Singing, Strumming and Standing Still Games

My birthday wish came true when my family conspired to get me Rock Band and an Xbox 360. Kind of… it’s almost a month later and I think the statue of limitations on hijinks has expired. Well, what really happened is that I couldn’t take it any more after my Illinois trip and ordered Rock Band a few weeks early. Then my family said they were going to order it for me. I quickly calmed down and told them I was already on the case, not really mentioning that I’ve been playing Rock Band for a week by that point. =)

Rock Band is as incredible as I remember it from Anna and Anthony’s house. Unfortunately Kristin and her boyfriend were very unimpressed by it so I’m pretty much playing this party game sololy with me trying out every position. I’ve taken to vocals and I’m actually doing the best in that area at the moment with a firm grasp of expert mode. Guitar is a close second with me in the last set of hard (curse you Flirtin’ With Disaster, Train Kept A-Rollin’‘ and Green Grass and High Tides!). Drums is giving me trouble and I’m struggling at medium difficulty in the drum tour.

There’s a subculture of Rock Band players who play “voxtar” or sing and play guitar or bass simultaneously… like Jewel does in real life. I’ve taken up voxtar, even buying a real life mic stand to make things a little easier to manage. Voxtar is really fun, and makes doing vocals or guitar by themselves kind of empty-feeling. It’s a challenge though as you can guess: I’m working on simultaneous hard vocals and hard guitar at the moment and some songs are very troublesome. It helps if I know the words already like I Think I’m Paranoid or Sabotage.

Rock Band was not all that happened around my birthday. A mysterious package from my family had arrived a little before the date. Since Rock Band was well out of the bag, I kept the box sealed until May 28th so I’d something to open on my birthday. It was a rather large Amazon box and very evenly dense and heavy. I had absolutely no guesses what it could’ve been. When I opened it I was completely stunned because out slid out Wii Fit!

Wii Fit is another unique Nintendo game. Jokingly I call it The Scale Game, or Standing Still: Hyper Turbo Championship Edition. While there are a lot of active things to do in Wii Fit, many minigames just as yoga or the balance tests simply asks you to hold a pose perfectly still. It’s certainly a different gaming experience than the norm of pushing buttons as accurately as possible, and therefore quite a challenge.

With all these new games, a job, and research my plate is so very full. I haven’t played Warcraft in almost a month. I wonder if my guild hates me.