30 posts tagged “guitar hero 2”
I have beaten it on Expert on the PS2. This evening, I beat it on the 360 with the nerfed guitar. Next up will be beating Expert (or whatever it will be called) with all three possible instruments in Rock Band.
After much patience, my 360 has returned. After the unfortunate events that caused the demise of my original 360 and paying for repair (which includes another 1-year extended warranty), my house is no longer 360 less. What was sent back to me was not my original console, but a new console (kinda new, manufactured in August 2006). I guess this is what to expect in the new world of repair: out with the old and in with the new. Included in the box was an apology letter which looked like got shipped with every swap out and a free 1 month Xbox Live Gold membership. Oooo, thanks Microsoft, that makes me feel better. Too bad I have had one since the Xbox Live beta...asshats. Want to say your sorry, then give me some god damn Xbox Live Marketplace Points. Also give me an explanation as to what the hell happened to my system and why the Guitar Hero II patch acted like an EMP pulse to so many 360 console owners.
At least I am happy to have my Guitar Hero II back. I decided to "test" out the new system, fully expecting to make another call to Bangladore to have them open up another ticket. It felt nice to be playing GH2 again. I had only played it once since I sent the console back, and that was at a local Best Buy (I felt like a junkie looking for a fix that day). I started up where I left off, "Carry On My Wayward Son" on Expert. My hands were rusty, but the Xplorer guitar controller felt better than it did when I first got it. Perhaps my hands had forgotten the form factor of the SG controllers that came with the PS2 version and were much more forgiving to the new Xplorer form factor. After cranking through 8 songs, it felt good to be back in to groove again.
So now I don't feel as leery as I did before towards Harmonix and Red Octane. However, the whole experience made me question whether I see further Microsoft consoles in my future. I thought about what was going on in the Sony space and then a remembered the price point of that monolith. And I thought migrating away from the constant PC upgrading to a console was going to be a cheaper path.
I wasn't going to originally post this but the lack of communication between Red Octane and the Guitar Hero community is making me turn a nice shade of Bruce Banner green.
Sunday night while the wife was putting the wee one to sleep, I sneaked down to get some GH2 360 Expert action in (Daddy needs them accomplishments). As the game was loading up, I was informed that there was a patch for the game and if I wanted to install it. "Sure, what could it hurt?". Heh...
So the patch downloads and installs itself and I am told that the system needs to reboot itself. After reboot, I get back into the game and start on Carry On My Wayward Son. About half-way through the song, the screen freezes. Uhhh, that has never happened before. So I reboot the system and try again. This time the freeze happens right when the song starts. So I reboot again. This time it freezes when the game's main menu appears. I reboot again, this time it freezes before the 360 dashboard appears. Finally on the last reboot, I am graced with the "red ring of death". I think Microsoft felt it would be too fitting to have the 360 spit out a blue screen of death, so they gave us the next best primary color.
So once I encounter the legendary and dreaded red ring of death, I ran through all the troubleshooting tips on the Microsoft site. This included removing the hard drive from the console. After stripping my 360 of all accessories, I was still greeted with the warm red glow of the ring. So it was time to call support. A nice and helpful Southeast Asian woman answered the phone (I think I pretended it was Aishwarya Rai just to keep me calm) and I cut right to the chase. I told her that I had 3 red lights glowing and I had run through all the troubleshooting tips, including the removal of the hard drive. With that said, it made her skip to the last part of her script: "we are sending you a box so you can ship it back for repair". What sucks is that the 360 is now out of warranty and I have to pay for this repair. On the plus side, I get a year warranty with the repair. So I gave them my information and I hung up mourning my poor plastic white guitar (shouldn't my guitar be weeping according to Sir Harrison).
Later on in the evening I was IMing PhysicalEd regarding my newly acquired white brick when he linked in a post regarding the patch to GH 2. That sent me to the Guitar Hero forums where people were complaining that there once perfect 360 were now freezing. OMG! Coincidence? Evil conspiracy to rid the world of its legion of Guitar Heros? Evil Sony fanboys? So I posted my sob story to the forums. Since then, I have trolled the forums looking for any official word regarding the patch being the cause of death of many 360. Still nothing really concrete.
What am I expecting? If the patch is the cause of my 360 dying, the I would want the responsible party to reimburse my repair cost. I would want something that would regain my trust in the franchise that I love. I would hate love something that just kept burning me, because then, I would just be pathetic.
Why did you do this to me Judy? Why? I started a Vox group for you. I have converted legions to follow the ways of the plastic guitar. I currently own 5 plastic guitars and bought 2 of the three song packs. Why?
 clipped from www.pennyarcademerch.com |
What is your current obsession(s)?
Submitted by eijsr.
If we keep this question scoped in the realm of video games, here are the latest obsessions.
In World of Warcraft, I have three: Wrathora, Sangreta, Iceehawt. I have been leveling these characters in parallel and loving the 3 different styles of play. Actually the new Armory site has been a fun distraction as well. I love being able to check out my guild mates talent specs.
In the Guitar Hero world, there are two:
(1) Get 5 stars on all songs in Hard Mode in Guitar Hero II. Only two songs are left, both currently at 4 stars: Pyschobilly Freakout and Carry Me Home.
(2) I have been obsessing the Guitar Hero II Xbox 360 Multi-Player Bundle. With the prospects of downloadable songs (including the songs from the first Guitar Hero) and more tracks in the set list, it is not a question of if I will get it, it is a question of when.
For some reason I decided to play a Guitar Hero II session of just one try at Free Bird before I went to work. Looks like lightening struck. 360, here I come.
Aside: "...a legend among the common folk". Cracked me up.
I have this drinking game that I have been playing for months. There is only one rule in the game:
I finally had that first beer last night. I am currently at 75% on Free Bird. The end is in sight.Every time you beat Hangar 18 on Expert, you drink a beer.
I actually took a break from Hangar 18 for the past couple of months and have just been playing the rest of the set list on Expert. When I recently heard Freebird on the radio, I knew it was time to make another shot at completing the set list on Expert. I spent some time in Practice mode Monday night to work on the sections that were killing me on Hangar 18 (mainly Solo #8, Solo #9, and the Bigger Riff). Once I had the Bigger Riff down, I started working on beating it allowing myself on 2 tries per GH2 session. I pulled it off on Try #4.
Not sure how correct are these, but the "Hendrix Award" sounds like a fun one to unlock.
Like most X360 games, Guitar Hero II will also have a full compliment of Achievements. Some will be pretty simple, like unlocking an arena or failing a song on Easy. Others get tougher, like getting 100% or 500,000 points on a song, while several are simply creative, like the "Hendrix Award" ("beat a song with lefty flip on"). For many people, it's a good enough reason to get that Xbox 360 you've been holding off on -- we'll be waiting for you on the leaderboards.
-- GameSpy.com
Umm, so yeah, started a group.
Nothing to see here, please move along.
Kotaku: Hands-On: Guitar Hero II For 360, New Tracks Revealed
Update:
Team Xbox: Guitar Hero II: RedOctane to Announce Xbox 360 Specifics
"They" are speculating that the downloadable content includes songs from the first GH. Co-op'ing the first GH songs...heaven. Supposedly they are gonna ship it in March 2007.
