Never Say Die

Out of sheer luck, I had struck gold. Rock Band 3 was sitting on the shelf. I swooped towards it. Gracefully, it leapt into my waiting hands. As one we sailed, onwards to the checkout for what seemed both an instant and eternity. We had been parted for nigh on a single month. Too long!

Maybe I dramatized it too much, but this is almost exactly what buying a copy of Rock Band 3, months after it’s release, felt like. It’s now so hard to come by that even seeing it is like being part of some fairy tale. I half expected to trip over someone’s carelessly discarded glass boot on my way out.

Cuddles Chuckles, or Michael to everyone who doesn’t live on Xbox Live, had been kind enough to invite me over at the New Year for some games and excessive amounts of alhocol. Sorry, alcohol – I’m not as think as you drunk I am, honestly! Anyway, we played a tonne of Rock Band 3 and I was overwhelmed by just how insanely good fun it was. Admittedly, we did play a few of the songs more frequently than he’d have liked (ie. more than once) but this was my first experience with Rock Band 3 and I was determined to give it a damned good go.

Needless to say, I was rubbish at it. I hadn’t played it in a while and so my expert bass prowess wasn’t quite up to scratch. Naturally, I gave up pretty soon and switched to vocals. I was hesitant to sing on the basis that his mum was still loitering within eardrum shattering distance but after a bout with Low Rider by War, Peace Sells by Megadeth and Ballroom Blitz by Sweet, those fears were discarded.

A month and a bit later and I managed to get myself a pre-owned copy of the game and a Metallica track pack. Slowly, my bass mastery was coming back to me. I’d always preferred bass in music games, I often found it too tricky keeping up with the solos and the changes that guitar players generally have to put up with.

Obviously me playing Rock Band 3 and not just a picture of Dave Mustaine.

It’s probably important to point that right now I’m in a bit of a Megadeth phase. In the last two months, I’ve bought their first four albums and I have no intention of stopping at that. I was ecstatic then, to discover that what are easily Megadeth’s two best albums were available, one in part and one in full, as DLC. I was prepping myself for some serious bass carnage – especially from the likes of Holy Wars…the Punishment Due. What I didn’t count on was my transition to Metal God.

For a change, I had decided to have a go at some Hard Guitar and picked a song with a riff I was familiar with and that had some awesome solos in – Wake Up Dead. “Holy shit. I am Dave Mustaine.“, I thought to myself. I didn’t perfect the song but I did pretty damned good on my first try, if I say so myself anyway! Immediately after, I played through Ride the Lightning, Five Magics, Caught in a Mosh and some Megadeth songs on top of that – with varying results admittedly, but I felt no less awesome.

It’s a shame to hear then that Guitar Hero has been cancelled entirely. Tis no more. I was quite a fan of the Guitar Hero games – while Warriors of Rock didn’t really do much for me, World Tour was the first music game I’d played and I loved it. Guitar Hero: Metallica is easily the best of all the music games, however – due no small part to the amazing setlist. It had nothing at all to do with the fact that I would sell my own mother for a chance to see Metallica live. Not a bit. Honest.

Could this mean that we may see an end to the Rock Band franchise as well? I surely hope not. Music games, despite having been milked for their popularity far too quickly, still have some life left in them. Developers maybe just need some fresh ideas.


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