao....I can't even beat my own records back than!!! The best I could was getting my name on the 5th place for most of the song. Although I had fun and got de-stressed through those 70s and 80s rock music (ironically), I felt a bit sian my skill had degenerated into the present state. Those record breaking results are all achieve during my stay in US, where I stay alone with my house mate Ricky, I can have the whole living room to myself and I can play Guitar Hero everyday when I come back from work. The house is always cool during summer and pretty comfy during winter, conducive to play whole year round. I played so much that sometime after a lengthy game session, I got a temporary visual distortion due to prolong visual fixation of 5 scrolling columns on the screen. Was pretty good back than I must say. No problem with my house mate and no neighbor call the cops for the loud music.

Back in Singapore. I stop playing at home until today. Weather is always warm and humid, not too nice to play video game. Turning on the air-con is gonna burn my civil servant paid pocket. I have parents and sis in the house most of the time and the rock music will just disturb their peace. Than there are the neighbors I got to be considerate about. No wonder my skill become rusty now. Today I discover I still love the game and I wish that one day I will have a dedicated entertainment room that I can come home to everyday to de-stress rather than just a bedroom and PC to blog about this.

I still love Guitar Hero and its one of the few games that got me interested in 70s and 80s rock music from the like of KISS, Nirvana, Gun & Roses, Megadeth, Cheap Trick, Black Sabbath. SUPER ROBOT WAR series got me hooked on Japanese robot Anime like Neon Genesis Evangelion, Patlabor, Macross and all the Gundam Series up till Gundam Wing.

Here today, I like to share some of my favorite songs from the Guitar Hero series...

First up is Sweet Child Of Mine - Gun & Roses. Took me a painstaking 1 month to play the song in HARD mode. Still learning those fast note in the middle of the track though. My favorite track in Guitar Hero 2.

Next up is STRUTTER-KISS. This is a very easy song to play even in the HARD mode. I got a 5 star rating and minimum 4 star on HARD mode. Really easy. One of those song to boost your morale after a few failed HARD level songs.

Than its War Pig from Black Sabbath. A song that reflect about politician and war. Very very strong meaning in the lyrics. War are fought at the expense of common folks. This is not an original MTV though but it get the meaning across.

Killer Queen - Queens. Quirky song from the British group Queen. Always very impress with Freddie Mercury voice that no one had ever emulate thus far. This song was feature in Guitar Hero 1. Not exactly rock, not exactly pop...

A heavy metal song about Aliens and Roswell. Hangar 18 by Megadeth. I'm still learning to survive in hard mode. This is a really really nice song to play in Guitar Hero. Very fast notes and very tired fingers. The MTV got a nice storyline to it.

And finally. Heart Shaped Box - Nirvana. Easy song to master in HARD mode as long as you learn to use the pinky finger. Really like the monotonous style of guitar riff the song got that break into a high intensity jamming at the chorus.